September 15, 2007 There is not a hint of anger or bitterness in Toni Phillip's voice when she explains what has happened to her and the dogs. Exhaustion and resignation long ago supplanted both. Oh, she will spit out the occasional "knuckleheads" when speaking of her neighbors, but she says she has too much to do over the next month and a half to waste time hating them. There are close to 50 dogs - mostly pit bulls - running around her house and its kennels. They'll need new homes before Oct. 31 - the court-ordered deadline for her and the animals to leave her Teller County residence. A lot of people know of the 50-year-old Phillips. For the last four years, she has run Mariah's Promise, a mostly pit bull sanctuary that has saved hundreds of dogs that otherwise would have been euthanized because of bans on the breed in Denver and other municipalities
. Last year alone, Mariah's Promise took in 228 dogs, and found homes for 206 of them. She gained local and national prominence for her work. And now, in the end, it was precisely that notoriety that she believes proved to be the shelter's undoing. She traces it back to a glowing, Sept. 17, 2005 article in the Colorado Springs Gazette. "We had been here since Labor Day 2003, and we did not have a single barking-dog complaint against us. After the Gazette article came out, I think all I ever did was let the animal control people in the front door." From September 2005 until now, Phillips was handed 23 such complaints, eight of them sworn out by one neighbor alone. "It wasn't like we were running a covert operation for two years," she said. "We weren't a secret, but the complaints came anyway." The arrival of the fourth citation meant a court hearing. And Toni and her husband, Mike, would be in court over much of last year, making deals, promising to build soundproof kennels, and to reduce the number of dogs on the property to 50. Money to build the kennels evaporated when title to the property unexpectedly showed that the buyer of their back 40 acres somehow had title rights to the land that ran through their house. In the end, Toni Phillips agreed to vacate the property with the dogs, after paying some $800 in fines. Mike, under the agreement, can stay. Asked why she would agree to such a deal, Toni Phillips thinks a long time. "I don't know," she finally says. "I was there with my attorney, but I was a little bit stunned. There was talk that I could go to jail for the citations and, well, I'm not big on going to jail. "I should have said, 'h*ll no, you're not kicking me and my dogs out of my home.' I just didn't know what else to do." She has reached an agreement with a nearby kennel to house 24 of the dogs. It will cost about $1,800 a month to do it, an expense Toni Phillips hopes will be covered by donations to the sanctuary and a grant she believes she will receive. How long she will be able to afford such a payment, she simply says, "I don't know." Nor does she have a current plan for the remaining 20 or so other dogs. "If I can get them all adopted, that would be a perfect world," she says. A Texas shelter has indicated it will take the non-pit bulls. Other shelters outside of Denver that do not kill have also made promises, she said. Where she and Mike will end up, she also doesn't know. "I guess it's off to the great unknown," she says with a laugh. What it really means is no laughing matter. The 200-plus mostly pit bull dogs that Toni Phillips annually saved from the euthanasia needle will likely die now. Unsuspecting owners will move to Denver from out of state, as they always have, buy a home or sign a lease, learn of the law and have nowhere to put the family pet. That has been Toni Phillips' calling the last four years. And now, a good, completely worthwhile and humane service has been lost. "People just didn't like the fact that pit bulls were here," said Toni Phillips, who has saved 177 pit bulls scheduled to die in Denver. "Some have confided that they don't want me to stop. They just don't want me doing it here." As for what the future might hold, she says she searches everyday for a kennel close to Mike's sheet-metal business in Woodland Park, far away from homeowners, where she can reopen Mariah's Promise. So far, there has been nothing. "You know," she says, "I tried very hard to keep the dogs from barking. It is what dogs will do. But it wasn't like they were doing it all night. "This is just terrible," Toni Phillips says. "No, this is dumb." johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com Laura
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