I am one of you. My blood, sweat and tears are literally all over The Devoted Barn. My love for those animals is not an ounce less than yours is. You are some of THE MOST hardworking people and that includes those that are no longer working there. I truly love some of you and you’ve left lifelong impressions on me. But I have been watching other brave Barn Family members speak their truth of how things really are at TDB and have chosen to stand by them to say, they aren’t liars or haters. My speaking my truth has NOTHING to do nor does it lessen your hard work as Rhonda and Mel so want you to believe. Mel’s own letters in the Barn Page go from they are attacking me to we. Not a single person has written that the volunteers are bad people. As volunteers, we know that place would fail without us. You will all walk your path there at TDB and some of you like me will come to realize that those who spoke up, weren’t lying or a hater! Or per Joe, mentally ill. Ugh But some of you do very little physical work, but have taken a huge role to enable a horrible situation and it only continues to worsen. It is this core group of people that surround Mel and enable her to continue with the lies and demise of TDB. Until the volunteer count got so low from the move north or good people leaving due to no longer being able to take part in these poor animals demise, there were months that passed without Mel stepping foot into the dog barn at both locations. Maybe an occasionally live video to keep the followers thinking she was doing daily amazing work with the dogs, but nothing was further from the truth. It’s the volunteers! Pictures she posted were pictures “family members” were asked to send to her. Am I lying?
Mel’s in a PR Social Media overdrive right now trying to change the real narrative of TDB due to the “Not Devoted” website and deflect from the truth. We watched all this happen before at Newport. But to all you new volunteers, please enter with your eyes and your minds wide open. Look around the property and see the disorganization and poor way people’s donations are treated/handled. On a good day many of the current volunteers would admit that THEY have complained about this. I’m not lying! Also new volunteers, pay attention to how many times the lack of feed or finances is brought up and how the words get played for you all to open your own wallets. Once the boarders are gone, it will just be someone or something new to blame for the poor running of things because the flat out truth is there isn’t enough money to run that place the correct way! Have I lied yet?
People, not even the animal details on the cages are always honest! For example, Mel and the Dog Coordinators believed that writing HIGH PREY DRIVE was enough information for us volunteers to know as you were encouraged to take this certain dog out for a walk cause he was labeled walkable. Yet the truth was this dog had TWO prior dog kills. Tragically, this dog got his 3rd kill. And though there was supposedly a Court Order that Mel could never allow him to leave the property, he went to finish his life at a Coordinator’s home. I only bring this up to show what Mel thinks about Court Orders and being upfront with her volunteers. All true!!! I might add that the public only got the story of how Mel swooped in and saved this dog who had been ordered to death. So he was a great money pull for Mel and added to her Social Media hero status. But also a HUGE risk when you don’t give volunteers the whole truth on the animals. Like Wilbur too.
“Family members” there are rumors that there isn’t a consistently paid insurance policy in place, so you really are volunteering at your own risk! We’ll ignore that release form you signed at orientation. You are literally just thrown to work as they are so low on good volunteers willing to put in the real hours it takes to run a successful rescue. You are told not to try leash training until you are shown by Mel, but Mel wasn’t coming into the barn, so how do these dogs get progressed? MANY volunteers asked to take dogs into their homes to work with them and were denied for a variety of reasons. The crazy thing is the reasons change on a regular basis from Mel! And now that Mel IS in the dog barn are we seeing any training taking place? Remember she is the only one in the organization who knows how to advance these dogs properly. Not only do we see NO legitimate training being done, followers aren’t allowed to see the inside conditions of the dog “house”. The place the follower’s hard earned money is paying for that they keep asking donations of. Not a single lie stated yet.
Carrie, you so publicly straight out lied on that Newspaper’s feed!!! There weren’t horse mats in Newport in the dog kennels. Yes, the dogs got them in Holly, but they WEREN’T disinfected and very rarely ever cleaned! In fact I can truthfully say that some of those dog/horse mats were NEVER disinfected! And the urine would pool under them, especially the Oklies. The volunteers were given long handled dustpans, brooms, small rakes and metal scrappers. And wood chips, lots of wood chips. Scoop up the dirty wood chips and throw more down. I would say, remember what it was like to try and scrap the dried poop off of those mats, but you NEVER cleaned them. In case you are new to TDB, Carrie has germ issues and having dogs with poop stuck between their toes jumping on her. I must admit your flat out lying really helped push me to write this. I’m not the one lying here.
Strawberry was found to be completely housebroken. Strawberry’s reality is heartbreaking and she is literally rotting in that room. But she brings in BIG money with her sad story and cute head tilt. $$$ So a “lifer” she will be. But as Mel does her cute videos in there with Berry, how many times have Berry’s feedings been forgotten? It was 10 o’clock the other night that she was getting feed!!! Am I lying?
Would followers believe that a dog lived in Mel’s laundry room for well over a year with the only human interaction being the occasionally walk in there to throw more food and water at it. Absolutely no training what so EVER for Tot! And before you try to make an excuse that dog was rotting in that laundry room and the bathroom long before the pandemic! Remember how many times you forgot her in that small crate in the Tack Room, Mel? Am I lying? Nope
Monkey and Doodle didn’t see the outside for over a year until a “barn family member” built Mel’s dogs access to her side yard. They literally were just allowed to urinate and poop all over her house! No, they weren’t potty pad trained and that would be another lie they want you to believe. Hence those new floors Mel had put in her house. Think about Shiver, I believe Shiver has made it outside ONE time!!! One time, can you even imagine? To live your life locked away in a bedroom? Mel’s personal dogs are on all kinds of meds due to behavior issues, behavior issues due to an absolute lack of training! Notice she only answers, he’s fine, when asked about Trigger in Live feeds? Or what about the dog that she has literally hid for years because she trapped it and never let the people know she had caught him. That dog lived in a kennel in her garage with Knox and Trigger in other kennels for a good year. Wonder why they became so violent, hum. Is he the dog that she finally publicly admitted to keeping from the owner/rescue on her personal page but has since deleted. Did any of you Barn Family Members know that there are rumors that a barn dog is chipped? Another poor “Lifer” I suppose??? Not lying.
Yet, we “Family members” are lead to believe that she is the top of the field for working with and rehabbing feral dogs. That you are rehabbing the MOST difficult cases. But when you have a rescue leader who won’t even give her own domesticated animal’s proper care and training… Do you seriously believe you are giving these dogs proper care and training?
I know how many hours it takes to properly clean those kennels and they aren’t getting disinfected and cleaned as they should be, though that is not any of your faults!!! That again falls into Mel’s lap. Trust me, I KNOW how many hours it takes to clean those kennels and now that they are so small and you can’t even walk into them, it’s even harder! It literally leaves NO time for any REAL training. The straight facts are absolutely no real training or REHAB goes on at TDB. You are told these dogs are the worst of the worst, but friends remember Blackie, Gilly, Poppy, Shaggy, Tai, Ammo, my gosh look at Dazzle living her best life now. (Thank you!) Micah, come on…how long did he rot in that kennel?! The answer is far too long and in 6 months he was completely rehabbed and beautifully trained to move on to being adopted. And Micah was at least Vince’s 3rd dog he took and quickly turned around and into a home. That’s what rehabbing a dog is. So MANY of those dogs are ready for homes, but what is truly being done to move them on? NOTHING, instead TDB has decided to inflict more emotional and physical damage on them by putting them into very small cages for 23 hours a day. No dog, again, no dog should be sitting in a kennel for 6 years. Micah, 6 months completely rehabbed. Dazzle… can you all really turn your heads and hearts on them so easily?
PLEASE open your eyes to these poor animal’s pleas. Mel is now openly talking about buying this place. These animals are living in the smallest cages they have ever been in! Some are showing signs of getting cage crazy. They are out for 20-30 minutes once or twice a day TOPS! That is the TRUTH and reality. That is not stated in hatred, mental illness or harm to the animals as you are so led to believe. 6 YEARS, next time you walk in and see them in those small cages, remember 6+ years of being in a cold, dusty dirt covered barn. Not seeing the sun or having constant access to fresh water. Think of how many times their water was completely frozen or had a dead mouse floating it and it was 2 or 95 degrees in those barns! Don’t they deserve better? Are you saving them at this point or prolonging their suffering? Am I lying?!!! Yay for cement floors and what we are told is temperature controlled, but so small they are walking in their own feces and urine. This is sure to start sores between their toes. Not to mention the size of the cages. There’s a reason Mel doesn’t share the real conditions of the inside of this building. And remember because I want as much for those barn dogs as the puppies that keep flooding into TDB foster homes doesn’t make me a bad person. Why haven’t they all been put into foster’s homes?!!! They have paid for the funding of TDB with over half of their lives for many of them. Truly, SHAME on you Mel and Enablers. The majority of Enablers don’t go near those poor rotting barn dogs. But you willingly spend the money they bring in on another horse or sick puppy. Straight up facts.
Remember at Newport, how Mel would say that man had done things to her truck and she crashed because of him? Or how they poisoned the sheep? Yet no one was ever shown the autopsy reports for these sheep that were housed in her garage. How she was sued for taking the man’s dog though she said she didn’t… Yet now she publicly admits to keeping at least one if not 2 people’s dogs!!! How you were all ready to shred someone for the goose being dead, the goose that was allowed to wander free on a working property? How she just recently posted to us that someone had loosened the bolts to her truck engine. Yet she couldn’t tell us who though we all know she has multiple camera’s in the barn’s and at her home. So many cameras she wants you to believe as she publicly posted that they could narrow it down to a 20 minute timeframe and just a couple of cars during that time that killed the goose. But those cameras didn’t pick up the person who loosened her engine bolts?! I bet there is no police report about her truck being tampered with and she lives on a bumpy dirt road and drives like a crazy chic (normally she admits to that), yet she dropped that fear morsel in the Family Barn page to you all. Fear, fear, fear the bad people…The Haters and now the mentally ill as Joe wants people to believe. No huge outrage was stirred when the manure guy ran over everyone’s favorite barn cat and he flew through there! Instead she gave him Fred and even paid for Fred’s medical bills. Does any of that make any of you go…. Hold on a minute.
These things have always been the TDB pattern since day one. Mel has frequently made it a mission to destroy people’s lives who haven’t agreed with her. Just as she’s trying now with the Rose township Supervisor and some Board members. But has she shared with the public or us how she made a deal with the township Clerk?!!! Debbie Miller was filtering innocent people’s letters to Mel without them going to her lawyer. Mel was sharing them all to us on the Family Barn page, even the one’s that asked to not be made public due to fear of retribution. The retribution she was asking you to engage in. The secret chat room explaining how people were writing letters about her and TDB to the Township, so she was asking people in that chat room to write letters. Here Mel was quickly sharing them, in fact, Linda Smith’s letter was passed to Mel from the clerk and posted on the Family Barn page literally within a couple hours of the clerk acknowledging that she received it. Is there not a single one of you that sees the hypocrisy of this as Mel posts and rants about these horrible unlawful Board members?! Yet she is actively doing her own smear campaign, sharing and Live taping of meetings about them. But she labels anyone who does her SAME behavior “a Hater”. Even though those people weren’t and aren’t responsible for her own lack of legal actions/choices. Is any of that a lie? No it isn’t, yes it’s difficult to have to admit and even harder to digest and justify.
Did any of you watch the Court of Appeals case? You can and it’s very interesting. I learned a lot! I also think the Attorney General would be just as interested in this information as Mel works to deflect the truth behind her lies of Township members. We are victims of the continuous hypocrisy of Mel and her ring of Enablers. There are SO many secrets and insider deals that “Family members” and Followers aren’t aware of, yet you are all willing to stand by someone and her enablers, who openly discuss how they will just do a Live feed or “drop” a line and let the Barn Family and Followers” take care of the problem/person. How you guys “eat up people for her”. That’s sick, but it’s proudly been stated by Mel. And I will gladly challenge her to a lie detector test on it. And while we’re at it Mel, let’s do a lie detector on how you say, “You gotta bring in animals to make money” and the sicker they are or sadder their story, the more money you can get people to give”. I know you will HATE that I shared that truth, but those words HAVE come out of your mouth. You just never thought one of your trusted would share them. I AM NOT LYING. Think about it people, why are Rhonda, Mel and even A when she was there always so willing to bring in another one, while the Barn dogs rotted away? Cause you gotta bring in more to make money they believe. People, I’m not lying nor am I a hater. Hate is such a strong word and it just turns my stomach at how quickly they stand on their self-righteous box and are willing to label someone a hater and you follow because that’s what you are told they are. When all they have done is tell facts… They told the TRUTH! You seem to genuinely like me for the person I am, but you would shred me for speaking the truth of what really goes on at TDB. I don’t hate, I love and I want to leave a positive mark on this world. I don’t want to take part in animals rotting for years on end in cages and horrible conditions. Especially while poor management continues to run things the same from one county to the next. I want to stand proudly with “Barn family” knowing we don’t spend our time constantly on the defensive because the organization is so poorly run that it is in constant turmoil and the animals just continue to suffer from it. Do you see Marley’s Mutts members attacking other member’s and followers? How about the other “Brother’s” rescues? Nope, But those rescues are run with the animals integrity kept at as high a standard as the Leaders are!!! And that’s why their rescues and animals flourish!
Ask yourself, how many legal suits has Mel and TDB been involved in since she began. Five that I know of and she even threatened to prosecute us, her own “Barn Family” members recently! All for an operation that’s only been open 7 years?!!! Add up the time, MONEY and energy that these have taken. Those barn dogs could have had an amazing new building by now. Time could have been spent with REAL training to move these deserving dogs out and bring in new lost souls. Barns are not ever okay to house dogs in. What is the ONE consistent thing throughout all these years and lawsuits, MEL! The person who wants you to believe that it’s a man who wanted his dog back, a couple of horrible sisters, mean Council members in Frenchtown and now Rose Township Board members. Oh yes and let’s not forget the Boarding Barn people. But now she’s engaging in more of the “Followers” money that they send with good intentions for the animals to be used in another court case. All while the barn dogs continue to rot.
This letter isn’t in hate, mental illness or a lack of Christianity, all things that TDB people throw at good innocent people. This letter is honestly done in love. Love for the animals. Out of love for us to do better. Real honest love, not to be known as a group of people with “a mob sense of reality”. When the truth is we are wrong. We have been played to act as bullies to hid the truth of the actions the leaders have not only done, but are doing before our very eyes. What is wrong with honestly admitting our faults and lack of learning from them? To make a complete 360 and change the Organization for the REAL good of the animals! Get the barn dogs into the needed and correct foster homes. They can be found, if they’d try. Carrie don’t even start with your lies again like you did using Maria and A! Establish a reasonable and working number of dogs and animals so they really are receiving the best care and treatment. Robbie runs a great set up at that. Become known for the real care TBD does vs the lawsuits they have and the “Haters” they claim that follow them. People with nothing to hide, Hide nothing. If we as the volunteers were dealt with the honesty and compassion by the Leadership and Enablers that we give to the animals, you won’t have to make your “Family Members” sign non-disclosure forms!
Those dogs are truly safe from people in the outside world, it’s the owner and her enablers that need to feared.
Now I ask to those who have been there for years, Am I lying? Aren’t you tired? We can do better, demand it for the animals.
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