Lisa Van Arnam: Dog Mom

By Caroline Monday

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Dog Mom! And, for countless animals, she is here to save the day. Lisa Van Arnam is an advocate for animals, fighting on the front line to make sure that, one day, every domesticated animal will have a good home.

Lisa Van Arnam is surrounded by her adopted dogs. Photo by Marie Freeman

She is a member of the Watauga Humane Society’s board of directors, supports a number of agencies serving animals and regularly goes out of her way to help an animal in need. With that kind of dedication, it’s no surprise that she has come to be known as Dog Mom.

Meeting with Van Arnam and her “kids,” as she calls her eight dogs, means learning each one of their stories. Their names are Holly, Tucker, Amanda, Baruth, Bianca, Jasper, Gracie and Max. Van Arnam rescued each one, either by finding it as a stray, taking it in as a sick dog that a shelter couldn’t afford to keep or by adopting it from someone who no longer wanted it.

Many of the dogs that Van Arnam has helped are Dalmatians, which are often abandoned or left to the care of a rescue group. Van Arnam said many people don’t realize that Dalmatians can be a difficult breed, but one that has been romanticized by the Disney movies. Dalmatians shed constantly, she said, and they demand a lot of attention. They are not the lap dogs many pet owners desire, but rather very active dogs, originally bred to run alongside carriages.

Their whip-like tails can be dangerous to have around young children, and Van Arnam said their short-haired coats give them little protection from the elements, so Dalmatians have to spend much of their time indoors.

In response to the problem of unwanted Dalmatians, several breed rescues have formed and Van Arnam is part of several, including Dalmatian Rescue of the Peidmont, based in Charlotte, and Dalsavers, based in Cordova, Tenn.

The animals Van Arnam saves are not limited to Dalmatians, or even to the ones she can keep in her house. She said that she fairly often drops whatever plans she has because she has seen an animal that needs her help. In preparation for coming across animals that need to be saved, Van Arnam said she keeps rescue supplies, like food and water, in her car.

Van Arnam is now a stay-at-home mom and said that when she worked as a registrar at Appalachian State University, she was lucky to have a boss who would understand if she came in late because she had been saving an animal.

Recently, Van Arnam said, she was traveling to reach a vacation destination with her daughter when they came across a dog that had been hit by a car. The dog was laying on the center line, and though it had been hit in the head, it was still alive. Van Arnam took the dog to a veterinarian in Virginia, which, in the end, saved the dog’s life.

Saving that dog is a good example of Van Arnam’s philosophy about helping others, both canine and human. While other drivers passed by the dog, she chose to delay her vacation to help it. “You have a choice, you can stop and help or you can look at your watch an walk on by,” she said.

“You can always do something,” she said, even if it’s just to provide that person with a meal for a day. With animals, “it’s like seeing a hungry child in front of me.”

This lesson is one Van Arnam said her mother taught her. Her mother, she said, would do whatever it took to help someone in need. “ She’s not going to turn her head,” Van Arnam said. “She sees the need and she’s one of those people that she has to help them. I think she’s part of the reason I have the feelings that I have, and the reactions.”

Van Arnam’s mother is one of her partners in her work to save animals, fostering several of the animals Van Arnam has saved.

Her love for helping others is also connected to her Christian faith. “I had prayed as a small child that God would help me and guide me and show me what I should do and where I could be helping,” Van Arnam said. And God has answered her prayers. Van Arnam believes she has found what she is meant to do with her life.

She said she knows God will provide for her and her family as she continues her mission. Van Arnam often takes in sick or injured dogs at her own expense. The vet bills can add up, but she said she knows God will provide and will ultimately reward her for her efforts.

It seems the tradition of helping others has been passed on to another generation in Van Arnam’s 6-year-old daughter, Scout. Scout is as enthusiastic as her mother about helping animals. After hearing her mother referred to so often as “Dog Mom,” Scout has adopted the title “Dog Daughter.”

Van Arnam is an advocate for responsible pet ownership. She said she wants people to think about all the responsibilities of owning a pet before they get one. They should think about if they can afford to have their pets spayed or neutered before adopting it. Being a responsible pet owner, she said, means making sure they always have fresh food and water and are not always kept on a chain.

She compares the responsibilities of owning a pet to those of having a child. It takes time and money. Like children, pets cannot provide for themselves or take care of themselves.

Van Arnam said she would like to see Boone on the map for having no homeless animals. She wants to encourage people to help local efforts to serve animals, like the Watauga Humane Society, Friends for Life and Animal Control. Van Arnam said even small gifts make a difference, like used cages or a bag of pet food. Most of these agencies have wish lists of items they need. Friends for Life offers opportunities to foster pets for as short a period as one week at a time.

The Watauga Humane Society offers many opportunities to help the animals of Watauga County. It will host the Fur Ball, its largest annual fundraiser, this Saturday, Aug. 25, at the Broyhill Inn and Conference Center in Boone. For more information about the Fur Ball, call Jan Watson at (828) 264-1743. For information about more ways you can help, call the Humane Society shelter at (828) 264-7865, or visit them online at wataugahumanesociety.org.