“Grandpa! Look here!” Rita Earl Blackwell calls, her New York accent dissolving into the whipping wind. Wearing an electric blue jacket emblazoned with the words “Tell Your Dog I Say Hello,” she bends down to film a lazy old pug named Jojo with her iPhone.
On this blustery morning, Jojo wears a hooded jacket topped with a pair of redundant ears that fall, to comic effect, over his own. He smells and pees like a guy without a care in the world. Jojo has no idea why he narrowly escaped euthanasia, thanks to Blackwell and the committed community. she is built on instagram.
Blackwell has mastered the art of the shelter dog stand as a volunteer primarily in Lancaster Animal Care Center, which looks like a preschool with its colorful murals of flowers and pets. However, it also has one of the higher euthanasia rates throughout Los Angeles County. His posts draw the attention of celebrities like Jennifer Aniston and good Samaritans like Terri Jackson, who transports Jojo to Frozen Faces Foundationa rescue from the San Diego area.
Rita Earl Blackwell records a video of a dog named Bullet at Lancaster Animal Care Center.
“I saw Rita's post about this little guy and I couldn't let him die,” Jackson says. She is neither an adopter nor a volunteer, but she saw Blackwell's Instagram post about authorizing euthanasia for Jojo and she felt moved to act. She contacted Frosted Faces, who had an opening if Jojo could find transportation. “Today I'm driving a 300-mile circuit,” she says, fighting back tears.
This is exactly the result Blackwell expects. “I believe the publication, but it is community“Sharing, commenting and tagging, which sets the Instagram algorithm in motion,” he says. “Now Terri comes home knowing she saved a life!”
But first, Blackwell must capture Jojo's “freedom path.”
In dog rescue parlance, a “free range walk” is when an animal is seen leaving the shelter because it has been adopted by someone or taken in by a rescue organization that will ensure its safety and care until it finds its forever home. Blackwell is known on Instagram for her signature freedom rides: always triumphant, life-affirming, and beautifully photographed. “If I get a million views or more, it's always with free rides,” she says.
“Their social media is brilliant,” says Hillary Rosen of A rescue with purpose, who regularly works with Blackwell. “Rita is very nice and good with dogs, but also extremely creative. She has a way of making people feel connected.”
Creating that connection is essential to saving these dogs' lives.
Rita Earl Blackwell spends time with Bean at the Lancaster Animal Care Center.
A professional photographer by trade, Blackwell's current medium is video because she wants to show “that wag” or “twisted tail” and “how happy these dogs are just to have someone talking to them.”
She films herself interacting with the dogs, her long dark hair obscuring her face as she showers love on the lucky pup of the moment. Her videos reveal moving expressions of interspecies bonding, with dogs voraciously licking her face or melting into her lap as she massages them. “I want people to imagine the dog in his House in his couch,” he says, “so I'm always rolling around in the grass, making out with all these dogs!”
After a full day at the shelter, Blackwell spends hours at home putting together posts: editing videos, adding music, and communicating with shelter staff to gather details. Some dogs never appear on her feed because, with her numerous relationships with rescue organizations, she can match them offline. As for the dogs that appear on Instagram, their more than 100,000 followers share them everywhere, all the way to Oregon, for example, where a family saw a post and got on a plane a few hours later to save a German shepherd named Brenda . (“That was crazy!” Blackwell says.) Another post reached an A-list celebrity, who reposted it. “That dog was adopted immediately! Thank you Jennifer Aniston!” —Blackwell jokes.
From imminent euthanasia to glorious safety in a matter of hours, sometimes minutes – these are the extreme highs and lows at Lancaster and other local shelters drowning in the current overpopulation crisis. The problem is largely one of simple math: the number of dogs arriving far exceeds the number of dogs coming out for adoption and rescue. Lancaster has only 176 dog kennels, but from October to December 2023, an average of 821 dogs arrived each month, making euthanasia for space common, even among social, healthy, highly adoptable dogs.
Rita Earl Blackwell walks to the playground with a dog named Raven at Lancaster Animal Care Center.
Rita Earl Blackwell connects with Raven on the playground at Lancaster Animal Care Center.
In the past, the public adopted these calm dogs, so rescues could focus on saving animals with medical or behavioral problems, Blackwell explains. Now there are too many dogs and few adopters. “No one will come, not even for these fantastic, happy dogs,” she says.
Embracing this sadness, Blackwell holds space for the sacrificial dogs she knows by posting “RIP” compilations, despite losing hundreds of followers on Instagram each time she does so. “People don't want to know this part, but these dogs are my friends,” she says, her voice breaking. “I want to honor them and inform the reality that we need help.”
Still, Blackwell focuses on the positive. She artfully maintains emotional balance on Instagram, where the three current “RIP” compilations are fueled by 12 joyous “freedom walk” montages. Sometimes exasperation shines through in her captions, but she fights back with inclusive calls to action. A recent post ends with a polite plea: “I beg you to consider adopting your next shelter dog.”
Blackwell is often asked how he can maintain a positive attitude under such dire circumstances. All of her answers boil down to the same thing: It is the best for dogs.
There are many more dogs than space available at Lancaster Animal Care Center.
Rita Earl Blackwell interacts with Missy at Lancaster Animal Care Center.
This clarity of mission contributes to his reputation as a volunteer superstar. “Rita doesn't get caught up in the drama and sadness of the shelter system,” says Kelly Smíšek, co-founder of Frosted Faces, who has known Blackwell for more than a decade. Don Belton, Los Angeles County animal control spokesman, calls Blackwell “an inspiration.”
Blackwell insists that not everything is altruistic. “Are you kidding me? I get to hang out with all these beautiful dogs.”
Born into a large family in Staten Island, New York, Blackwell attributes her extreme love of dogs to never having had a pet as a child. “My mom told me, 'There are no dogs!' so I feel like maybe that's why I'm obsessed,” she says.
Years later, living in Los Angeles, she adopted a brown pitbull named Cherry from a rescue and realized she could help by photographing the organization's dogs. This led her to “basically stalk every rescue in Los Angeles” to offer the same thing. Now she works for Paws For Life K9 Rescue and volunteers at the shelter during her free time. “I don't have time to work on photography anymore because I want to be at the shelter all the time,” she says.
How to help overcrowded shelters
While her obvious goal is to save lives, Blackwell also recognizes the importance of making the dogs' lives the best they can be during their stay at the shelter. “Spending 20 minutes with a dog can brighten their day,” she says. These small moments of kindness and connection matter, perhaps more so for those who don't make it.
“Rita works with dogs that she knows will be euthanized, just so they can have some love and affection,” says Erica Fox of Wiggles and walks rescue. “She faces this more head-on than anyone I know.”
Adoption and rescue alone will not end the overpopulation crisis: Blackwell acknowledges this. Policies and public perception about animal stewardship must change. “Can anyone else work on that?” he asks, half laughing, half not. “If you need me, I'll be here with the dogs, doing the part I know how to do.”
This reminds Blackwell that there are several dogs whose faces he wants to “fatten” before leaving the shelter that day.
Walking through the kennels with Blackwell is like arriving at a surprise party with an exceptionally gregarious guest of honor.
Tiles decorate a playground at the Lancaster Animal Care Center.
Rita Earl Blackwell runs her fingers through the bars to give Tina the dog some scratches.
“Oh my god, hello!” he trills to the rows of dogs who respond with equal enthusiasm.
“Good morning, babies!” Fozzie Bear says, as she feeds chunks of Pup-peroni to two howling huskies and a wiggly black Labrador.
To a matted poodle: “Sweet love, what are you?” To a bouncing boxer: “Where have you state all my life?!”
Blackwell pauses, the cacophony of dogs barking “pick me, pick me!” swelling around him. “If we just put our hearts aside and think about theirs,” she says, flicking a piece of Pup-peroni from his thumb, “we can find all this love.”
