Hermosa’s Hideout

It goes with the job of rescuing animals - encountering people so blithely callous to animals you wonder which planet they have come from. Co-founder Faith Maloney, who in the 1980s served as unofficial animal control in Kanab, Utah, the area in which Best Friends is located, has certainly met her fair share of these kinds of people. But one man, after all these years, still sits in her mind like a thorn.

The county sheriff one day asked Maloney to pick up a rabbit from this man's house. Apparently, the man couldn't afford to feed the rabbit anymore. While Maloney was there picking up the rabbit, he asked if she wanted to take the family dog as well.

"What's the problem?" she asked.

"Kids are going back to school so we don't want her anymore. I was going to shoot her when she finished the bag of dog food."

Too shocked to speak, Maloney gathered the dog and the bunny and left.

"I don't think I will ever get over the casual way some people relate to life," Maloney says. "Why waste the food? Let the dog eat the remainder of the food. Then shoot her. Made sense to him."

Back at the sanctuary, the founders renamed the dog Hermosa, which means "beautiful" in Spanish. Later, in honor of the dog, the founders named one of the octagons after her. The "hideout" part of the name came from the Old West theme the founders had running in the early days. Hideouts were, of course, places where bandits would go to evade the law.

But the name could just as well have conveyed a place where dogs, like Hermosa, could find sanctuary from the brutish approach certain people take to animals.  

Written by Ted Brewer

Photo by Gary Kalpakoff