Through wherewithal, tactics, tricks and traps, resident rescues as much as she can

Behind every successful pet adoption is a successful pet rescue. Behind some of the Las Vegas Valley’s most extreme rescues is North Las Vegas’ Adrienne Breen.

Breen, co-owner of Centennial Hills’ Woof Gang Bakery, estimates she has rescued around 1,000 animals over the past 12 years, including a handful of cats, chickens and, once, a “green duck.”

Mostly, she finds dogs: dogs with near-severed necks and shattered legs; dogs left abandoned on rooftops and garages; dogs thrown from a moving car or tied to a backyard tree.

But one, a cattle dog/pit bull mix named Madison, stands out. Madison, Breen said, was pregnant when she found her in a wash near Owens Avenue and Walnut Road.

That turned out to be a good thing. Breen figured she would wait for Madison to come to term — knowing she would have to dig a hole in the nearby wash to nest — and plan to catch her when she was at her most vulnerable, in the weeks just after giving birth.

She spent months on nighttime reconnaissance, tracking Madison’s movements to make sure she didn’t miss a rescue chance. Breen even tapped into a network of homeless tipsters living under a nearby bridge, paying them in duct tape to keep an eye on the dog’s comings and goings.

Finally, in January, all that duct tape paid off. Breen got a late night call from a payphone and sped to Owens Avenue, where she and a handful of friends ended up corralling Madison and her four puppies as she nested in a burrow on the side of the flood wash.

Breen remembers area kids throwing rocks at Madison during the rescue. She threw them right back.

“I had called my husband, called a couple friends, and finally, we were barely able to pin her down,” Breen said. “It took us eight tries. … She’d been living in the wash for two years. Other rescues had tried to get her, but I have a thing about leaving things unfinished.”

The 300,000 miles on Breen’s ‘98 Ford Explorer are no accident. She’s the one shelter owners call when everyone else is asleep, the one who will still go out after a pit bull takes a chunk out of someone else’s leg.

“I’d take more, but my only problem is I can’t rescue them all,” Breen said. “If a rescue can’t take them, I can’t do it because it’s not fair to rescue them and just keep them in my garage.

“I guess they come to me because I have the stuff that you need to do it. I have the catch pole; I have the traps; I have the nets. I have weird little baits for dogs.”

Mostly, she has the wherewithal. Breen has been known to track a dog for months, or on a couple of occasions, years. She’ll follow dogs for miles into the desert, where she’s found a few of the 84 dogs she’s rescued this year.

Desert rescues are not easy cases, she said. They involve waiting, in full desert camouflage, binoculars raised, for as long as it takes to lure the pet within catch pole range.

Breen has been known to stay out six to 12 hours on similar missions. She hopes a new pair of night vision goggles will help her stretch those trips a little longer.

“That’s what I asked for for Christmas — night vision goggles,” she said with a laugh. “No jewelry for this girl. I know, that’s the saddest thing on the planet, but I love it.”

Animal shelter owners and volunteers love her for it.

Debra Hood-Smith, who has fostered out rescued pets through Centennial Hills-based A Home 4 Spot for the past three years, said there’s no one quite like her.

“I think she’s awesome,” Hood-Smith said. “She’s just tireless and reliable, and she networks; everyone knows who she is, so that’s the most important thing.”

Contact Centennial and North Las Vegas View reporter James DeHaven at 702-477-3839 or jdehaven@viewnews.com.