Caring for animals still a passion for couple

STAFF WRITER

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Regardless of age, a person’s passion will always stay a passion, just like Beth and Glen Bradshaw, who despite being in their 90’s and 80’s, respectively, still have the time and energy to take care of their neighbors and animals.

Staff photo: Matthew Asher

Glen and Beth Bradshaw stand outside their house. Glen holds Penny while Beth pets Molly. Both dogs were strays and were rescued by the Bradshaws. Glen estimates that while he and Beth were an informal animal shelter in Portales, the couple found homes for more than 1,000 animals.

Glen came to Portales back in 1980 and met his wife through a friend. Beth had lived in Portales longer as she was born in Melrose but moved to Portales when she was six. After graduating from high school, Beth moved away until 1978, about 37 years, and has been in Portales ever since.

“I came back because my parents were here,” Beth said. “I had been gone for so long I wanted to spend their last days with them. They lived up the road. My father called it the ‘Dream Farm’. It was a big garden with no junk surrounding it. He gave away a lot of what he grew.”

Beth inherited her father’s generosity as she and Glen built the house they now live in, and continued to do her father’s work but took it a step further.

“At the time this was just a vacant lot with a small brick house,” Beth said. “Glen being a repair man had the house bricked, the windows and the roof changed. I had some acreage and planted some huge gardens. We did a lot of what my dad did. We had some fruit trees.

“We also had animals because I was the head of the Humane Society here in Portales. We found homes for the animals. It can be so fulfilling but it can also be so heartbreaking. In all the years, we never had more than half a dozen dogs that we put down in my time. That was for health reasons. It was a no-kill place.”

Glen said his wife did everything possible to make sure all the animals found new homes to live in.

“The humane society and her found more than 1,000 homes for dogs and cats,” Glen said. “She advertised with word-of-mouth, and had articles written in the paper. When she gave it up, that’s when the city decided to build a pound, or shelter for the animals.”

Beth and Glen spent about 10 years as the informal animal shelter of the city until 1998, when Beth was diagnosed with breast cancer. She admits the cancer took too much out of her to continue on such a large scale.

However, just because Beth has taken it easy, she still has adopted several animals since the cancer diagnosis.

“We now have a border-collie named Molly and a chihuahua named Penny,” Beth said. “Both of them were picked up. We found Penny on the side of the road. Molly came to visit us as a puppy. She was probably four months old when she came up to our house and put her paws on me. We had just put the last of our puppies down from stomach tumors.”

Molly, their final dog, was an unexpected and early Christmas present the couple received.

“I asked Glen what he wanted for Christmas,” Beth said. “He said ‘I just wanted another dog.’ I said ‘We don’t even have any cats. Let’s take some time out and do something else for a change.’ I had gone to the grocery store and there’s Molly, who came up out of nowhere and jumped on me. I thought ‘Gee whiz, what an adorable dog.’ So I put her in the truck and drove to Glenn, who was on jury duty that day. He comes out, I open up the door and said ‘Merry Christmas!’ while Molly jumped out.”

Molly and Penny are still with the Bradshaws to this day. In addition to the dogs, Beth and Glen have adopted a litter of kittens and their mother.

“We saw a mother cat this Thanksgiving, Beth said. “She was so pretty, I fell in love with her. She came in the dead of winter and had started to live next door in a shop. I noticed she was pregnant. It was too late to do anything about that. She came by everyday and I would feed her because she needed all the help she could get.”

During the winter months, Beth and Glen didn’t see if any of the kittens survived, but got their answer once the cold front broke.

“The mom comes over with the first kitten,” she said. “I think ‘Well, we can handle that.’ She ends up bringing six kittens. I knew they couldn’t live outdoors so we let them in.

That was an absolute crisis but we had so much fun. We found homes for two (kittens). We had the mom spayed so we wouldn’t have any more kittens. We kept four of them.”

Beth is happy to report the four kittens are still living with them and they have adopted Molly as their new mother, much to Molly’s chagrin.

“Anytime Molly is outside the kittens will run to her,” Beth said. “Molly’s not thrilled with them following her around, but she tolerates it at best.”