A woman donates to a Fort Myers shelter that helped rescue dogs during Jan

FORT MYERS

A woman who helped save two dogs during Hurricane Jan is now giving back to the Fort Myers shelter that took them in.

“Now that there’s a little boy … who was saved with a plastic bag, his 13-year-old dog just died,” Marianne Spindel said. “So now I want to do more.”

On Sunday, Spindel is doing more for Guardians of Florida Animal Rescue, located at 13931 Sophomore Lane, a shelter that has given a lot with very little. It all started when she got a call from her husband, who had come from Parkland to help save families in Southwest Florida.

“He said, ‘I need you to do me a big favor: here are these two dogs; they’re very elderly, they’re very sick,” Spindel said. “This is from one of the women I helped save. And she is very worried about her dogs.”

Spindel, her son and stepson got to work calling all the shelters in Lee County they thought might take the dogs, Max and Wolf.

“Unfortunately…some of them were, for example, too much red tape to take immediate action; others were saying, ‘Oh my gosh, our van is coming back and we’re full,'” Spindel said. “I found this little shelter in Fort Myers and thought, ‘Why should I call them?’ You know, they probably hit it. Maybe they need more help than I do. But why not?”

This last call led to the rescue of dogs who survived unimaginable conditions.

“At 7 o’clock in the morning, I get a text from, you know, the Florida Rangers saying, ‘I’ve got a volunteer already on the way to pick up the dogs, we just need to get permission to go into the house,'” Spindel said. “They were elderly, very sick. They sat on the dresser for about two days. They drank the water that came. So by the time we got them out, they were very sick. They didn’t move, they couldn’t get up.”

Although the family still hopes for Wolf’s recovery, even though he has pneumonia and is struggling to get up, things have not gone well for Max.

“The shelter was able to get them to Miami to a specialty animal hospital,” Spindel said. “Max, the chocolate lab, had to be put down two nights ago. And the second is like… 50/50 chances.”

While this family lost their clothes, home and one of their dogs, they tell WINK News they feel lucky to be alive. Spindel now wants to share her blessings with the Florida Guardians for doing everything they could to make sure the dogs got out, even if just for a few days. The owner had to sleep in a shelter with more than 100 dogs and no water or electricity.

“They are saturated; they have so many dogs, but they still do more,” Spindel said of the shelter. “It’s not every day that I find people this strange. So I told them, “If I lived in Fort Lauderdale, I’d probably quit my job and work for you full-time.”

On Sunday, Spindel and her family brought a load of donations to the Florida Guardians.

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