In Greenbrier County, if you see a starving dog running loose, you may be the one trying to catch it—not the person paid to do it.
I have lived this reality more times than I care to count. In the winter of 2024, four Dalmatians were abandoned when their owner moved away, left to survive a brutal winter in a holler on Leonard Cordova Road. When I learned of them in April 2025, I did everything I could to catch them, but they disappeared one by one.
Then, in June, in what felt like triple-digit heat, I spent a full week trying to rescue another dumped dog near the Greenbrier River Trail. Citizens called for help. Sheriff’s Deputies drove right past. No authority intervened. That dog was struck and killed on Route 60. I wept—not only for that dog, but for a system that repeatedly fails those who cannot speak for themselves.
In Greenbrier County, local ordinance requires law enforcement to contain stray dogs. Yet even when law exists, enforcement often does not. This is not a staffing issue. It is not a funding glitch. Our County spends over $3M a year on our Sheriff’s Department. It is a structural failure.
And that failure is not isolated to Greenbrier County—it is statewide.
Today, we operate an industrial chain of abandonment. Breeders profit upstream. Taxpayers, shelters, volunteers, and animals absorb the cost downstream. Shelters are overwhelmed. Citizens fear legal risk if they intervene. Families searching for lost pets encounter silence, fragmentation, or paywalls. Government reacts after suffering occurs—if it reacts at all.
This is not an accident. It is the predictable outcome of a system designed without accountability.
We do not fix outcomes by managing symptoms. We fix outcomes by redesigning structure. We must build what I call the Interstate System for Animal Welfare.
To those ends, I have created the PROVENIQ System, grounded in three non-negotiable principles: Access, Affordability, and Accountability.
Access means help actually arrives.
Affordability means survival is not income-dependent.
Accountability means those who profit share responsibility for consequences.
At its core is Pet Command—an integrated public-interest infrastructure composed of MAYDAY, ShelterOS, VetOS, and LifeLog.
MAYDAY (petmayday.org) is the real-time crisis layer. Lost, found, injured, and at-risk animal reports are routed instantly—not buried in voicemail or scattered across social media. MAYDAY verifies sightings, alerts nearby responders, coordinates safe capture, and connects citizens, shelters, rescues, and veterinary care into one functioning response network. Chaos becomes coordination. Panic becomes action.
But technology does not pick up the leash.
MAYDAY depends on people. Real-time routing still requires human responders to verify sightings, assist with safe capture, and help reunite families. Even one hour of volunteer time per week saves lives. We are building a statewide MAYDAY volunteer corps. Information is available at lostpets911.org.
Where MAYDAY handles crisis, ShelterOS (mypetrescue.org) repairs institutional weakness. ShelterOS is a no-cost, next-generation system managing not only animals, but entire shelter operations—intake, medical care, inventory, compliance, and fundraising. It removes financial burden from shelters while improving outcomes. If you want your local shelter equipped with modern tools instead of outdated systems, call and ask: “Have you heard about ShelterOS?” Public awareness drives institutional change.
VetOS (vet-os.org) confronts a quieter tragedy: economic euthanasia. Too many animals die not because treatment is impossible, but because it is unaffordable. VetOS connects veterinary providers within the Pet Command ecosystem and helps fund emergency care through surplus and charitable mechanisms. Affordability must mean survival—not theory.
LifeLog (petlifelog.org) provides lifetime continuity—identity, medical history, behavioral record, and custody trail—ensuring animals never become anonymous during crisis. Its infrastructure supports broader prevention programs, including Homeward Bound and Fix-It Forward, creating a self-reinforcing welfare system.
Homeward Bound treats identity as public-safety infrastructure. Microchips are essential but imperfect, so the system reinforces them with biometric nose-print identification—an immutable marker unique to each dog. Through our Chip n Sniff events, firehouses will host public safety events where pets are microchipped and dogs receive biometric scans, while departments are equipped with universal scanners capable of identifying animals during disasters and emergencies. Identity prevents disappearance. Identity creates accountability.
Fix-It Forward addresses the root driver of shelter overload: uncontrolled breeding and population growth. By targeting spay and neuter resources where risk is highest, it prevents suffering before intake occurs—shifting the system from reaction to prevention.
But infrastructure alone cannot correct exploitation. Our laws must close structural gaps.
Our proposed B.A.R.K. Act (Breeder Accountability and Regulation for Kindness) provides the missing backbone.
It enforces Accountability by requiring breeder licensing, closing the hobby-breeder loophole, and capping operations to prevent industrial overproduction. It ensures Affordability through the B.I.T.E. Fund (Budget for Investigation, Treatment, and Enforcement,) financed by licensing, enforcement, and a point-of-sale lifecycle excise tax—so the industry generating the problem funds the solution. And it expands Access through regional hub-and-spoke animal control authorities and 14-day finder immunity, allowing citizens to rescue abandoned animals without fear of legal retaliation.
This is not radical policy. It is basic system design.
The real question is not whether we know how to fix this. We do. The question is whether leaders are willing to act.
Because every year of delay has consequences measured in suffering, abandonment, and preventable death.
Together, the PROVENIQ System and the B.A.R.K. Act move animal welfare from fragmented charity to coordinated public infrastructure—where responsibility is shared, prevention is prioritized, and enforcement is real.
This is not about blame, but it is a wake-up call to look at ourselves clearly. A society is judged by how it treats the voiceless. Right now, we are failing that measure.
West Virginia can lead—or it can continue managing failure.
The choice is not whether to care. The choice is whether we build a system worthy of that care. I cannot build it alone, and I will not be the Little Red Hen. If you believe in what we are building—for animals, families, and communities—please consider supporting this work at pro-found.org.
“Terry L. Holliday is a lifelong resident of Greenbrier County and a staunch advocate for humane policy reform. Press inquiries: press@pro-found.org”
