The nonprofit emergency dog boarding service had just been founded in December 2023 by Tim and Molly Lydon. The Lydons were eager for any help they could get their hands on. Michele visited their Wilkinsburg home to drop off supplies, and by the time she left, she had signed on to be a volunteer dog walker.<\/p>\n
Two years later, the Bossers have fostered five dogs and consider the Lydons \u2014 and Harmony Dog Rescue \u2014 part of their family. The rescue as a whole has supported 112 dogs over the past two years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got to be friends \u2026 because all this is happening in their home in Wilkinsburg,\u201d Bossers says. \u201cIt\u2019s not like you\u2019re going to an office, you\u2019re just going to their home, and over time, we established a really supportive relationship. They were just here last week for dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you haven\u2019t heard of emergency boarding before, you\u2019re probably not alone. Lydon claims Harmony Dog Rescue is the only organization solely dedicated to emergency boarding in the state.<\/p>\n
In Allegheny County,\u00a0 three other groups provide emergency boarding in addition to other services: Paws Across Pittsburgh, Animal Friends and Humane Animal Rescue. Most of these organizations don\u2019t advertise that they offer emergency boarding, though, because of how often owners ghost them and abandon their pets \u2014 what Lydon calls \u201cdog dumping.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lydon\u2019s passion for the project arose from time he spent as an employee of a local animal shelter. One day while he was working the pet helpline, he got a call from a woman who was sleeping in her truck with her two dogs after leaving a violent home.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat phone call \u2014 I\u2019ll never forget that woman\u2019s voice, the terror in her voice, and it still haunts me,\u201d Lydon says.<\/p>\n
It was late Friday afternoon, and he was prepared to leave his post to go meet her, but managers told him he couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only thing I could say to this woman who was obviously in crisis was, \u2018Call us back Monday,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cWe never heard from her again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lydon and his wife, Molly, wanted to create a scrappy, responsive organization that could cover similar service gaps.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/PXL_20251115_1620267122-scaled.jpg\")
Queenie plays with a toy during an interview with Michele Bossers on Saturday, Nov. 15. Photo by Roman Hladio.<\/p>\n
On Dec. 7, 2023, they accepted their first two fosters into a kennel they had installed in the basement of their Wilkinsburg home.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were really afraid to pull the trigger and take in those first two dogs, because there was no turning back, but once we started \u2026 our lives were never the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harmony Dog Rescue offers 40 days of emergency foster care and often provides extensions, which can stretch to 60 or even 90 days. The dogs stay with volunteer fosters in their homes.<\/p>\n
Michelle Byrne was recently reunited with her dog, Sonic, after an emergency surgery sent her to the hospital in October. Sonic spent about a month in foster care.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe missed me and I\u2019ve missed him, and all he wants to do is cuddle with me,\u201d Byrne says.<\/p>\n
Byrne says that it was Sonic\u2019s second stay with Harmony Dog Rescue \u2014 they previously took care of Sonic while Byrne left a domestic violence situation about a year ago.<\/p>\n
Before connecting with Harmony Dog Rescue over Facebook, Byrne was going to surrender Sonic, which she says would have been devastating. He doubles as her emotional support animal.<\/p>\n
The Lydons not only ensured that she could reconnect with Sonic after she found stable housing, but continued to check in and make sure the pair could stay together.<\/p>\n
\u201cI live in housing, so I have to have [proof of vaccination] to be able to be in housing,\u201d Byrne says. \u201cTim helped me with that and made sure I could get him back \u2014 he didn\u2019t make it hard for me to get him back. A lot of places, after a while, they\u2019ll ask you to surrender your animal.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t do that. He knows that I\u2019m attached to Sonic and Sonic\u2019s attached to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Initially, the Lydons\u2019 mission was to serve domestic violence survivors by taking care of their pets while they found safe new homes. At the same time, they were getting calls from people who were unhoused, going to rehab or in the midst of a medical emergency, so they expanded their mission.<\/p>\n
Pets can feel the pain of rising prices of food and housing as much as humans: Allegheny County reports rising cases of people experiencing homelessness in 2024<\/a>, and Humane Animal Rescue reports an increase in cases of dog abandonment<\/a> at its shelters. <\/p>\n Harmony Dog Rescue works with community support groups like the nonprofit Bridge to the Mountains<\/a>, Pittsburgh Mercy\u2019s Operation Safety Net and the City of Pittsburgh\u2019s Office of Community Health and Safety.<\/p>\n \u201cThe dog stuff\u2019s easy, but the human side has been very challenging because my wife and I are not social workers,\u201d Lydon says. \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to love someone who\u2019s overdosed on fentanyl for the third time, and it\u2019s 11 o\u2019clock at night and I have to drive Downtown to get their dog. That has tested my compassion for people. But it\u2019s what we signed up for.<\/p>\n \u201cWhenever they eventually get clean \u2026 and they get in a house with their pet, it makes it all worth it for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Harmony Dog Rescue keeps the circumstances of a dog\u2019s owner confidential, but they tell foster parents any relevant information regarding potential triggers for the dog and a rough estimate of how long to expect they\u2019ll have the dog, Bossers says.<\/p>\n Harmony Dog Rescue financially covers everything a foster dog might need: medicine, vet visits, bedding, food and more.<\/p>\n In October 2024, the Lydons moved to a 3-acre property in Wexford. It\u2019s not much closer to Downtown Pittsburgh, but the new location has proven to be a boon for the organization.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have probably half a dozen people who, weekly, come over and just walk dogs for us and socialize dogs,\u201d Lydon says.<\/p>\n The rescue works with a collective of 30 to 40 volunteer foster homes. Fosters end in reunification more than half the time, says Lydon. Currently, the rescue has seven dogs in foster homes set to return to their owners and three more up for adoption<\/a>.<\/p>\n While Michele Bossers is no longer close enough to be a consistent dog walker, she remained a foster parent in the rescue\u2019s network until recently. In July, she and Henk adopted Queenie, a pit bull they had been fostering, after her owner surrendered her.<\/p>\n \u201cHer first mom was really good to her, but her life situation changed,\u201d Bossers says. \u201cWe didn\u2019t plan on adopting a dog. She\u2019s an older dog, but \u2026 she\u2019s just the right dog for people our age \u2014 maybe a little big, but just the right dog.\u201d<\/p>\n If you\u2019re experiencing homelessness, mental health challenges, domestic violence or medical emergencies or want to apply to be a foster, visit Harmony Dog Rescue\u2019s website<\/a>, call 412-565-9789 or email info@harmonydogrescue.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n Emergency housing resources for humans are accessible via Allegheny Connect\u2019s website<\/a> and via the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Wilkinsburg residents Michele and Henk Bossers lost their 17-year-old dog Cody nearly two years ago, the couple…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[9356,8270,73,75,74,15281],"class_list":{"0":"post-51133","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-dogs","9":"tag-nonprofits","10":"tag-pittsburgh","11":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","12":"tag-pittsburgh-news","13":"tag-wexford"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51133","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=51133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/PXL_20251115_1619427252-scaled.jpg\")
Michele Bossers and her dog, Queenie, pose in her Wilkinsburg home. Photo by Roman Hladio.<\/p>\n