Tina Whittemore received the 38th Key Peninsula Lions Club Citizen of the Year Award during a celebration at the KP Civic Center March 29. She was nominated for the award to recognize “her absolutely tireless efforts to save stray and abandoned dogs in our area,” said club President Hal Wolverton.
The Lions Club has recognized a Citizen of the Year since 1984 (excluding the COVID-19 pandemic years of 2020-22) after collecting nominations from the community for anyone whose work, professional or volunteer, deserved recognition for its impact on the Key Peninsula. The recipient is chosen through secret ballots cast by club members.
There were 22 nominees for the 2024 award.
“I felt really bad when they called my name because it was a total surprise to me,” Whittemore said. “I didn’t even think about preparing a speech, and I wanted to thank the Lions Club and the Scouts and everybody for putting on that wonderful event. Applauding people for the things they do in the community is just amazing.”
Whittemore, 55, has lived on the north end of the KP since 1994, where she and her husband, Sean, raised a son and daughter. For the last 13 years, she has run a dog boarding facility there, Pawsably Home, LLC, caring for up to 20 dogs at a time in addition to her own animals.
“We have 11 dogs, three horses, and a cat,” Tina said. “Several of the dogs were lost and rehabbed and could not find appropriate homes, so they stayed. I also foster dogs for several organizations.”
Compared to her time spent finding lost dogs, running the kennel seems almost a hobby.
“I have people who call me, people who tag me on Facebook, people who get a hold of me through word of mouth,” she said. “I’m on the board for the Humane Society of Mason County, and animal control in Kitsap County contacts me when they have a tough case that they’re just not able to dedicate their time to.”
Tina is involved in finding five to 10 missing dogs a month, including trapping five or six.
“I trapped a dog out at a church in Belfair after 16 days,” she said. “I had to convince the people that were around to quit feeding her because she didn’t want to go in my trap. Why would she? A few weeks ago I had another dog, I was setting up my trap and I looked up and the dog was just standing there. She was in the trap, like, immediately. Another dog I trapped in Gig Harbor had been missing for 18 months.”
She often works with ad hoc groups of strangers, just people who want to help find a dog, but also sometimes teams up with a searcher from Seattle and his tracking dog or a woman from Thurston County with a thermal imaging drone. “That’s amazing; it’s pretty incredible to watch.”
One dog on the KP was missing for over two weeks before Tina caught up with him.
“If you’ve ever lost a pet, you know it’s very emotional,” she said. “I just kept giving (the owner) hope to not give up and just keep doing all of the things that she was doing to try to find her dog, putting up signs, talking to everyone. Eventually, we found the right area and he went into the trap. It took a while but, you know, nine times out of 10 I do help the dog get home.”
But not all the dogs she finds are runaways.
“I also help animals that are in need,” Tina said. “Right now I have a dog that was abandoned up in Carbonado and she was skin and bones. She weighed 45 pounds, and she now weighs 70. I rescued a boxer out here that I was fairly certain came from a really bad situation, like a dog fighting ring. There’s not any breed of dog that’s safe from anybody doing horrible things to them.”
Tina has also encountered many more abandoned dogs in recent years.
“With COVID, a lot of people got animals, because they were home, and then the prices of everything to take care of animals went up,” she said. “So now you have maybe an animal that you got as a puppy, and you don’t really have the money to get it fixed, and then you’ve got babies. And people are abandoning them. I’m seeing that more and more.
“I’ve managed to track down owners and not only helped them with that situation but help get their animals fixed and rehomed,” she said. “Sometimes they’re very difficult situations that you’re dealing with, and you have to handle them very tenderly.”
Tina helps connect dog owners with local spay and neuter services and low-cost vet care when possible. “I’ve got a couple of nonprofit organizations that I work with,” she said. “People for Animal Care and Kindness, and also the Humane Society in Mason County. I help some people who can’t afford to transport their animals. I recently raised funds for medical boarding for a customer that was going through cancer treatments, so she could have 30 days of paid boarding however she needed.”
Tina doesn’t charge anything for her services. “I’ve been toying with doing a 501(c)(3), but I haven’t got there yet, so I pretty much work off donations from people I help,” she said.
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