Much Love for All Dogs

Twenty-six years ago, Nikki Ferraro found herself in a parking lot outside a Santa Monica surf shop, holding handmade posters, trying to find a home for a stray dog. “We just really didn’t know what to do with them back then,” Ferraro recalls. “The shelters weren’t set up as great as now, they were smaller.” What began as an impromptu adoption event has evolved into Much Love Animal Rescue, a grassroots organization that has placed upwards of 5,000 animals in loving homes since 1999.

The operation remains defiantly analog in spirit, even as it has grown sophisticated in reach. There is no gleaming facility, no corporate headquarters – just a network of steadfast volunteers working 24 hours a day. “Nobody says it’s a weekend, I can’t do this,” explains Board Member Karen Gaspin. “There are 2am phone calls,” adds Board Member and 18-year Much Love veteran, Jude Epstein. “Every year we are doing better and more work.”

Their nimbleness proved invaluable during the recent Palisades and Altadena fires. While larger organizations struggled with logistics, Much Love pivoted instantly. Within two weeks, they had rescued 15 dogs displaced by the crisis, their all-volunteer foster network expanding to accommodate the emergency.

The organization’s specialty lies in the cases others might avoid – the medical complexities, the senior dogs, the animals with stories written in scars. “We’re suckers for the medical cases and the seniors,” Ferraro admits. “Some of the best dogs we’ve ever gotten had some major medical issues that we’ve rescued, and you just fix ‘em up and they become somebody’s best friend.” She describes pulling a pit bull from a two-foot chain, hairless and hobbling, requiring thousands in veterinary care for a broken hip, mange, and tumor removal. He became her beloved companion. “We don’t take a dog by what they look like,” Gaspin emphasizes. 

Their annual medical budget approaches $125,000. The calls arrive constantly – more than 10 each day – from overwhelmed shelters, from strangers who’ve found dogs wandering with makeshift collars. “We get a call. We have a medical dog that they’re going to euthanize. Could you guys take it?” Ferraro explains. The financial pressure is relentless: “We literally have to go out and say, we need $10,000 in the next week” when emergency cases arise.

The mathematics are unforgiving: every rescue requires immediate placement in foster care or costly boarding, every medical case demands upfront payment, every success story builds toward the next emergency. Yet the organization persists through pure volunteer energy, embodying the kind of grassroots activism that feels increasingly rare in an institutionalized world.