Today we’d like to introduce you to Marianne Cox.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I started SDH because of my first time traveling abroad – was in college and visitied Mexico w/ my family. It was the first time I saw street dogs. I saw them running down roads, hwys,, begging for food. I was with my now husband at the time and said I wanted to save one of those dogs. Over the years we started to travel more and the more street dogs I’d see- it saddened me and I’d spend most of my vacations collecting all our left over scraps for the dogs and worrying about them. 20 years later i was volunteering at our local humane society and they had a transport come in that was new to Central Oregon – 40 dogs from a meat farm in South Korea. I was w/ my daughter at the time volunteering – she was 10. I again, had never heard of a dog from a meat farm, didn’t know that existed. And the dogs we saw were all broken both phsically and emotionally from being raised and living in small wire kennels.
That is what told me I had to do something and the moment I said i have to,
Street Dog Hero was born just months later, I knew my heart was w/ street dogs internationally but that didn’t stop me the first few months from saving our first 20 dogs from the streets of Mexico, India, Virgin Islands, kill shelters in Texas and even dogs from meat farms in south korea, I was saving as many as I could who needed help.
How it grew….
I quickly realized that the dogs i was rescueing or saving were not the ones I thought needed help when I was traveling all those years. Those dogs – still street dogs – are doing ok and owned if not by a family by the locals and know how to survive. Its’ the dogs you don’t see as tourists – step away from the fancy resort towns and go to a neighboring community and then you’ll see true street dogs who need rescuing and need someone to ‘notice them’ and give them hope to live another day,
I saw so much saddness, saw so much suffering, my goal with SDH quickly turned from we need to rescue these dogs to we need to stop the problem. This is when our spay & neuterinig clinics became the most important things we do. Our end goal is for SDH and all rescues to not exist – that means all dogs (and cats) are loved, cared for, healthy, and loved. We have a long ways to go.
Over the last 9 years (started in 2017),SDH has grown from a small grassroots effor that was just myself, my 2 kids (ages 8 and 10 at the time) and a few all star fosters who for some reason said yes to this crazy idea and helped it grow into what it is today. But today we are an organziaton with an incredible team, over 600 foster families, and over 500 volunteers spread across the PNW. We continue to help animals both here in the US and internationally, which I find to be so great even tho we get lots of hate for not helping dogs here or there or wherever it may be – but for us – we are not pigeno holed into helping just one community-we can say YES to any sitatuion and from anywhere. And we say yes a lot. We focus on communities where access to vet care is extremely limited or there is none. And we are lucky to be able to do so and the communiiteis we help are so thankful we are there.
To date, we have rescued and helped find homes for over 5,000 dogs (and cats too) and spayed/neutered more than 13,000 animals thru our free and low cost clinics both here in Oregon and around the world.
Prevention is what we are passionate about – because 1 surgery can prevent generations of animals from being born into suffering. we are trying to stop the cycle from where is starts – spay & neuter and education.
when i look back i never imagined where wanting to help a dog running down a hwy in Mexico would lead me and what SDH would become. SDH has becomeso much bigger than me. It’s a community of people who believe as I do, that were an ahimal is born should not determing whether they get to live.
I got to where I am today because of those who believed in our mission that first year and continued to believe year after year. Fosters, volunteers, adopters, donors, sponsors, the list is endless. I am so lucky my dream has come true as I couldn’t see myself doing anything else…
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It definitely hasn’t s been a smooth road. Interestingly, some of the hardest parts haven’t been the things people might expect. Moving dogs from point A to point B, coordinating international transports, putting on large spay and neuter clinics in communities with very few resources—those things can be incredibly complicated, but somehow we figure them out.
One of the bigger challenges has actually been the perception of where Street Dog Hero “should” be helping.
Because we started internationally, there has always been some criticism or questioning about why we help dogs outside of the United States when there are animals who need help here. I’ve spent years trying to explain that it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Need doesn’t have borders, and neither does compassion.
What sometimes gets lost is just how much we do locally. We take local owner surrenders, help families keep their pets, provide spay and neuter and veterinary services, pull animals from overcrowded shelters, and support our Central Oregon community in many different ways. We are a rescue, not a shelter, yet we are increasingly being asked to fill needs that go well beyond traditional rescue work.
I think one of the hardest lessons for me has been accepting that no matter how much good you do, there will always be someone who believes you should be doing it differently. Every community has needs, and we simply cannot be everything to everyone.
So I’ve had to learn to stay focused on why I started Street Dog Hero in the first place. We go where we believe we can make an impact—whether that is down the street, across the country or across a border. I’m incredibly proud that Street Dog Hero has grown into an organization that can do it all and we are proud of that.
I also want to add the emotional challenge of not being able to save them all and the emotional toll it takes not only on me but the SDH team. We have seen so much suffering – esp with parvo & distemper – puppies die horrible deaths because something as simple as a vaccine is not available. We have rescued and dogs/puppies are so close to being to being w/ us and in a safe envirnoment but some get sick for various reasons and don’t make it. Those are hard.
Or the dogs in kill shelters that have one way in and no way out – the systems we are currently fighting in LA county to pull dogs that are getting euthanized in high numbers and there is nothing we can do.. Some systems make is so hard to save lives and I just don’t get it as it’s not hard.
It’s also the challenge of so many people are always asking us to help and we again, can’t save them all. Our team can only work so many hrs a day and try to have some sort of work/life balance and keep our families happy. We could quite literally work all hrs of the day and we’d still be saying no to dogs – and knowing that the other option is when we say ‘no’ is one of the hardest things we do.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My husband was/is an entrepreneur and I always supported his businesses and was a stay at home mom. I don’t have any vet experience, any animal welfare experience and honestly never volunteered until the year I started SDH. I always loved dogs, animals in general, my family, supported our family businesses. I grew up not even knowing the importance of volunteering or of non-profits – it wasn’t part of my childhood and upbringing. So I had no skills or was specizlaied in anything. Just knew I cared and wanted to help. Sometimes that is all that is needed.
It was a steep learning curve learning how non-profits work, how boards work, about animal welfare, vetting in general, I learned a lot quickly and still learn every single day.
What am i known for – my passion and dedication to not stop and do all i can for our mission and these animals and their communities.
What am I most proud of – all SDH has accomplished in 9 years – I pinch myself every day – and see the results in areas we spend time in and see the animals who wouldn’t be here today but are because of SDH and the familes who are lucky enough to be able to love them and share their families with them. We are changing animal welfare = always striving to do better, be better and set higher standards for what ‘rescue’ looks like.
What sets us apart – is our belief in spay & neuter. We don’t just rescue – we are doing all we can so dogs/cats do not need to be rescued in the first place.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
When I started Street Dog Hero, I honestly didn’t know what I was doing, I just knew what I wanted to accomplish. I reached out to everyone I could think of for advice and guidance, and most doors were shut. I heard a lot of “good luck with that” and plenty of reasons why it wouldn’t work.
But one person said yes. She took the time to help me understand things I had never done before and, most importantly, helped me avoid reinventing the wheel. Her willingness to share what she had learned made my road a little easier, and she’s still part of Street Dog Hero today.
That experience really shaped how I approach people now. If someone reaches out to me with an idea, a dream, or something they’re passionate about, I will always make the time. I’ll answer the email, take the lunch, share what I’ve learned, and help however I can.
SDH has grown into something I never could have imagined when I started, and we still have so much more we want to accomplish. But I’ve learned a lot along the way. If anything I’ve learned can help someone else fulfill their dream, pursue something they’re passionate about, or make the world a better place, I’m there for it. I’ll always make the time.
Pricing:
- for us to sponsor/hold a spay & neuter clinic – depending on location/vet team/etc is can cost between $25-$40 /dog or cat. Which sounds like nothing but we hold high volume clinics from 600-1300 animals in a weekend and that can range anwhere from $20k to $50K – all money we spend cause it’s important and get nothing in return.
- our adoption fee’s are around $500
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.streetdoghero.org
- Instagram: streetdoghero
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/streetdoghero
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@streetdoghero9071
