Tribal teen receives Courageous Heart Award for work with animals

Sixth-grade Tribal member Teegan Ritchey has a lot of heart. Officially.

At the end of October, Desert Paws, a Palm Springs, Calif.-based nonprofit that promotes compassion and respect for all living creatures, awarded Teegan its Courageous Heart Award.

Singer and board member Barry Manilow made the presentation.

"I was a little nervous because everyone was clapping and everything, but when I went up there, I was fine," Ritchey says. "I just walked up on stage and they gave me a trophy and a folder with a certificate: Courageous Heart Award for the Youth Advocates Group."

Ritchey rescued and adopted out more than 40 dogs in 2010, she says in a phone interview from her home in La Quinta, Calif.

She's been at it for almost two years.

It started with a simple-enough visit to the pet store.

"Me and my grandma and cousin went to the local PetSmart and saw the puppies and went over there," she says. A Lend-A-Paw employee, working out of the store, asked Teegan if she wanted to volunteer. And did she ever.

"She's the one who goes out and rescues the dogs and keeps the dogs at her house, and brings them to PetSmart," says Ritchey.

As part of the rescue team, Ritchey takes the dogs for walks and socializes them.

"We walk them around. We leash-train all the dogs and get them social. We let people pet them."

She works with dogs of all ages, from puppies to older dogs, she says.

Every weekend, Ritchey and a friend she met through the program go to PetSmart to help adopt out these abandoned pets.

"This week is a really big adoption fair," she says. "We have cards out in case they want (to adopt) them later. When people are interested, we let them walk the dogs around in the store. If they want one, they have to sign a paper (saying that they will take good care of the dogs); we check out their homes to see if they're OK; not cluttered and no holes in the fences so the dogs can escape."

Ritchey started sixth grade this year at the Colonel Mitchell Paige Middle School in La Quinta, where she plays baseball, volleyball and soccer.

The middle school has been a new experience for her.

"There's a lot of people there, crowded hallways and everything," she says. "My hobby is to, like, volunteer with the animals."

She also volunteers at the Indio, Calif.-based Epona Horse Rescue, where the mission is to provide a healthy environment for neglected, abused and unwanted horses.

"We brush (the horses) and clean their stalls," Ritchey says. "We feed them; we wash them off; we sometimes ride them. I go out in the fields with young horses and pick up everything, things that fall off the fences, rope that wraps up hay bales (to keep the horses safe). My grandma's cousin owns three horses, so sometimes I ride horses with her."

Teegan's sister, Tribal member Kelsey, 15, is also a horse rescue volunteer.

"She used to do the dog volunteer with me," Teegan says. "She did it for a little while, but then got busy with sports."

 "We all love animals, but nobody in the family has her passion," says mom, Casey. "Everybody in the family has always had animals, mostly dogs, but she has that passion. She'll see a dog on the side of the road and she wants to rescue it.

"For her birthday in April, when she turned 11 and had a party, instead of asking for gifts from her friends, she asked for money and raised $200, half to help an elephant in Kenya, through the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, in Nairobi, and half to help a polar bear through Polar Bears International."

"Her aspiration," says Casey, "is to go to college to study zoology."

Teegan's father is Tribal member Tony Ritchey.

The Ritcheys also have a chihuahua of their own.