Pet Posse benefit Saturday pins hopes on donations

PORT ANGELES — What would you do for your pet?

Here’s what a posse of unpaid volunteers will do for other people’s pets six days a week, on holidays and weekends:

• Endure 18 bites from a spiteful chihuahua.

• Lie on the dirt, fake injuries and cry in public.

• Wander through Ocean View Cemetery at 2 a.m. in the snow.

The Port Angeles Pet Posse will do just about anything to reunite a lost pet with its owner.

Although Port Angeles often accompanies the title, there’s no fixed limit to how far they’ll venture. Posse volunteers have trekked to Kitsap County before, and often go to Jefferson County.

Armed with bear spray, first-aid kits, rescue equipment and compasses, they’re prepared to traverse cougar/bear country, tread through swamps, rappel down mountains and venture into cellular-less and no-navigation terrain — all to retrieve a lost pet.

“We kind of look like zombies when we’re all ready to go in the woods,” said Shell’ey Van Cleave, founder of the Pet Posse.

No matter the difficulty of the search, Van Cleave says, the Pet Posse never charges for its services or asks the owner to donate once they’ve found a pet — even if it bites a volunteer’s arm 18 times.

“I want to feel as happy as they feel,” Van Cleave said. “That’s what it’s all about. It’s not about the money at that point.”

Rather, the group relies on donations from the public and volunteers. It turns out that more strangers donate to Pet Posse than locals who have enlisted the posse’s help, she said.

On Saturday, Pet Posse will put on a flea market fundraiser at the Port Angeles Eagles Aerie, 2843 E. Myrtle St., from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Many of the Pet Posse volunteers chip in their own money to keep the posse going or treat an animal in need of urgent care.

For example, the volunteers pooled together $50,000 out of their own pockets to treat Hydee, a stray 14-year-old golden retriever that no one claimed. She was found with skin hanging off her body and almost no fur left. Van Cleave said she ran outside to vomit when she first saw and smelled Hydee in a garage, where a concerned citizen brought her from off the street.

“I said, ‘No way. We don’t have this neglect in Port Angeles,’ ” Van Cleave said. “We decided we were going to help her even if it killed us.”

Now fully recovered, healthy and happy, Hydee serves as the posse’s mascot.

The average donation to Pet Posse is $100, Van Cleave said. However, the organization expends an average $86 per day for insurance, equipment wear and tear, and gas money. A trip outside Clallam County can easily rack up $50 more in fuel.

“We’re losing money,” Van Cleave said.

The posse also “desperately” needs someone to volunteer their grantwriting expertise to secure more funding, she said.

Approaching its third anniversary Nov. 8, the nonprofit has reunited at least 1,213 lost pets with their owners since 2014, Van Cleave said. Five core volunteers work three 12-hour shifts per week and answer anywhere from 50 to 100 calls a day.

Van Cleave said she “handpicked” her team for their particular skill sets.

For example, volunteer Gail Nivala served as a San Diego County sheriff deputy in the 1970s and now contributes her sleuth detective skills to serve the missing pet population on the Peninsula.

Volunteer Shari Hamilton possesses a special way with animals, as does her “magnet dog” Macha, a Labrador-Rottweiler cross whose presence often attracts loose dogs for the volunteers to capture, Van Cleave said.

Hamilton rescued the posse’s 100th missing dog. The dog had been lost and disoriented in the woods for days when Hamilton and Macha spotted him among trees.

She opened her van door, and the dog climbed in.

Beyond commonly lost canines and cats, the Pet Posse has also found pigs, horses, rabbits, cows, turtles, prairie dogs, a peacock — and even a tarantula. The posse doesn’t directly handle wildlife or marine life but calls the Northwest Raptor &Wildlife Center or Feiro Marine Life Center when a citizen reports a wild animal who needs help.

Van Cleave started the Pet Posse after she lost her recently adopted shepherd dog, Danny Boy, less than 30 hours after taking him home from the Noah Center in Stanwood.

The dog became spooked when a raccoon named “Daniel Boone” came to Van Cleave’s backdoor for his habitual 7 p.m. sandwich. Danny Boy bolted out the open back door.

Van Cleave didn’t see him again for two months and two days. She was a “wreck,” she said. Although Danny Boy was eventually found, she realized the need for a pet-finding service in the area.

Pet Posse volunteers utilize a web of communication to advertise lost and found pets: about 30 location-based Facebook groups, waterproof flyers, an LED sign, Peninsula Daily News classifieds, Pet Posse’s Facebook page and word of mouth.

Van Cleave said a woman once mistakenly thought all the lost animals advertised in the PDN belonged to her, because the Pet Posse’s phone number was listed on each one.

“Young lady, you’ve had a lot of lost animals,” she told Van Cleave. “I don’t think you should ever own an animal again.”

The Pet Posse follows county and city ordinances, which means volunteers with an organization cannot take a stray animal off the street without permission from an owner or notice from a concerned citizen.

The organization begins a search when the owner of a lost pet or a concerned citizen who has found an animal calls its Pet Search hotline at 360-775-5154, she said.

“If they’re concerned enough to call [us], we have to help them,” Van Cleave said.

If a concerned citizen cannot house an animal until the owner can be found, Pet Posse will keep the pet in one of six enclosures at its shelter inside the Port Angeles Pet Posse store at the former Tiny Bubbles location, 1130 E. Front St.

If an owner cannot be found after months of searching, the pet will go up for adoption.

Currently, Pet Posse has one dog available for adoption: Bella, a 4-year-old female wheaten terrier. Pet Posse has been feeding and keeping Bella for two months since she was transferred from an animal shelter in Forks.

For more information about Pet Posse or adopting Bella, call 360-775-5154.

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Reporter Sarah Sharp can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56650, or at ssharp@peninsuladailynews.com.