Don’t be fooled by Maverick’s first name. The Pembroke Welsh Corgi is a team player.

Working with his Southfield-based trainer, Maverick was part of Team USA which brought home a team silver medal from the 2024 World Agility Championship in Bourgbarre, France.

The annual event was a showcase for more than 200 competitors from more than a dozen nations.

For Maverick and trainer Jeremy Gerhard, a veterinary technician working in Commerce Township, the success was another high mark in a partnership arranged in 2017 by Maverick owner Sally Slade of Grand Blanc. The showdown in France was their fourth international event together.

The dynamic duo was assembled, Gerhard said, when Slade was recovering from knee surgery and sought a partner for her Maverick. About the same time, Gerhard’s pet dog had died.

Slade often joins Gerhard and Maverick at trials to review training and strategy.

Maverick “has a big heart and is a hard-working dog who always likes to please,” Gerhard said.

For Maverick, he said, plain pancakes are an effective treat and reward.

“Sally makes him pancakes wherever we go to compete,” he said. “She brought pancake mix to France and made them for him.”

They’re served up without syrup or other goodies. “He good with plain, old pancakes,” Gerhard said.

Maverick puts in the work, but always prefers competition to training. And, while he enjoys the camaraderie of his teammates, Maverick is “all business” when competing on the agility course.

Moreover, he really cranks up the effort and performance in front of an audience, Gerhard said.

“In practice and the early rounds of competition when the crowd is smaller and it’s more quiet, his times are slower,” he added.

But when the competition and audience heat things up, Maverick gets cooking.

“He can be pretty darn focused,” Gerhard said. “Maverick likes a crowd, so the atmosphere (at the world championship), where most competitors are ringside, watching and cheering for others, is perfect for him.”

The competition includes dogs of all breeds and sizes in a race against the clock through an array of obstacles: hurdles, tunnels, hanging tires, weave poles – and more. Winners are those with the fastest times and fewest penalties.

Maverick competed in the 10-inch height category.

In France, Gerhard said, “we (had) a couple of faults that potentially cost us another medal or two, but Maverick ran really well, as he always does.”

“This was our fourth year as part of Team USA, and it is always a great thrill and makes me so proud to represent our country and the United States Dog Agility Association,” said Gerhard, secretary and trial chair for the Canine and Combustion Dog Agility Club, Michigan’s oldest dog agility club.

The USDAA is the world’s largest independent authority for the sport of dog agility, with more than 45,000 registered competitors among more than 200 breeds.

A Michigan resident since 1990, Gerhard’s interest in dog training began as a high school student in Massachusetts, where he attended some dog training with an aunt.

“I was hooked from then on,” he said.

Gerhard and his wife have two dogs of their own, an Australian shepherd and a border collie. Both have competed with the USA team, he said.

Maverick’s next big showing is expected in October at the U.S. national championships in Arizona.

Pet owners must take many things into consideration in their quest to keep animals healthy and happy. One of those considerations involves animal reproductive health.

Veterinarians as well as animal welfare organizations urge pet owners to spay or neuter their pets, not only to provide various health benefits, but to help reduce overpopulation in pet communities.

Cat pet parents must be especially diligent in their quest to squelch reproduction to help control cat populations. According to The Spruce: Pets, female cats that are not spayed will come into estrus (heat) as early as four months old. The animal health resource BondVet says a cat can go into heat as often as every two to three weeks. Generally, though, cats are seasonal breeders, meaning heat cycles slow down in autumn. Another thing to note is that cats do not enter menopause like people and other animals. That means a female cat can continue to reproduce well into her senior years.

Cats can become pregnant even during the first estrus cycle. A feline’s pregnancy lasts around 63 to 65 days, or about nine weeks. A cat also can be impregnated again very quickly after giving birth, as nursing kittens will not prevent a subsequent pregnancy. The average litter size is three to six kittens, so it’s easy to see just how many kittens can be born of one cat if she’s left to her own reproductive devices. Females also can be mated by more than one male or even one of their male relatives.

While there is still some debate among veterinarians as to the best age at which to spay or neuter cats, the general consensus seems to be the earlier the better, particularly if cats have access to other cats that are not fixed. This can occur as early as age six to eight weeks, while standard spays and neuters occur at five to six months of age. Vets who advocate for spaying before the first heat say it nearly eliminates the risk of mammary cancer, and spayed cats will not develop ovarian and uterine cancers, according to PetMD.

Physiologically and behaviorally, cats are built to reproduce as frequently as possible. Pet owners must put a stop to that to protect against overpopulation and to reduce unwanted behaviors like inappropriate marking, aggression and other issues.

At a time when Clinton Township-based nonprofit A ReJoyceful Animal Rescue has seen its resources stretched to the limits, its founder said its longstanding partnership with PetSmart Charities has provided crucial funding and support.

A ReJoyceful Animal Rescue was founded in 2007 and has been working with PetSmart Charities for more than a decade, founder Michelle Heyza said. The rescue takes in and rehabilitates stray, abandoned and unwanted dogs and cats — as well as the occasional guinea pig — then helps them find new homes, she said.

In 25 years of animal rescue work, Heyza said, she’s never seen more animals in need than now. To top it off, donations also are down, she said.

“It’s been really, really, really bad, and I don’t know if we’re going to pull out of this,” Heyza said. “I think it’s just going to continue to get worse.”

The simplest thing people can do to help?

Keep your pets, Heyza said. When financially needy pet owners consider surrendering their animals, A ReJoyceful Animal Rescue does what it can to help those pets stay in their homes rather than take up crucial space in a shelter or foster home. Grants from PetSmart Charities, including funds provided for each animal adoption, enable the nonprofit to help owners in need, which in turn helps ease pressure on the entire rescue system, Heyza said. PetSmart Charities also provides spay and neuter grants, which helps reduce in fighting overpopulation, she said.

“We don’t need any more animals in the rescue. We have enough,” Heyza said. “We don’t need someone surrendering their animal because they can’t afford a surgery. Instead, we’ll try to say: ‘Hey, what if we help you out with the surgery? And would you be willing to keep your pet?’ And 95% of the time, the answer is ‘Oh my God, yes.’”

Heyza pleaded for concerned residents to make donations to their local animal rescues. County shelters may be short on resources, but they do receive some government funding, she said. Local rescues subsist solely on donations, adoption fees and grants like those provided by PetSmart Charities, Heyza said. A ReJoyceful Animal Rescue is primarily foster-based, but operates a small shelter that costs about $17,000 a month to run, Heyza said.

“Donate to your local shelters, donate to your small shelters, because we survive on it,” Heyza said. “With us being here, it takes the burden and stress off of the county shelter. I don’t even know how many times we’ve gotten animals brought to us that were supposed to go to the county shelter, but we’ve taken them in instead. … We’re all here to work together as a community.”

While the rescue holds adoption events at a variety of different locations, all of their adoptions are finalized through PetSmart and new owners pick up their pets at the store, Heyza said. A Rejoyceful Animal Rescue runs the “cat condos” at the PetSmart store in Chesterfield, which she said has been a “tremendous” help with exposing cats to adopters and finding them new homes.

“I think (the partnership) has been hugely beneficial for A Rejoyceful Rescue,” Heyza said. “The fact that they give back for every single adoption that’s done through PetSmart is amazing. PetSmart is truly giving back to their community in that respect because the dollars that we get from that go right back into our community efforts.”

Special needs adoptions always stand out to Heyza.

Orion, a cat with feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) who was with the rescue for nearly a full year, was recently adopted from the PetSmart cat adoption center, she said. Another cat condo resident, Potato, recently found her forever home after raising a litter of kittens. Potato was considered special needs because she required a home where she would be the only animal, Heyza said.

“We couldn’t even bring her back to our shelter because she didn’t like all the animals in our shelter,” Heyza said. “So that was a really huge success story — the fact that she found a home as an only-cat through PetSmart Charities, and being able to have those condos there.”

For more information, visit rejoycefulrescue.com.

Through its partnership with PetSmart Charities, Lansing-area grassroots nonprofit Saved by Zade has furthered its mission of controlling cat overpopulation and easing related suffering by finding new homes for hundreds of feline friends through in-store adoptions.

When Saved by Zade started, it focused on bottle-feeding stray kittens and moving into TNVR work, which stands for trapping/neutering/vaccinating/returning, according to the organization’s website. Many of the strays at that time were friendly and adoptable, leading the group to create a foster and adoption program in 2018 and partner with PetSmart Charities.

Saved by Zade was incorporated in 2017 and has since grown by “leaps and bounds,” according to Alyssa Draper, a longtime volunteer with the organization. Draper, a veteran volunteer with other organizations since 2012, joined Saved by Zade in 2018 at the onset of its foster and adoption program, she said. Draper also chairs Zade’s Anatomy, a sister organization created to handle high-risk medical issues, with plans to operate a spay-and-neuter clinic in the future.

“Zade” does not refer to a specific person, but the organization likes to say that the “Spirit of Zade” represents the community’s inspiration to help manage cat overpopulation issues, Draper said.

“As soon as we went gung-ho, PetSmart became our first major platform for adoptions,” Draper said.

Today, Saved by Zade handles the cat adoption centers at two PetSmart locations in West Lansing and Okemos and also regularly hosts adoption events there, Draper said. Saved by Zade has adopted a total of 235 cats through PetSmart so far in 2024, and was able to reach 919 adoptions in 2023 and 686 in 2022, she said.

Saved by Zade has seen a drop in adoptions coinciding with rising inflation, but those numbers might just be normalizing from a spike during the COVID-19 pandemic, Draper said.

“In addition to publicized events, we ask volunteers to be there as often as they can just for when people are walking by as well, to hopefully make that connection and find the right kitty the right home at the right time,” she said.

The most obvious benefit of Saved by Zade’s partnership with PetSmart is having a physical platform and presence at those stores so shoppers can learn about the organization and know where to go if they want to adopt a cat, Draper said. PetSmart Charities’ adoption incentive program has been “life saving, literally” for Saved by Zade’s cats, as the grants allow the organization to recoup costs spent on vet care, Draper said.

Draper’s favorite Saved by Zade adoption story involves Cher, a cat she previously fostered. After having surgery to remove intestinal blockages, Cher was adopted in January 2019. However, she returned to the rescue after her owner had to enter assisted living and was unable to bring her along, Draper said. Cher reentered foster care and was able to find a new forever home, where she is already bonding with her new sibling, Draper said.

“My favorite thing about being a Saved by Zade cat is you’re a Saved by Zade cat for life. We will move Earth and mountains to make sure that a cat that is affiliated with our program gets what it needs,” Draper said. “It’s just great to know that not only did she have her happy ending the first go-round, we were there to make sure she got it the second go-round too.”

Despite Saved by Zade helping roughly 2,000 cats a year, overpopulation remains a pressing issue and seems to get worse and worse over time, Draper said. The organization has to make careful use of its limited resources and funds to address as many needs as possible, she said.

“We’re full and we’re always going to be full,” Draper said. “I think that’s just the reality of the overpopulation problem, and hopefully if we keep chiseling away, we can see some progress.”

For more information, visit savedbyzade.com.