“It sounds like a really nice dog,” Mrs. Karam said. “So, we have to get her out.”

For the last decade, Mrs. Karam has made it her mission to get as many dogs out as possible. She’s the founder of Adopt a Boxer Rescue, a group that takes unwanted boxer dogs from pounds, then puts them into temporary foster care until finding permanent homes for them.

The group is among many nowadays that specialize in working with just one breed. Its reach is huge, covering Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Delaware and Connecticut. It has a volunteer network of more than 200 people.

“Any boxers we can take, we take,” said Mrs. Karam, as two of her dogs, Jessie, a boxer, and Buster, a bulldog, snored away on the kitchen floor, and her other two, Mason, her other boxer, and Rudy, an American pit bull terrier, played out in the yard.

Waiting for homes

At the moment, Mrs. Karam coordinates temporary care for 50 boxers waiting for homes. Some take more time to place than others, but ultimately they all find homes. Last year, the group placed more than 300 dogs, and Mrs. Karam has never been forced to put down an unwanted dog.

Though it in many ways resembles a full-time job, Mrs. Karam receives no salary for her work with the nonprofit. Instead, she said, “You get paid in personal awards.”

Over the years, many people have asked Mrs. Karam why she focuses her energies solely on unwanted dogs and not, say, abused children.

Simple, she tells them. Abused kids usually go back to their parents, and you can do almost nothing about it. With the life of a dog, you can make an actual, tangible difference, said Mrs. Karam, a longtime vegetarian who tries to adhere to the Gandhi quote, “We will be judged by how we treat our animals.”

“It’s not just about animals, it’s about being good human beings,” Mrs. Karam said. “There are no better people than animal people.”

Mrs. Karam comes from a long line of animal people. For as long as she can remember, her family had dogs, all of which, she stresses, were rescued from shelters.

“Dogs do great things for kids. They’re great for self-esteem. It’s proven,” said Mrs. Karam, who gets a lot of help from her parents, her brother, her three kids — Camille, 16; Frankie, 13; Alexander, 9 — and her husband, Jerry, who jokingly refers to himself as “a dog person, not a four-dog person.”

Mrs. Karam’s interest in boxers started with Jessie, who at 12-1/2 is the oldest of the Karams’ dogs. Jessie was living in a rabbit hutch when she was rescued by a woman from West Chester.

“Oh, it was heartbreaking when I went to pick her up. But she has had it made here for 10-1/2 years,” Mrs. Karam said of Jessie, who recently went blind.

Not long after taking in Jessie, the woman who had rescued the dog asked Mrs. Karam if she’d go check up on a stray dog picked up in Wilkes-Barre. When the woman called back to inquire about the dog’s well-being, Mrs. Karam told her, “He’s fine. He’s here now.”

And so, with that, the Karams welcomed boxer No. 2, the now deceased Jake, into the family. Mrs. Karam was inspired to do much more.

Initially, the group was limited entirely to the Scranton area. The first year, it found homes for seven boxers. The next year, that number passed 100.

“If you’re breed-specific, people come looking for you,” Mrs. Karam said.

Eventually, she had no choice but to look outside the area for homes in order to accommodate the ever-growing number of dogs that they had rescued. Through the Internet, she hooked up with Long Island, N.Y., boxer enthusiast Sandy Trehy, and today the two of them run the group along with two other women: Karen Lampe, of King of Prussia, and Jamie Meadows, of White Plains, N.Y.

“You live with a boxer, you know they’re a thinking being,” said Mrs. Trehy, explaining the breed’s appeal. “Once you have one, it’s hard to think about getting another breed.”

The fact that the women are so widely spread out geographically widens the group’s reach considerably. In addition to Adopt a Boxer Rescue, there are about seven other boxer rescue organizations covering the same territory as the group.

When Mrs. Karam founded the group, boxers were the 35th most popular breed in America. Now, they’re seventh, according to the American Kennel Club. That’s led to mass breeding, which makes for countless more unwanted boxers in shelters. Adopt a Boxer Rescue doesn’t have nearly enough foster homes to accommodate its boxers. Mrs. Karam and Lisa Mastri-Valenzano, of Factoryville, are the only two in this area, so most of the dogs are kept in like-minded kennels.

One dog a month

Typically, Mrs. Karam takes in at least one foster dog a month. Before adopting a little boy from Guatemala, Ms. Mastri-Valenzano, who is currently fostering a boxer named George, was averaging about six a month. When people tell her they’d like to foster dogs but don’t have the time, Ms. Mastri-Valenzano tells them, “It’s always a bad time for us, too, but you make your time.”

“People always say, ‘I can never do it, I’d be so emotional’ ” having to give the dog up to its adopted family, Ms. Mastri-Valenzano said. “The first time I did it, it was tough. The first time I was sad, but thought, there’s going to be another after this one.

“It’s basically one of those things where you can’t think about yourself,” she continued. “It’s not about you, it’s about the dog,”

The breed isn’t for everyone, and Mrs. Karam has no trouble talking people out of taking on a boxer. They’re big and strong and extremely energetic.

And she doesn’t automatically accept any boxer. Those who pose potential dangers to humans are simply too much of a risk, she said. Some get sent back. Sometimes, it’s the dog. Other times, it’s the owners not quite knowing what they were getting themselves into, she said.

Her dogs all came with significant baggage. She found Rudy, the pit bull, as a stray wandering Main Street in Dickson City a few years back, and Buster the bulldog’s white fur was almost completely black with fleas when she first took him in. Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find two more sweet-natured dogs.

Mason the boxer is still somewhat of a head case. Rescued from an East Harlem shelter by Mrs. Karam, he’s a glorious-looking dog, but he tends to act up around strangers. Mrs. Karam is convinced the dog was abused as a puppy.

Through the years, Mrs. Karam has come across too many animal-abuse cases to count. Among the most horrific is the story of Hope, a boxer found hanging from a chain in a Philadelphia railroad yard. The dog was nearly decapitated, but somehow miraculously recovered, and eventually found a new home through Adopt A Boxer Rescue.

On occasion, group volunteers go on missions to states where it’s still legal to gas unwanted dogs, and the proliferation of mass-breeding puppy mills has seen the number of unwanted dogs skyrocket in recent years. Surprisingly, Mrs. Karam has come across many of these puppy mills on, of all places, Amish farms in Lancaster County.

Debbie Stezar’s 3-year-old boxer, Emily, came from an Amish farm, where Mrs. Stezar believes she was “just bred constantly” and never allowed out of the barn in which she was kept. Since adopting Emily last April, Mrs. Stezar has put the dog through obedience school and is now thinking of training her to become a therapy dog.

“From the minute I saw that dog, I fell in love with her,” said Mrs. Stezar, a Hill Section resident who is now volunteering for Adopt a Boxer Rescue. “She fit right into our household.”

Just recently, Mrs. Karam got a call from a kennel in New Jersey, where a 13-year-old boxer was dropped off by its owner. The challenge for Mrs. Karam will come in trying to find a home for a dog so near the end of its life cycle.

“It really weighs you down,” she said, noting the average life span for a boxer is about 10 to 12 years. “You can see the very worst of humanity.

“Some days are sad and hard. You just have to focus on the ones you helped.”

Adopt a Boxer Rescue is always looking for additional help, and not just from those willing to open their homes. Volunteers are needed for everything from transporting dogs to filling out applications and taking the dogs for their necessary shots, spaying and neutering and other medical needs.

At the end of the day, no money is exchanged, but the dividends are huge nonetheless.

“I feel really good about the fact that I’m helping animals,” Ms. Mastri-Valenzano said. “I just feel it’s important to give all animals a chance. I just makes sense to me, honestly, to adopt an animal.”

“There’s nothing like taking something from a bad to a good situation,” Mrs. Karam said. “It makes you feel so good.”

Contact the writer: jmcauliffe@timesshamrock.com

For more information on Adopt a Boxer Rescue, visit the group’s Web site, www.adoptaboxerrescue.com.


Boxer tutorial

n The ideal boxer is a medium-sized, square-built, muscular dog with a short back, strong limbs and a short, tight coat. Its most distinctive feature is its broad, blunt muzzle.

n Though most identified with Germany, the boxer springs from a line of dogs found throughout Europe going back to the 16th century. It is widely believed the breed is a descendent of the old Tibetan fighting mastiff.

n Boxers also share bloodlines with bulldogs and terriers.

n The first documented registration of a boxer in the United States was in 1904, but the American public didn’t take an interest in the breed until the early 1940s. Today, boxers are the seventh most popular canine breed in the U.S.

Meet Dawn Karam

At home: Lives in Dickson City with her husband, attorney Jerry Karam, and her three children, Camille, 16, Frankie, 13, and Alexander, 9.

At work: Founder of Adopt a Boxer Rescue, a volunteer nonprofit that finds permanent homes for unwanted boxer dogs. The group has volunteers spread throughout Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New York and Connecticut.

Hobbies: Visiting New York City, reading nonfiction, traveling, listening to music.