SOUTH WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. – “We didn’t have to worry that she was out there, that she was going to get hit by a car, that she was going to get hit by a UPS truck,” said South Whitehall’s Jessica Hunsicker through tears.<\/p>\n
This on Mighty Pawz special operations finding Bailey, her son’s dog, who went missing for nearly a month this summer.<\/p>\n
“All their guys were accessible within 10-15 minutes of that call, were there on site immediately,” she said of the volunteer humane officers.<\/p>\n
From the recently rescued like a brown miniature poodle brought in this week from Monroe County, to a ruckus lab that will most likely never be adopted, to a resilient pit bull once used as a fighting dog, Mighty Paws says it’s taken in nearly 100 dogs in need.<\/p>\n
But now owner Rob Rozak says his 5-year-old business is the one in need of rescue.<\/p>\n
“We’re going to lose the humane society, and it looks like we’re going to lose the business on top of it,” he said, fighting back tears.<\/p>\n
Since August, Rozak says business is down 96%. He blames construction caused by a UGI pipe replacement project that he said, at times, took cars 45 minutes to drive a block as detouring business.<\/p>\n
We first met Rozak riding his Mighty Pawz doggy day care bus. He started the humane society this summer. Now, he doesn’t think he’ll make it past December.<\/p>\n
“As business owners, we could, you know, always fix things, but as a humane society that takes in animals that can’t go nowhere else, we’re the last chance for those animals,” he said of the 34 current dogs in his care.<\/p>\n
UGI said, due to the project’s complexity, limited 9-3 work hours, and being a high traffic area, the timeline ran long but the much-needed project will be fully finished Friday. The company added they do what they can to mitigate issues for businesses.<\/p>\n
Rozak is worried if he has to close, his unadoptables will be put down. His hopes are pinned on a GoFundMe page and the support of those like Hunsicker.<\/p>\n
“My son’s best friend is home, and all we have to thank is Mighty Paws. They are in our eternal, grateful, heartfelt gratitude,” Jessica added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SOUTH WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. – “We didn’t have to worry that she was out there, that she was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,15796,15797,2941,28,15795,664],"class_list":["post-23798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-jessica-hunsicker","tag-mighty-pawz","tag-monroe-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-rob-rozak","tag-south-whitehall-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}