GIANT PAWS BOERBOEL RESCUE, INC. BOERBOEL Rescue Interviews
MARJORIE MAPES Marjorie is Founder and President of Giant Paws Boerboel Rescue, INC. I got my first Boerboel in 2008, my Topanga girl. She was one of the best dogs; great temperament and very family-oriented. We got our second Boerboel three years later, our Buddha Bear. We joined the Boerboel world online and started to notice a trend starting of Boerboels needing homes. In 2014, without knowing what the heck we were even doing, we jumped in with both feet and started Giant Paws Boerboel Rescue. We didn’t even know if there was or had ever been a Boerboel breed rescue organization. Our first rescue, although not 100% Boerboel, a BB mix, was Argus. He was adopted to what we thought was a great family at the time, but he found his way back to us five years later after they had two babies back-to- back and decided they didn’t have time for him any longer. We will always take our rescues back if ever needed. We rescued one dog at a time, being the fosters, until Kayte Ryan came into my life about five years ago. She has been one of the biggest blessings and has helped us grow to where we are today. I also have to give big kudos to my husband, Jeremy Mapes, who is not always hands-on with the rescue like I am because he works 24/7 with his own business, but any time I need him he is there. He may grumble at times when another dog comes through our door, but he never says, “No.” What reasons do people have for surrendering their Boerboels? We find a lot of the surrender requests are of male Boerboels entering into, what we’d call, their rebellious teenage years and are pushing their boundaries... from around 1-1/2 years to 2-1/2 years old. People usually don’t know about this stage. It catches them off guard and they can’t handle it. We do try to help them work through it, if we can. Kayte is great at this and, sometimes, we are successful. It is always great if we can help a fam- ily keep their dog instead of surrendering. We get a lot of the “our dog is too aggressive” requests. These, if they truly have an aggression issue, we cannot take as we are foster-based only and we will NEVER put our foster families in harm’s way. We also get the all-too-familiar, “We are moving and can’t take them with us.” We see a lot of senior surrender requests as well, with the excuse, “We just don’t have time for them anymore or they aren’t getting along with the other dog in the family.” Now, one that I have noticed popping up more often is when the owner passes away and the extended family doesn’t want the dog or the widow is not able to take care of the dog. Or another is the all-too-familiar excuse, “The dog is too protective and we have so much traffic going in and out of the house that we
248 | SHOWSIGHT MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2020
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