Rethinking Rescue

By: Carol Mithers

Published by Catapult, 2025-08-05

Rethinking Rescue boldly confronts two of the biggest challenges of our time—poverty and homelessness—in asking the question: Who deserves the love of a pet? In Los Angeles’s most underserved communities, Lori Weise is known as the Dog Lady, the woman who’s spent decades caring for people in poverty and the animals that love them. Long before anyone else, Weise grasped that animal and human suffering are inextricably connected and created a new rescue narrative: an enduring safety net empowering pet owners and providing resources to reduce the number of pets coming into shelters. Rethinking Rescue: Dog Lady and the Story of America’s Forgotten People and Pets unites the causes of animal welfare and social justice, moving between Weise’s story and that of the larger U.S. rescue movement. Through captivating storytelling and investigative reporting, Carol Mithers examines the consequences of bias within this overwhelmingly white movement, where an overemphasis on placing animals in affluent homes disregards pet owners in poverty. Weise’s innovative and ultimately triumphant efforts revealed a better way. As cities across the country witness some of the worst housing crises in history, and as the population of unhoused people and pets continues to skyrocket, Rethinking Rescue offers a story of compassion and hope.