Home And Heart Shelters For Strays

Eccentric is one of the kinder things some people in Stevens County call Joyce Tasker, but no one in fairness can deny she has an exceptional heart for animals.

Tasker has turned her attractive semi-rural home into an animal shelter she calls Dog Patch. In a pending lawsuit, her neighbors call it a nuisance.

Except for a room in which Tasker keeps a computer and her cherished knitting and needlepoint work, more than two dozen dogs have the run of the tile-floored house. Most of the pine furniture has been gnawed and no cushions are left, but Tasker prides herself on keeping the place clean.

She’s a former sales manager for a big pharmaceutical company in the San Francisco area, and used to be “a good little yuppie.” She attributes her new lifestyle to seeds planted at the Catholic school she and her identical twin sister attended.

“I learned very early in life that material things are very inconsequential,” Tasker said.

Now the 54-year-old woman said she devotes 98 percent of her disability pension to her do-it-yourself humane society. She suffers from “multiple chemical sensitivity” and a liver-damaging disease called porphyria stemming from accidental exposure to a solvent called toluene.

“I don’t have a social life because of my multiple chemical sensitivity,” she said. “The dogs became my family and my social life and everything.

Tasker said she had 25 dogs when she moved to Stevens County in January 1990 and soon had as many as 70 when one hardship case after another came her way. Then, three years ago, she realized she had to start euthanizing animals so she could spare more of them from abusive situations.

She received training, got a license and administers the injections herself.

“You cannot believe what it was like to go through that the first time,” she said. “I love dogs more than my own life, so for me to take a dog and euthanize it is a real personal crucifixion for me, but it is the responsible thing to do.”

When she’s not looking after the dogs already in her care, Tasker is investigating cases of animal abuse. Or she might be heaping abuse of her own on what she says are the irresponsible commissioners of the “backward” county.

“It’s Mach 4 hell to work in Stevens County as a humane society,” Tasker said.

Tasker estimates there are 18 dogs and 90 cats for each resident, and the population explosion continues to worsen as people shun the high cost of spaying or neutering their pets.

Although the county is becoming more and more suburban, she says 19th century attitudes persist and there is little regard for domestic animals. “Hell holes” for animals abound, she claims.

On a public road near one particularly egregious farm, she says she displayed a pistol to protect herself from an angry man who previously had threatened her life. The man, who says Tasker trespassed and pointed the gun at him, got a restraining order against her.

In that and other cases in which Tasker alleged animals were being abused, the sheriff’s department concluded no charges were warranted.

Tasker dislikes firearms and abhors the idea of shooting stray dogs. But she said there is so much hostility against her now that she fears for her life and sleeps with a gun.

She has no regrets, though: “To me, it’s a fulfilling life.”

, DataTimes