One hundred huskies.

There is a particular kind of August afternoon in Louisiana — the air sitting on you like a wet coat, the asphalt soft underfoot. It is the wrong weather for a dog built in Siberia.

We find them in it anyway.

Chained in a backyard behind a house nobody answers the door of. Loose on a levee road, running the way huskies run — beautifully, and in the wrong direction. Waiting in a municipal shelter run that has no idea what to do with a dog like this.

Since 2019, 312 huskies have come through our hands. 288 of them are home — asleep on somebody's couch tonight, in a house where their name is known.

This campaign is about the next hundred.

The challenge facing Louisiana's huskies

Across this state, Siberian Huskies are being abandoned at an alarming rate.

They are not a rare breed — the husky is the 14th most popular of the 192 the American Kennel Club recognizes. They're simply among the most misunderstood. People fall in love with a blue-eyed puppy and take home a working animal bred to pull a sled across frozen tundra for hours without tiring. Then reality arrives: the escaping, the digging, the howling at 2 a.m., the undercoat that blows out twice a year and coats an entire house, the absolute refusal to be bored.

So they get surrendered. Or dumped. Or left chained outside in a Gulf Coast summer their body was never built to survive.

The ones who land in municipal shelters land somewhere without the resources to manage their specific needs. The ones who don't land anywhere fend for themselves in traffic, in heat, in the kind of conditions that don't end well.

In 2024, 1,266 Siberian Huskies were known to have been euthanized in Louisiana — not stray mixed breeds, this one breed, in this one state, in a single year. And that is only the ones we know about.

Louisiana Husky Rescue is the safety net under all of that. And our capacity is at its limit.

What happens when a husky reaches us

This is the unglamorous part, and it is the part your donation pays for.

A husky who comes to us is rarely "just a dog who needs a home." He is a dog who needs a veterinarian first. Louisiana is heartworm country — mosquitoes year-round — and a stray or neglected dog here is very often heartworm positive. Treatment is a months-long protocol that is expensive and not optional, because untreated heartworm kills.

Then vaccinations. Then spay or neuter. Then a microchip. Then, frequently, the quieter repairs: weight to put back on, skin to heal, a dog who flinches at a raised hand learning that hands can also mean food.

All in, initial vetting and emergency care runs an average of $450 per dog.

Then comes the part no money can buy: months in a foster home, learning how to be somebody's dog. House-training. Crate-training. Walking on a leash without dragging a human down the street. Learning that a door opening isn't the end of everything.

And every husky we adopt out leaves fully vetted, spayed or neutered, microchipped, and wearing a properly fitted harness and a strong leash — because a husky in a bad collar is a husky in a ditch.

Then one Saturday, there's a door. And a family standing in it.

That door is the whole point.

The growing need

Here is the thing we don't say publicly often enough, because it's painful to admit.

We have to say no.

We have no facility. Every husky we save lives in a real foster home — someone's spare room, someone's fenced yard, someone's couch. Our foster network isn't part of the operation; it is the operation. Which means our capacity isn't measured in kennels. It's measured in people.

Between the rising cost of veterinary care and a foster network stretched thin, we are turning dogs away. Right now there are numerous huskies in queue — dogs we know about, dogs someone has asked us to take, dogs we cannot reach until there is somewhere for them to land.

Every dollar in this campaign is a dollar toward turning "no" into "not yet," and "not yet" into "yes."

What this campaign will do

We're raising money to expand our reach so that no husky is left behind. Specifically:

Medical rehabilitation — covering initial vetting and emergency care, which averages $450 per dog.
Foster support — crates, high-quality nutrition, and training resources for 50 active foster homes, so that saying yes to a dog never means asking a volunteer to pay for it out of pocket.
Transport — safe passage for dogs out of high-kill shelters and into our foster network. Our dogs travel border to border across this state.

Your direct impact

We are 100% volunteer-run. Nobody here draws a paycheck. There's no mystery about where your money goes — it goes into dogs.

$100 — a month of specialized food and preventative medicine for one rescue
$450 — complete initial vetting and emergency care for one dog, start to finish
$900 — the same, for two

And any amount helps, genuinely. A rescue like ours runs on twenty-dollar gifts from people who love this breed.

Support Our Mission

The dream we haven't given up on

One day, Louisiana Husky Rescue will have a sanctuary — a real building, our headquarters, and a public place where families can come meet this breed, learn what living with one actually requires, and adopt with their eyes open.

It would mean we stop being limited by how many spare bedrooms we can find. It would mean the answer is yes far more often.

That project is paused right now, deliberately: the dogs in our care come first, and a strong foster network has to come before a building. But we haven't let go of it, and we won't.

Join the rescue effort

Somewhere in Louisiana right now there's a husky on a chain, or in a shelter run, or trotting down a road in the heat with no idea where he's going. He doesn't know we exist. He doesn't know a door is coming.

Help us make sure one is.

Every dollar goes to the dogs.

Make Your Gift Today

Louisiana Husky Rescue Inc. — a 501(c)(3) nonprofit · EIN 84-1977696 · Lafayette, Louisiana
louisianahuskyrescue.com · admin@louisianahuskyrescue.com

Born to run. Built to be loved.

Help Rescue Abandoned Louisiana Huskies

Providing a safe haven and a second chance for dogs in crisis

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