| Emmylou's Experience: Singer-songwriter Emmylou Harris has been awarded 13 Grammys over the course of her career along with other accolades too numerous to count. A long-time animal rights activist & lifelong dog lover, Harris founded Bonaparte's Retreat in 2004 and named it after one of her own beloved dogs. "Bonaparte had this really friendly demeanor," she says. "Loved people, very sociable, loved other animals." Harris decided to take Bonaparte on the road with her & "he loved the traveling, the bus, hotels, backstage. Of course, once you have the experience of having a dog on the road with you, you don't realize how lonely you've been without one. So he went everywhere with me. He was my constant companion for 10 years." When Bonaparte died suddenly in 2002, Harris was heartbroken (she wrote "Not Enough," a tribute to her traveling buddy, for her album All I Intended to Be). From this personal loss came the genesis of Bonaparte's Retreat. "I had this big yard, & I had seen an HBO special called Shelter Dogs," Harris says. "I was very moved, & I thought, I've got the room?I could foster three or four dogs. So that's where the idea came from. We took in our first dog in July 2004. Eventually, I felt some kind of call?to focus on the dogs at Metro Animal Control." Metro now has great success at radically reducing its euthanasia's rate, but in those early days, the dogs were on death row, so to speak, to be euthanized if they were not adopted. So, Bonaparte's Retreat became the first nonprofit rescue organization to partner with Metro Animal Care & Control. To this day, Harris continues to make new music & to perform all over the world at countless benefits to raise funds for Bonaparte's Retreat, animal rights causes in general, & to raise awareness about the plight of shelter dogs. |
