Amber's Halfway Home

Mason and I arrived at the Halfway Home Animal Rescue in Greenfield, TN fifteen minutes late. We are never late. But the Halfway Home is two hours west in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by kudzu-covered woods, tobacco and cotton fields. It’s in a place where the numbers on my Google map turn black instead of green, and it sends me in circles until it finds some sort of signal. As though even Google isn’t quite sure where it is. 

Through a strange set of circumstances, I was on a pre-interview interview. I’ve been considering working on a special project involving Amber Reynolds, the nonprofit’s founder, but before I committed I wanted to meet her. I have a habit of starting a creative project and drowning in it until it’s over. Did I want to make that kind of commitment? 

The answer was yes. And I knew it within ten minutes of talking to Amber. From the time we jumped in her cargo van until we pulled back into the Halfway Home’s gravel drive six hours later, we had picked up ten dogs, eight from a kill shelter near Memphis. When we first arrived at the shelter, Amber swore she’d only take one dog and six puppies. We left with the puppies, two dogs, and a promise that she’d return for two more on Monday. 

During our six-hour road-trip, she fielded countless calls from people needing help with dumped, hurt, and feral dogs. She said her voicemail fills up frequently. I wasn’t surprised. Everybody in Amber’s inner circle is involved with her rescue, including her husband and four kids. But let’s be honest, they don’t have a choice. “I live, breathe, and eat rescue,” she said in a thick southern drawl. And she wasn’t lying. 

Amber grew up in Memphis. She used to be a welder. Now she helps her husband dig wells. She uses some of her salary to help subsidize her nonprofit, and subsidizing that nonprofit means constantly negotiating, negotiating with vets, other nonprofits, fosters, transports, shelters, and the list goes on and on. But Amber is a hustler. “I’ve hustled my whole life,” she said. Then she winked.

She’s mid-thirties, 5’2” and maybe 120 pounds. Maybe. But don’t be fooled. There’s a dynamo in that little body, a dynamo who wears work boots and tattoos, a dynamo who spends 20 hours a day rescuing animals. She gets up at 4 am to start cleaning kennels, administering medicine and feeding dogs. She only sleeps four hours a night. “If you cut me open, I’d bleed coffee. And ranch,” she said and laughed. 

She laughed a lot. I wondered how somehow who sees the worst parts of human nature on a daily basis maintained such a healthy sense of humor. But she did. And it was contagious. 

At one point, I asked her if she thought animals had souls. She puffed up, looked at the camera and said, “Why would God make something so innocent and so pure and not want them in heaven? It just doesn’t make sense.”

Amber’s full of fire. I recognized it within ten minutes of meeting her. And that fire saves lives. Without Amber and her Halfway Home, countless dogs in Western Tennessee would be dead. There’s no other way to say it. I can’t wait until everybody gets an opportunity to meet Amber. She’s a warrior and worth the wait. I promise. Special Project Coming 2021 from Who Will Let the Dogs Out and The Farnival.