A Second Chance for Santa Barbara’s Senior Dogs

Emily Grossheider was 5 years old when she sat in the hot tub next to her family’s deaf 16-year-old pit bull and decided to cover the sleeping pup with a blanket. The next thing she knew, the dog had latched onto her face.

“The poor girl had like six teeth left in her whole mouth,” she recalled, “and she got all of them on my face.”

Reflecting on the incident decades later, Grossheider doesn’t blame the senior dog — quite the opposite. “It was not her breed that caused her to do that,” she said. “It was fully me as an annoying little kid that was not perceptive enough about dogs.”

After such a formative experience, one might expect her to have sworn off dogs altogether. Instead, she decided to work with them. Today, she is the executive director of the Grey Muzzle Organization, a national organization dedicated to improving the quality of life and adoption prospects of senior dogs in shelters.

The organization primarily does this by providing grants to local partner organizations, enabling them to offer critical medical care that helps older dogs become healthy and adoptable. The grants can also cover or reduce adoption fees, encouraging people to take senior dogs home.

Aside from grants, the organization also provides hands-on mentorship to shelters and rescue groups, collecting and sharing best practices from successful senior-dog programs and actively coaching organizations — particularly small, under-resourced shelters — on how to design and sustain initiatives that keep senior dogs in their homes and help those in shelters get adopted.

During its 2024-25 grant cycle, Grey Muzzle helped almost 6,000 senior dogs.

This year, two Santa Barbara–area organizations — CARE4Paws and the Santa Barbara County Animal Care Foundation — were among the grant recipients. During its most recent grant cycle, Grey Muzzle received just under 400 applications and funded 59. Grossheider said it’s rare for two organizations from the same county to be selected.

Grey Muzzle divided its grants into two categories: Pathways Home grants, which provide funding to shelters and rescues to help senior dogs find homes, and Staying Home grants, which support organizations that help owners care for senior dogs whose medical needs they cannot afford on their own.

The Santa Barbara County Animal Care Foundation’s Pathways Home grant will help senior dogs, generally those 7 years of age or older, in Santa Barbara County’s three animal shelters. The funding covers medical treatment and reduces or waives adoption fees, giving older dogs a better chance of finding homes.

The CARE4Paws grant aims to help senior dogs stay in their homes by offering subsidized or free veterinary care and other support for low-income pet guardians. Grossheider said one reason senior dogs are euthanized at higher rates than younger dogs is the high cost of preparing them for adoption, particularly because of the medical care they often need. She said that almost every senior that enters a shelter needs a dental and cleaning.

She shared the story of a dog owner who couldn’t afford the dental care her dog needed until CARE4Paws stepped in. As a result, the organization was able to keep the dog and its owner together.

“And you know, it’s just beautiful,” said Grossheider, “because these bonds exist, and we should keep them intact.”

For more information, see greymuzzle.org.