Montie has been an animal lover since she was old enough to remember. She started unofficially rescuing animals after she moved into her first apartment at the age of 17 and there was no one to tell her “No”.

She’s worked with animals in one way or another for her entire adult life, and it was always a dream and goal of hers to see an actual animal rescue and shelter become a reality in White Pine County, Nevada. With the support of a great team and through BAARX, that dream, and goal are now happening!

Montie and her husband live on 5 acres in rural Nevada with their many, many critters.

Teena's love for animals  started at an early age, always a dog owner, she later married and was able to move to acerage where it would expand to Horses, Goats, Chickens, Cats, and numerous Dogs.

Teena has worked in animal rescue off and on for over 30 years, with different organizations. 

Her main goal is to have a shelter built in her community where all of the unwanted animals can be housed safely,  with Love and Care.

She lives with her husband  Steve, and their two Goldens, Luka and Murphy. She has two sons,  Niko and Marco.  

Patricia Garay Bute

Director

Patti grew up on remote ranches in the west where her best friends were animals.  Her parents instilled in her a love of animals, big and small.  It wasn’t unusual to find calves, lambs, and kittens in the laundry room, and it was always her pleasure to bottle feed anything that moved!  Thru the years, she has belonged to several animal welfare groups and rescues, finally landing at BAARX where she sees an amazing dream that she can help with, in some small way, to become a reality working with other likeminded individuals.

Patti lives with her loving husband in the high country of Nevada, surrounded by her horses, cats and dogs.

Draco

Official BAARX Mascot

Draco hales from Northern Arizona and was born into this world around the end of July 2023, along with his seven brothers and one sister. Draco’s mom was a young 10-month-old Belgian Malinois whose owners didn’t realize that “she could get pregnant at such a young age.” Draco’s dad was the working Metro Police German Shepherd Dog that lived next door and simply could not resist climbing the fence to have a quick tryst with the beauty next door!

Puppies are a handful, and nine puppies of this particular mix and lineage was an even bigger handful, so the mama dog’s owner’s husband decided that the puppies HAD TO GO at a mere 6ish weeks of age. The owner reached out to a local Malinois and GSD breeder to see if she could take in these puppies, but unfortunately the breeder (NOT THE BREEDER OF THESE PUPPIES OR THEIR PARENTS!!), we’ll call her L, was unable to take these puppies in at that time, as she was currently at her legal limit of dogs that her kennel permit allowed her to have. Despite having told this lady that she could not take the puppies, L came home one day to find all nine puppies dumped off in a box on her front porch!! L didn’t want to then take the puppies to the animal control facility because they would have euthanized them, so she decided to try to find them homes. L was successful in finding 5 of the 9 puppy’s homes, but still had 4 left, and with her kennel inspection coming up, she desperately needed to find a place for these pups to go to. She reached out to her friend T in Ely to see if she could help. T then reached out to Montie at BAARX to see if BAARX could help, and that following Thursday the 4 remaining pups were on their way to Ely!

Upon arriving in Ely, the pups went into foster with Norm & Montie Lyn Liebsack of BAARX until they could find homes or another rescue to transfer them to that would be better suited for their breed. As adorable as these puppies were, Montie NEVER intended to adopt any of these pups herself, despite her love for both the German Shepherd Dog and the Belgian Malinois breeds…. she knew that they would likely be of a higher energy than what she wanted to deal with! As time went on, Montie noticed that two of the pups were considerably mellower and more laid back than the other two, and those two quickly became her favorites, but she was still not planning on keeping either of them! A little more time went on and Montie’s second favorite of the two (known as Thor at that time) started spending more time away from the other puppies and sleeping on Montie’s feet in the mornings while she was working at her computer and having her coffee. Montie still was NOT keeping a puppy!! “Thor” then started coming to Montie and sitting directly in front of her and looking up at her with his beautiful brown eyes, and that was the clincher…. Montie saw something special in this puppy and decided that she WAS keeping THIS puppy!!

Montie’s husband, Norm, wanted to rename their new puppy something that had to do with the stars in the sky, so they settled on the name Draco (meaning dragon in Latin), after the constellation Draco. Draco would go on to become Montie and Norm’s co-pilot whenever they went on animal transports for BAARX, and always accompanied Montie on these transports whenever she had to go on them alone because Norm had to work. Draco did his first transport at 12 weeks of age when they transported his three brothers to Wendover, NV. in order for them to catch their ride to another rescue in Tennessee.

Draco proved to be an exceptional puppy ~ smart, eager to learn & please, well-mannered, friendly with people and quite mellow for a puppy, especially a Malinois/GSD puppy!! He never chewed on inappropriate objects and was always on his best behavior…. You could leave him alone in the cab of the truck with groceries, including a prime rib roast, sitting right next to him, and he would not touch them at all! He would just sit, watch and wait patiently for his people to come back.

Beings how Draco was a BAARX rescue puppy himself, plays host to several BAARX foster dogs that come through his home, and also co-pilots on almost all of the BAARX transports for other animals to no-kill shelters, he was designated the official mascot of BAARX!

On February 4, 2024, at a mere seven months of age, Draco was diagnosed with IMHA and that’s when he started the fight for his life! A LOT of bloodwork and two blood transfusions later, Draco finally appeared to be heading in the right direction towards recovery. After several months of medications to combat his IMHA, Draco was finally able to be weaned off of those meds and is currently off all meds and IMHA symptom free!!

Today Draco is continuing his work of being the BAARX mascot by representing us at events, accompanying the shelter/rescue dogs that we transport to their new destinations and helping to make the new BAARX foster dogs feel at home when they come into our Foster & Adopt Program.