The Howling Foundation

07/21/2026

The last several weeks have been among the busiest since The Howling Foundation was founded. We’ve been quieter on this page than we intended—not because the work stopped, but because there was too much of it.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve done boots on the ground rescue with our rescue partners, met our first matching challenges, and had the privilege of supporting dogs like Jailbreak Husky Rescue’s Orphan and Woof Tribe’s
Atticus as they begin new chapters in their lives. Much of that happened in real time, so many updates ended up being shared through our founder Bethany’s personal page rather than here.

Time to fix that.

Let’s start with Atticus.

Three weeks ago, we partnered up with Woof Tribe to visit Miranda’s “Rescue” and save a husky, Snookie, that another rescue had sent there and had failed to account for. Snookie was nowhere to be seen, so we helped rescue Atticus, a young German Shepherd who was traumatized and fearful, as our first ever Honorary Husky of the Week and pledged to match the first $1,000 raised towards his rehabilitation and training.

Our community met that challenge quickly, and HF has now honored its $1,000 match.

When we ask you to support a dog, we want you to be able to come back a few weeks later and think: “Good job, us. We did that.”

Bethany visited Atticus with his trainer this past weekend and saw that he had made remarkable progress. Every day, he is gaining more confidence and moving closer to the loving home he deserves.

Sometimes, the barrier to adoption isn’t a medical condition. Sometimes it’s giving a rescue dog the time, guidance, and opportunity to learn that the world can be a safe place—something these abandoned, large breed dogs have every reason NOT to know.

Our matching campaign is complete, but Atticus’ training journey is not. If you’ve been following his story and would like to help carry him through the next phase, we’ll include the fundraiser in the comments.

Thank you to everyone who helped us reach the match. You are part of Atticus’ story now.

Go team.

06/26/2026

We are going to have a very special Husky of the Week this week.

But we’ll have to wait until the weekend to meet them.

Watch this space.

We promise they’ll be worth the wait.

06/21/2026

This right here. This is why Jailbreak Husky Rescue’s Orphan, who hails from Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, is our Husky of the Week, again.

This is why we’re matching the first $1,000 in donations sent directly to Jailbreak this week for his care. So the time to step up for him is now.

Because the bad news? He’s still missing a few things atm. Minor details like his coat. Healthy skin. Much of his body weight. Trust in humans. A family.

Here’s some good news: Jailbreak is changing those things right now. But they need your help.

Right now, he needs two things from you. Just two.

SHARE this post. He deserves for people to know who he is. And that is how we get him in front of his future furever family.

And DONATE towards his care in medical foster. His dermatology treatments start next month and we need your help to cover them.

Will you join his village? Because he needs you. Yes, YOU specifically.

(Many thanks to everyone who has already stepped up for him. And for those who will do so today, all of Jailbreak’s donation options are in the comments.)

06/20/2026

Orphan.

Welcome to Six Dollar Saturday. Jailbreak Husky Rescue’s Orphan is HF’s Husky of the Week…for the second time. He gets another $1,000 matching donation fundraiser. Because he needs it. Will you help him get there?

This should have been posted yesterday, but grief overtook it. How to go from telling the sadness of Mousetrap’s death - right on top of Halo’s, Ballistic’s, and Stalker’s - and then head right into asking for help for another tragically mistreated husky? It felt impossible to do.

But today, we’re - and so are the huskies who need us. Starting with Orphan. Here’s why we need to keep helping him.

Brooklyn K Jailbreak shared the heartbreaking reality from when he was pulled off the Texas streets. “Wary and nontrusting of people. He did communicate that.” There are parts of his body “that you can’t ever get near. Over the head is a no. The neck is a no.”

He’s healing, slowly. But he still has the missing fur, inflamed skin, emaciation, indicators of obvious neglect. So too his (completely justified) inability to trust humans. It’s all still there. Still needs more time and love to fix.

You previously donated $1,000 to help him. Where did it go already? Vet visits. Diagnostics. Preventives. Vaccinations. Medications. Ear infection and skin treatments. Weekly medicated baths. All of the things that go into mending a life previously characterized by egregious neglect.

We’ll start this fundraiser by honoring our prior $1,000 match for Orphan - right here on Meta’s donate button where you can see us do it. But we need to raise $2,000 more for Orphan. For his dermatology consult next month, the treatment that will follow, and his ongoing care and healing in medical foster.

And after the neverending heartbreak of the past two weeks, we must ask: if any of Halo, Mousetrap, Ballistic, or Stalker touched your heart, please consider donating to Orphan in their honor. Please help us do for him what we can no longer do for them.

The tears have arrived again, so this is a good ending point.

Please help us help him.

Let’s give him the life that he has always deserved but never had.

(All of Jailbreak’s donation options are in the comments.)

06/19/2026

We apologize for the slow posting around here; this has been a very difficult time, filled with losses, as referenced below and now fully shared.

We will, however, be launching our next Husky of the Week update this morning for Five Dollar Friday, so stay tuned for that! And for updates on our previously-featured weekly huskies (Woof Tribe’s Luna, for instance, has colonized the entirety of the Lake Tahoe basin at this point.)

(Bethany here. Brooklyn requested me to share my reflections on Mousetrap’s death that I posted, stream of consciousness, to my personal page. For those who do not know, Halo and Ballistic referenced in this post are Woof Tribe huskies who died - from metastatic cancer and hidden internal infection, respectively - simultaneously with the deaths of Jailbreak’s Stalker and Mousetrap, all in a two week period.)

The death that was the most devastating.

How can you rank them?

But last Friday, I sat in my living room, having received a text from Brooklyn that they were at the vet. I was paralyzed. The last two weeks of quarantine were so painful. Knowing that the clock was ticking down on his life day by day. Every one of those days, it was like a part of me was mentally in Colorado, waiting for this heartbreaking end.

This was one of the most beautiful rescues that I had been a part of. I thought we were going to give him the world. Every time I went to Colorado, I made sure to see him, except that I couldn’t the last time because Halo‘s visit took the whole time and I had no reason to believe I would never see him again. Sarah always welcomed me in and I always got spend time playing with him, cuddling him, watching him frolic in the yard with his foster husky siblings.

To have this play out in the midst of Halo's and Ballistic's excruciating deaths, to learn that Jailbreak's Stalker had died within 24 hours of Halo, and to have a ticking timer on Mousetrap's remaining days, and to know in the end, this ultimately had to have a human component… That’s why I said this two week period filled with four husky deaths was the most excruciating experience of my rescue life. That nothing even in 2025 could possibly manage to compete with.

With Halo, I have the peace of mind that there is nothing further we could’ve done no matter what. We did and gave her literally everything we possibly could.

This is my first real, 3D, surround sound experience with behavioral euthanasia. (Yes, this happened at a prior rescue, as you would expect given the scale of the operation. Multiple times. Once even with a dog who I had “picked” for rescue. But never like this. Never a husky I pulled out of the shelter with my own two hands.). I’ve known it would come. I’ve known it would be shattering. But despite knowing that Jailbreak did every single thing that they possibly could… And I’m not just saying that, there’s a reason that I went to see him every single time I could, and to see how well they were taking care of him… what I now understand is that behavioral euthanasia will always come with a haunting, excruciating, what if? How far back in his life would we have to go to break the causal chain? To make sure that humans did not fail him? To fix it so his life would not have ended early, at human hands—BECAUSE other human hands failed him?

I voice typed this stream of consciousness. I have tried to write more polished posts about this story. But in the end, on my own page, I just want to share spontaneously the hell that this experience has been.

How were the first five days after Halo’s death?

It was this. We lost Mousetrap. In a way where - thanks to the mandatory quarantine period that kept both the agony and him alive - we knew every. single. day. that the appointed moment was coming.

No rescuer should have to know this much pain at one. But I suspect that everyone here who rescues is going to tell me that they know the pain that I’m talking about.

You know my sign off. . Does it apply here? Did we succeed or fail in saving him?

I define rescue as “giving them every good day that is possibly available to them.”

In that sense, yes, Mousetrap was rescued.

But I wish we could have given him more good days.

06/15/2026

Team Howling,

You did it. We set out to raise $2,000 for Luna - $1,000 from you and $1,000 from us - and we made it happen. Meanwhile, Woof Tribe made the rescue magic happen. After two weeks of foster adventures in San Francisco, Luna left yesterday for her hopefully-furever . . . a foster-to-adopt family with two beautiful resident huskies and a backyard view of Lake Tahoe.

There, she will go through spay and recovery, and then slow introductions to the resident huskies….all the while, enjoying a million dollar view. We’ll be rooting her on every step of the way. And thanks to you, we were able to cover her vetting, spay, and other immediate expenses.

Check Woof Tribe’s page for more details on her next chapter. We’re honored to have played a small part in her prior chapter.

06/12/2026

“And you and you and you, you have to give [them] hope.” - Harvey Milk

🐺 Husky of the Week: Hope

Team Howling, we’re energized and incensed to howl from Harvey Milk’s city about our Husky of the Week: Woof Tribe’s Hope (fka , a stray taken to Fresno Animal Center in California’s Central Valley).

HF will match the first $1,000 donated directly to Woof Tribe for Hope’s care. Each of your (and our) dollars becomes two. Each of those dollars gets Hope further away from the hell someone forced upon her and closer to the happy husky life she should have had all along.

Look into her eyes. She is one year old. She should be living the husky life - terrorizing squirrels, trolling for cheese, and howling with joy.

Instead, she weighs 28 pounds. Her face is raw and inflamed. Her body is Exhibit A when it comes to the prolonged neglect she suffered.

And let’s be clear: this did not “happen to” Hope. Someone DID THIS to Hope.

Beyond a reasonable doubt.

Maybe they did not beat her or shoot her, as we see too often in rescue. But at best, they forced her to suffer through neglect and indifference.

Someone decided that feeding her, treating her, protecting her, and caring for her could wait until tomorrow. And then tomorrow. And then another tomorrow.

Until this is what was left behind.

Now hear this: the shelter notes say she is still easy to handle. After everything she has endured…the hunger, the pain, the infections. The betrayal by the alleged human(s) that were supposed to protect her.

She is still willing to trust us.

We. Do. Not. Deserve. Huskies.

But now is the moment that we show Hope that her trust in humanity is not (totally) misplaced.

Because once in a while, real humans show up. The kind who do not look away because it’s too sad or they assume someone else will help. The kind who understand that rescue is not a spectator sport.

Today is that day.

Today, Hope leaves a government facility in Fresno and steps into a new life. One filled with love, caring, and yes…hope.

But hope comes with a price and we need your help to buy it for her. And now is time to make it happen. HF will match up to the first $1,000 donated directly to Woof Tribe this week for Hope’s care.

Will you join us in giving her hope?

Please consider a donation through the Meta button below (GiveButter campaign is coming soon today.)

PS Thanks to you, we hit BOTH of our last two matches for WT’s Luna and Jailbreak Husky Rescue’s Orphan. We’ll be posting much more about those things sooner; thank you for bearing with us as we grieve Halo’s and Ballistic’s losses.

06/05/2026

Meet Jailbreak Husky Rescue’s Orphan - our Husky of the Week.

HF will match up to $1,000 in donations made directly to Jailbreak this coming week for his care.

Let us tell you why. Come spend your Five Dollar Friday with us so we can turn your $5 into $10 for Orphan.

A few weeks ago, the then-nameless Orphan wandered into a Texas yard looking like this.

Hair loss. Inflamed skin. Grotesquely underweight. Exhausted.

Barely recognizable as a dog, let alone a husky.

We don’t know who did this to him, how long he had been fighting to survive on the streets, or how many people saw him before someone finally stopped to help.

But we know one thing: Orphan didn’t do this to himself.

When Jailbreak saw him, they did what they do best: step in to transform a “medical case” into a healed and thriving husky. They’ve moved him to Colorado and settled him in with a medical foster (follow along this week to see how he’s doing with this temp human.). It’s why we love them and are honored to call ourselves one of their rescue partners.

But his rescue is not over - it’s just beginning. He’s still waiting for his first dermatology appointment, and his vet team thinks he might need up to six months in medical foster before he is healthy enough for an adopter to take over.

Six months of healing ahead . . . But through it all, look at his eyes.

Even at his lowest, he was still looking up.
�Pause to take in not just the suffering, but the resilience. Life gave this husky every reason to give up. But he didn’t.

So we won’t give up on him either.

If Jailbreak’s and our supporters come together to raise $1,000 for Orphan’s care over the next seven days, HF will match every dollar, up to $1,000.

Let’s show Orphan that he was right to keep looking up.

You can donate directly to Jailbreak through the Meta donate button below, or their other direct donation options are in the comments.

🐺❤️,

- HF

06/04/2026

Why we are so excited for the Fall 2026 launch of our husky spay and neuter fundraising pilot - the very first contribution our Halo’s Fund (HF2) will make to California spay and neuter.

We envision a world in which this will not be the reality for future generations of huskies in the country. In which every husky is born wanted. In which shelter “inventory” of the breed is almost nonexistent, rather than single locations each offering dozens of huskies if not into the three-figure range. In which they cannot be found on the side of the road as so many of our personal huskies once were.