Saving Old Dogs Is Her New Trick

Editor’s note: This article is part of The Great Unretirement, a Next Avenue initiative made possible by the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation and EIX, the Entrepreneur Innovation Exchange

At age 50, Sherri Franklin wasn't expecting a major career change. She enjoyed the "instant gratification" of being a hairstylist, which she'd done for 30 years.

To nurture her love of animals, she decided to volunteer at a shelter near her home in San Francisco. Her first day there was also the day an 8-year-old beagle mix named Heidi arrived.

"She had a real waggy tail," Franklin recalls. "I just fell for her."

As the days and weeks progressed, Franklin watched people adopt dozens of dogs, but not Heidi, who seemed less happy than she had when she arrived. Franklin prioritized taking Heidi for walks at the shelter to boost her spirits.

One day, Heidi was gone. Franklin got excited and a tad tearful, thinking she'd been adopted.

"I went to ask about where she went, and they told me she was euthanized because she hadn't been adopted and they needed the space," she says. "And they said, 'You have to get used to that, because a lot of the older dogs just don't get adopted, and we do have to euthanize for space.' "

Devastated, Franklin vowed to create a sanctuary for senior dogs – and in the meantime, started pulling older animals from shelters and taking them home while she tried to find adopters.

So, in 2007, Muttville Senior Dog Rescue was born.

Franklin continued to work as a hairstylist three days a week – a financial necessity that proved beneficial to helping spread the word about Muttville and leading to volunteers, donors, fosters and adopters.

She read a thick book about the steps required to start a nonprofit, like forming a board of directors. A friend registered the website domain name. Another volunteered to handle publicity. Franklin secured deeply discounted veterinary care from the San Francisco SPCA and Mission Pet Hospital, which allowed her to pay monthly instead of on the day of service.

When Franklin got the news that the IRS approved Muttville's application for nonprofit status, she celebrated by pulling a blind white poodle named Jimmy Love from a shelter and finding him a loving home in Minnesota.

Since Franklin was still working, volunteers came to her house every day to feed up to ten senior dogs. One even volunteered as "house manager."

"Every penny that we raised went to veterinary costs," she says. "We had no budget to pay anybody – just the vet bills."

Muttville got a huge boost in 2010 when Oprah Winfrey featured Muttville on her hit TV show's "Favorite Things" segment. After five years donating her labor and her house to the cause, Franklin could finally start paying herself and move Muttville into a physical shelter.

She was adamant that Muttville should feel more like a home than a shelter, since visiting a shelter can be off-putting, with strong odors and dogs sometimes barking and jumping in their kennels.

"People would come in my house and sit down and adopt a dog that sat on their lap," she says. "We wanted to change the whole model of animal sheltering."

So Muttville has always been a cageless animal shelter. The nonprofit pulls dogs aged 7 and up from shelters "up and down" California so long as they get along with other dogs. Volunteers often drive long distances to pick up shelter dogs and bring them to Muttville.

After receiving veterinary care and being groomed, dogs are ready for adoption. Some head home with a foster, while others wander around Muttville, interacting with other dogs and potential adopters. All dogs attend an adoption event at Muttville every Saturday.

The system works. Each week, Muttville finds "forever homes" for 20 to 25 senior dogs – typically after a couple of days or weeks.

"We've saved almost 13,000 dogs now," Franklin says. "And that's not the people we've saved – that's the dogs."

She's a strong believer in the healing power of pets, so Muttville offers programs to help the community. The nonprofit's Cuddle Club offers people in assisted living facilities and others who can't have a pet of their own the chance to cuddle with senior dogs on comfortable couches.

Some rescue organizations won't allow older people to adopt animals, but there's no age limit for adopters at Muttville, so long as they have support from a relative or caregiver. For instance, Muttville placed an 11-year-old Chihuahua mix named Gucci with a 100-year-old woman, who enjoyed two years of Gucci's playful antics before she died.

(Gucci now lives with the woman's daughter, although Muttville guarantees to take back any dog adopted from the organization if need be.)

Franklin believes senior dogs can be terrific pets because they are typically housetrained and mellower than younger dogs who need more exercise and training to avoid problem behaviors like chewing slippers.

Sweet seniors are popular both with families with young children as well as senior humans; in fact, 40% of Muttville adopters are over the age of 62, she notes.

Muttville also hosts humane education for school children to teach them how to interact with dogs, and to see how wonderful dogs can be.

"We are creating compassion and kindness right here in our community," Franklin says. "We're really working on making what we do part of the community instead of just being an animal shelter."

These programs are rapidly expanding since Muttville moved into a $30 million, state-of-the-art facility last year – one that runs remarkably well, according to a volunteer, Linda Schomaker. The 68-year-old retired in 2024 from a career as chief human resource officer for large companies and high-tech startups, and now volunteers at Muttville twice a week.

"A lot of CEOs just go to work, but Sherri stays involved, even though she's got a huge support system of employees and volunteers," she says. "She is sort of the welcoming committee to Muttville."

Schomaker loves fostering senior dogs for Muttville and even adopted a pug/Chihuahua mix named Elvis, whose owners had to surrender him when they moved into an assisted living facility.

"He's 14 but he has perfect eyesight and perfect hearing," she says. "He has lots of energy. He's the sweetest little dog."

She considers Muttville her "family" now and says volunteering there along with over 200 other volunteers provides her with the regular social contact she'd missed in retirement.

Franklin, who is now 69, is grateful for volunteers like Schomaker who help Muttville save so many senior dogs and gratified to see them form strong connections with one another. Recently, a man walked into Muttville to volunteer because his therapist suggested it, which touched her.

She's glad her experience with styling hair – which she still does once a week – helped make Muttville a success.

"When I started Muttville out of my house, I didn't visualize how big it would become. I was more focused on the work of saving these animals," she says. "But I took what I learned from doing hair into being able to fundraise and to be able to talk to people because that was something that I learned in my previous life.

"So wherever you are, if you're thinking about a career change, it could be a big change,' Franklin adds. "This was a big change, but I had lots of lessons that I learned in my younger life that I carried with me."