FAQ

Villalobos Rescue Center(VRC) first began as a wolf/wolf hybrid rescue in the 90’s back in California… long before there was a TV show.
Tia Torres was the contracted dog trainer for the City of Los Angeles Animal Services for 11 years.
VRC began employing parolees in 2006.
VRC relocated to Louisiana in 2011 due to economic reasons and major changes in county laws making it nearly impossible to function as a non-profit business.
Now in Louisiana, VRC has a location in the city of New Orleans and in the rural/country environment of Assumption Parish (an hour and a half outside of New Orleans).
VRC now has a location in Northeast Texas for wolfdogs (wolf/dog mixes) ONLY.
Due to the overwhelming need to help other dogs, VRC has now become an all-breed rescue with the main focus still being on Pit Bulls.
Now that we are in the South, we have to deal with heartworm disease. This means that 99% of the dogs we take in, enter our facility with this pre-existing condition. It not only takes three to six months to cure but costs up to $500 per dog.
Our yearly vet bill is almost half a million dollars. That’s… $500,000.00
The cost per day to run VRC varies, but it averages $10,000.00. That’s $70K a week, $280,000 a month…approximately $4 million a year to run the rescue.
We take in approximately 40 dogs a month.
We adopt out approximately 40 – 50 dogs a month.
We adopt dogs all over the country (the lower 48 states). We DO NOT adopt outside the country with the exception of Canada. We are no longer able to adopt to the state of Colorado due to state restrictions.
Placing or giving up a dog: Whether it be yours personally or a dog that you have found, unfortunately with our relocation to Louisiana, we are no longer able to take dogs from out of state. The amount of dogs in our local area that need our help is OVERWHELMING and for the past 3 years, we have taken on the responsibility of working with animal control in our “rural/country” location of Assumption Parish where by “parish guidelines”, no dogs can be turned away from within the parish. We get approximately 100 requests per day to take dogs from all over the country and this is simply not something that we can physically and financially keep up with. If you email our placement box on our Contact page, you will receive an auto-response with suggestions on where else you can find assistance. There are many other wonderful Pit Bull rescues around the country.
Showing up at our facility, unexpected and outside the tour times with the expectation of “seeing Tia Torres” or “trying to drop a dog off from out of the state of Louisiana”: Probably the two most common problems we have. To keep it simple, more than likely neither will happen. Tia Torres does NOT live in New Orleans and her schedule is very “hit & miss”. To have people showing up at our facility in the “middle of the night”, yelling and screaming for Tia (sadly it happens all the time) will only grant you a visit from NOPD. So you’ve been warned. As we stated in #13, we can no longer take dogs from out of state. For the record, this does not mean that by you bringing a dog from let’s say “California” and by driving it across the country into Louisiana….this does not constitute an “in-state dog”. You will be turned away and referred to a group closer to the area you just came from. We can only do so much and if we took in every dog we got a call or request for, we would be taking approximately 700 dogs a week and this is literally impossible. Please be respectful of the limitations we have had to impose.
Each dog that comes through our gates, is an initial and up-front cost of $1000 PER DOG to Villalobos (medical intake, vaccinations, heartworm disease, spay/neuter, etc)
Again, we NO LONGER are able to take dogs into our facility from other states but we are NOT the only Pit Bull rescue. Please Google for other organizations. They do exist.