For four months, Alan Cravens has been feeding ten pitbull puppies and their mother out of his own pocket, using nothing but a monthly disability check after his neighbors moved away and left the animals behind. The Vietnam War veteran lives on the outskirts of Little Rock city limits in Pulaski County, and he has built the dogs a warming shelter and feeds them twice a day while managing his own health, including COPD.
Cravens told KARK that dumping is a recurring problem where he lives, since his property sits just past the city line. “People are bringing their dogs out and dropping them off because we’re right outside city limits,” he said. The arrangement has strained his limited income: Cravens said he is going through about 30 pounds of dog food every two to three days, a steep cost on a fixed disability check that is his only source of income.
A Lone Rescue Group Steps In
Cravens said he called every shelter, rescue group and handler he could find, but kennels were full and many calls went unreturned. CARE For Animals, which identifies itself as the Central Arkansas Rescue Effort for Animals on its own contact page, was the one organization that answered. The group could not take the dogs in outright because it lacked foster capacity, but staff said they still wanted to help in whatever way they could.
That help has included volunteers cleaning up part of Cravens’ backyard and patching holes in his fencing to keep the puppies from escaping. The group also tested the litter for parvovirus, and the puppies came back negative, according to the station’s report. One puppy had already died before Cravens received that assistance; no cause of death was reported.
Eight Puppies Still Need Homes
Of the ten puppies, one has since been adopted, and the new owner agreed to foster two more, administrative assistant Lanie Wyles said, leaving eight puppies still in need of placement — six males and two females. CARE For Animals says it is seeking fosters who can take in one or two puppies for at least a couple of months, along with permanent homes and donations to cover puppy food and veterinary bills. The organization plans to get the remaining puppies vaccinated and spayed or neutered, and it donates puppy chow when it can, per the same account.
CARE For Animals notes on its foster information page that it relies on foster homes to socialize, train and comfort pets while they wait for permanent placement, since the group is not a shelter and cannot pick up strays itself. Cravens said he hopes homes can be found for all the puppies, and added that if he had the money, he would buy the property and turn it into a dog sanctuary.
A Statewide Shift Toward No-Kill Shelters
Cravens’ situation plays out against a broader statewide trend of fewer animals ending up euthanized. Arkansas shelters saved about 81% of animals in 2025, up from 80% the year before, according to data from the Best Friends Animal Society cited by Axios. That translated to roughly 900 fewer animals killed in Arkansas shelters in 2025 compared with 2024, while intakes statewide fell by about 1,700 pets year over year, according to KATV.
Best Friends estimates that 64 of the state’s 98 shelters qualified as no-kill in 2025, defined as saving every healthy and treatable animal with fewer than 10% euthanized, Axios reported. Even with that progress, cases like Cravens’ show how gaps remain for owners who find themselves with more animals than they can place on their own, especially outside city limits where capacity and oversight can be thinner.
