Who is Angie's Friends
In 2008 three of Angie's friends officially formed "Angie's Friends" as a non-profit organization recognizing the critical efforts which Angie had been doing for over a decade in the dangerous West Dallas neighborhoods. Angie spends the majority of every day going house to house to feed, water, medicate, provide shelter for, and pat the heads of dogs that have an extremely low quality of life. Many of these dogs are living on short chains in neglectful and abusive situations, only knowing the feeling of being wanted from Angie's visits.
Angie is now 80 years old and continues to care for these sweet dogs, feral cats, kittens, chickens, birds and other wildlife. She has found the need to take a day off occasionally as she should. It isn't easy, it isn't glamorous, but its the work and passion that Angie feels called to do and she won't stop.
Angie Needs Your Help! Consider being a "Friend" too.
With a Little Help from Her Friends
Urban Animal Magazine, February 2008
She's been known for a decade as "The Fairy Dogmother of Dallas." Now, she has "Friends." A petite 60-ish woman who single-handedly provides grass-roots animal welfare work in the most economically challenged areas of Dallas, Oak Cliff's, Angie Manriquez brings daily food, water, and care to dogs in the years of people who have neither the resources nor inclination to do it themselves. If there were a Hall of Fame for animal rescuers, the first inductee would surely be Angie.
Elaine Munch, President of the Metroplex Animal Coalition, said recently,
"Angie is the most effective grass-roots animal welfare worker we have in our area. She works the toughest neighborhoods caring for dogs living fulltime on short chains with no one else to look after the. Except for Angie, they often would have no food, water or shelter. Angie does this on a small Social Security income, spending every dime on helping needy animals. She's completely selfless - her concern is for the neglected dogs she ministers to every day."
After years of depending on the meager support of patrons and area rescue groups to funnel supples and equipment her way, Angie's now going to benefit - thanks to a group of supporters, including Munch and Angie's long time friend, Beverly Fyfe - from a non-profit organization established specifically to provide what she needs to continue her important work. Called, "Angies Friends", the non-profit organization will exist solely to support her critical effort.
Now, you can be one of those "Friends." Your donation to Angie's Friends is tax deductible, and your money will go directly and quickly to help the neediest animals in Dallas. Money donated today will be buying food and medicine for a needy dog tomorrow. Five dollars will buy a weeks food for a dog.
Here are two stories that only scratch the surface of what Angie does every day, in appalling conditions:
- Several years ago I accompanied her on her rounds through the slums, feeding and medicating dogs that were barely existing, with only faint traces of any quality of life. With food, water and medicine in hand, we approached a Chow mix with very fuzzy ears and on a short chain. As we drew near, the fuzz on her ears flew away in a cloud (flies!), exposing decimated ear flaps. Angie tended to those ears for weeks until they healed.
- On another day, she went into West Dallas to rescue two dogs that had spent their whole lives tied to trees in a back yard. Their owner - who had for years resisted surrendering her dogs to Angie for a chance at a better life - had finally passed away. But one of the dogs had already become so entangled in her chain and strangled herself. The Fairy Dogmother was too late for her. The other, when Angie unlocked the chain's hold on her neck, wouldn't move away from the tree she had been shackled to for years. After spending her whole life in that spot, she didn't know she could walk away. She was adopted into a loving home.
You can make sure Angie is able to continue this important work, making the lives of the most neglected dogs in Dallas better, even decent, with minimum necessities, by making a donation to Angie's Friends. Do it today.
-Bob Walton
All In a Day's Work
A testimonial by Angie's friend, Beverly Fyfe
You may have heard about Angie Manriquez and the incredible work she does caring for animals in West and South Dallas. In the equivalent of an 8- to 10-hour per day job (that she performs for free), Angie spends her days and her energy seeing to it that chained, neglected, and abused animals are fed and have shelter. She lives on a very small Social Security check each month and spends most of that helping the helpless animals.
She sees to it that the animals she runs across are on lightweight tethers (that she purchases) and not on the heavy tow-truck chains that weigh down and deform their necks/spines. She finds young dogs whose chains, placed around their necks when they were puppies, have grown into their flesh as they grew bigger. The chains sometimes require surgery for removal. She brushes aside used drug needles before she crawls under "crack" houses to rescue mama dogs and their pitiful puppies. She stops her car and runs into traffic to get an injured animal out of a street where it has been hit by a car. Even with a "rescue" rate at the veterinarian's office, her bill there stays very high and her credit card is maxed out - not from eating in restaurants, traveling or buying clothes, furniture, etc. - but from the help she provides at all costs for the animals that desperately need it.
Angie gets donations of dog food and distributes it in an area where animal owners do not care if their "pets" are fed or not. Of course such people should not have dogs, but they do, for security. These folks take the biggest dog they can find off the street (where there is always a selection of big, hungry dogs). They chain it in the back yard and feed it left over beans every few days if they remember it is out there. These animals live sad, depressing lives. Neglect and abuse are common in their neighborhoods of drug dealers, poverty, and pain. Some of these dogs have been held down and had their ears sliced off (making it easier if the owner decides to fight them--the other dog can't grab an ear that is no longer there). If the animals die on their chains from starvation or disease or abuse, their bodies are thrown in the dumpster. If the dogs become ill, the owners take them to the Trinity River bottoms or to the country and dump them, hoping the animal will be too sick to find its way home. Those dogs will die in pain and their bodies will rot. Then, these folks just step out in the street and get their next big, new guard dog, and the cycle starts over.
These are the forgotten animals that Angie spends her energy helping, in areas where the Dallas police do not care to venture. Angie is the only volunteer the Metroplex Animal Coalition has in this area - who else would go there? Every week, she takes at least three and usually five or six animals to a clinic for the free spay/neuter that MAC offers, then returns them to their owners. Unless Angie did this, none of these animals would have the surgery that prevents the next litter and the one after that and the one after that.
