Meet Holly Dool | Founder & President

We had the good fortune of connecting with Holly Dool and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Holly, what’s something about your industry that outsiders are probably unaware of?
People think we just get to play with cute puppies all day. People in rescue work long, hard hours. Each animal that comes into the rescue requires a foster (if we can find one), vetting and marketing once the animal is adoptable. Many of them need groomed. Many of our animals are sick or injured and require thousands of dollars in vet care. We get lists of ‘euthanasia listed’ animals daily from many shelters and we have to pick and choose what we have room and finances to save.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Camo Rescue takes in the sick, injured and senior dogs that some rescues can’t or won’t take due to cost. We are 100% donation based, we do not get any government grants or subsidy. In 2019 we rescued 854 animals. Our vet bills alone were $429,000. Grooming, food, training, and supplies was another $175,000. We have a team of volunteers that do our applications and a foster coordinator. It takes a lot of volunteers to run a rescue of this size. Once we get our facility built and running, we will be able to have on-site volunteers which will be new and very exciting for us. We hope to be able to save even more animals with the facility we are building in Magnolia.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I have no idea lol. I work 80-90 hours a week so don’t get out much. If I do go out for dinner we stay close to home as I have dogs here requiring care several times a day. Getting out for a pedicure or massage is about as exotic as I can manage. I can’t remember the last time we went away for the weekend. It’s been 2-3 years. We had a vacation planned the week after Hurricane Harvey hit. Needless to say that trip was cancelled as we were flooded with new intakes.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My husband calls himself my enabler. When we met I was doing parrot rescue and had 27 large birds. I joke with him that he should have known what he was getting into! He’s been wonderful about putting up with all the dogs in the house; the late nights, the constant emergencies and the fact that I can’t really take a break. It’s hard to get away. We don’t get to travel like he would like to. We are in the process of building a facility to house more animals and he has been wonderful in helping to design it, plan the construction and managing the process. I also have an amazing, dedicated group of volunteers and fosters. My Vice President, Emily Norris has been with me for 6 years! She is in Dallas and runs our rescue there along with her assistant Tammy Hovde. We also have 2 other long-time volunteers, Vanessa Johnson and Stephanie Mei. They head our adoption application processing and foster program. In addition we have over 75 fosters that help us get the dogs ready for adoption. One of them,Nancy Byron, has personally fostered close to 200 dogs for us over the last several years. New-comer Jennifer Shirodaker has only been with us a year and has fostered over 50 dogs for us. We can’t do without our wonderful Camo Village as I call them!! The village includes our financial supporters as well!

Website: www.camorescue.com
Instagram: @camo_rescue
Facebook: www.facebook.com/camorescue