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Humane Society tugs at her heart

With the Fur Ball approaching, the director can't slow down, despite a recent heart attack.

By RICK GERSHMAN
Published September 7, 2005

BROOKSVILLE - Had it been one of her beloved animals - one of five who live with her, one of dozens at the shelter - Joanne Schoch would have known something was wrong.

If it was Sweetie Pie - the sweet old hound that survived cancer, heartworms, eight infected teeth and a shockingly grisly ear infection - she would have been on it in a second.

Schoch, executive director of the Humane Society of the Nature Coast, lives to save animals. Taking the job cost her more than half of her income, not to mention affordable health insurance, but it's just about everything she lives for.

Well, just as long as it doesn't kill her.

That used to be a joke.

Now? Not so much.

Schoch is facing the struggle of her life, trying - and, she admits, failing - to balance her overwhelming passion for saving local animals with doctors' orders to focus on another important trait:

Self-preservation.

It visited quietly, imperceptibly, leaving little in its wake to indicate its visit. Some indeterminate occasion, sometime in the past few months, it struck.

When? She doesn't know. Maybe while she was mothering her five furry family members at her Davenport Lane home in Spring Hill. Maybe while she was putting in one of her 60-plus hours every week at the Humane Society shelter at Wiscon and Mobley roads south of Brooksville.

Most likely, as anyone who knows Schoch will tell you, it happened while she was talking. Discussing plans, perhaps, with her husband, Dennis. Socializing with kitties and puppies. Or doing what she does so much: begging for donations, for volunteers, for help at the painfully underfunded no-kill shelter.

Whatever the case, odds are that Schoch, 53, was yapping when her huge heart quietly betrayed her.

She'd been short of breath for several days, so she visited her doctor one day last month and learned she'd had a mild heart attack.

You'll need to take it easy, doctors told her, while you get more tests, while we learn more about what's wrong. Don't go to work. Stay home and relax.

That would be nice, Schoch thought.

Too bad it'll never happen.

"I'm going to do my best to take care of myself, but the doors to that shelter are never going to close, no matter what," she said.

So she's doing whatever it takes. Doctors be damned. Complications with health insurance - she pays more than $750 a month, out of pocket - and physician referrals have delayed key tests to assess the damage to her heart.

But the Schoch show must go on.

See, this isn't just any old time at the Humane Society, which has only two full-time employees: Schoch, and - on an interim basis - Dennis. It's crunch time.

It's the agency's 40th anniversary, and it's gearing up its big fundraiser, the second annual Fur Ball, on Sept. 16. It's a grand affair with dinner, music and dancing and a live auction.

The shelter is also undergoing renovations that - one realizes when touring the facility - are long overdue and desperately needed.

It's rare to hear Schoch, a real estate agent for the first half of her adult life, talk about anything other than the shelter and animals in need.

"I love my husband dearly, but my No. 1 source of comfort is my animals," she said.

Later, it's mentioned how refugees from Hurricane Katrina-devastated New Orleans had to leave their pets behind to take buses to the Houston Astrodome.

No sale, said Schoch: "I'd get out and walk."

She's strong in her convictions. But don't get the wrong idea. She's not one of your super self-serious activist types. She laughs constantly, which could be a little scary in its own way, but it's not. She's bubbly. She's bouncy. She loves her life. Even if it kills her.

Midway through an interview with a reporter, Schoch answers her cell phone. It's a call from a representative from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The team is sending a signed item to be auctioned at the Fur Ball. "Bless you!" she cries into the phone.

This is Schoch happy. Her mind's on what she can do for the area's animals, as opposed to what she can't.

Unfortunately, the can't still outweighs the can. It's a rapidly growing county, but the shelter hasn't grown anywhere near as fast. There's not enough space, not enough money, not enough personnel. In addition to the Schochs, the shelter is staffed by three part-time employees and a handful of volunteers.

"For every dog and cat we accept, we turn away five to 10 more every day, and that is unacceptable," Schoch said. "What we really need is for families to spay and neuter."

That's one of Schoch's big messages, and it appears here not only because it's important, but also because it's sort of a tacit agreement for this story. Because Schoch doesn't really want any newspaper articles written about her. She doesn't want anyone feeling sorry for her.

But if it will get the shelter some press, she'll grin and bear it.

And she lets the photojournalist record the daily canine insurgency at her home, the cur incursion: When Animals Attack, Spring Hill edition. All the affection she lords upon her pets gets reciprocated fourfold, with the added bonus of slobbery dog kisses.

"Dennis never had a dog or cat before me," she said. "Now he loves them."

She has three dogs, all of them she'd fostered and eventually agreed to adopt outright.

The aforementioned Sweetie Pie is a Humane Society spokesdog. Her medical condition was so dire most agencies would have put the aging dog with the sweet, sad eyes to sleep, Schoch said.

Instead, Schoch, Humane Society board members and other charitable folk chipped in to pay for her medical care, which totaled about $900. It turned out to be a good investment: In addition to her appearances to help teach schoolchildren safety lessons, Sweetie Pie raised $1,100 for the American Cancer Society, Schoch said.

Also roaming the Schoch household are canines Caesar (a terrier mix) and Cleo (a pug mix), so named because that was the original professional name of performers Sonny and Cher. Schoch was a big fan.

They are joined by two cats. Juney, an orange tabby, was named June until Schoch realized the furball was a neutered male. "I'd promised not to change "her' name," said Schoch, who figured "Juney" sounded slightly more masculine than "June."

And then there's Bandit, a female who starred in a recent video to thank the shelter's volunteers for helping it win its second consecutive Chamber of Commerce Service Organization of the Year award.

"I don't want it to seem like I'm a one-woman show," Schoch said. "There are committed, steadfast supporters who give every month. We have committed, steadfast volunteers and employees."

But, she admits, as executive director she's the main cog in the engine. Everything goes through her. And for someone recovering from a heart attack - mild or not - it's a lot on her shoulders.

"In what I do for the Humane Society, I get stressed, I worry," she said. "What worries me is the lack of funding. I'm hoping that once I get my testing done and have more information to go on, I'll know better (what to do). But I have to assume the best."

She'll rejoice every time someone adopts a pet in need of a home. She'll cry every time someone abandons a sickly, abused, pregnant castoff at the door.

"This is the most rewarding job of my life, and it's also the most depressing," she said. "We see the best and the worst of people."

And yet, she said, it's all worth it.

"I've chosen to do something that, if I'm still doing it when I'm 85 years old, hot dog!"

[Last modified September 7, 2005, 01:01:15]