New Humane Society executive director gave up law for petsBy Debra Pressey
News Gazette
Sunday, October 21, 2007 10:29 PM CDT
(left) Champaign County Humane Society Executive Director Mary Tiefenbrunn sits with her two dogs, Daisy, left, and Li'l Rocky.
By Debra Pressey
Sunday, October 21, 2007 10:29 PM CDT
Mary Tiefenbrunn's first career: stage manager. Second career: lawyer.
Third career: breaks her heart every day, but so worth it.
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Tiefenbrunn, who took over as executive director of the Champaign County Humane Society in early September, oversees an organization that tries to find new homes for a seemingly endless supply of animals somebody didn't want.
She and her staff have their success stories. And their sorrows, she says, because no matter how hard they try, there are always animals that are never going to have a home.
Tiefenbrunn – "Tief" to her friends – gave up her law career recently to devote her full time to animal welfare.
A Connecticut native, she can trace her interest in animals back to age 12, when she developed a passion for horses and riding.
Champaign County Humane Society Executive Director Mary Tiefenbrunn sits with her two dogs, Daisy, left, and Li'l Rocky. By Vanda Bidwell
As a teenager, Tiefenbrunn worked at a stable in her home town of North Haven, Conn., to get a discount on her riding lessons. She eventually began teaching beginner classes there, commuting back and forth when her parents moved north to Glastonbury, Conn.
There were no dog or cat pets in the Tiefenbrunn family, of which Mary Tiefenbrunn was one of four children, but the whole family was involved in community theater productions – which led her to her first career.
Tiefenbrunn chose a theater major when she started college at Hofstra University, Long Island, in the 1980s, and right after graduation she went to work in stage management in New York.
Eventually, she moved to Minneapolis, continuing in stage management for opera and children's theater, and it was in that city that she adopted her first dog from the local humane society.
"That's where my fascination with the dog brain developed," she says.
Always an avid researcher with a curious mind, Tiefenbrunn read book after book about dog behavior, and a year later she adopted her first cat.
In the early 1990s, she moved to Chicago for her former husband's career – and started re-evaluating her own. And what she decided was that she wasn't really happy with all the night and weekend work the theater involved.
She started doing some temp work, winding up in a law firm, and decided to go to law school. She chose Loyola because it offered a night school option, and four years later put her new law degree to work as an appellate court clerk in Springfield. By the time she left Chicago, she'd adopted another dog and had become a humane society volunteer.
In 1999, Appellate Court Judge Robert Steigmann offered her a job as one of his clerks, and that's what brought Tiefenbrunn to Champaign-Urbana.
In recent years, she grew increasingly interested in animal welfare, helping found the CARE (Companion Animal Resource and Education) Center and serving on the humane society board. When the humane society executive director's job opened up, she said, "it was kind of an opportunity to use all my skills and do something I'm passionate about."
The local humane society finds homes for 71 percent of the animals that are brought there – greater than the national average – but there's still a lot of sadness in the job for her and everybody working there, Tiefenbrunn says.
"We've got animals living in cages, and at our own homes we would not tolerate that," she adds.
Why there are so many abandoned animals is partly a failure of some pet owners to spay and neuter their cats and dogs, and partly the mistakes people make in getting pets to begin with, she says.
What's the biggest mistake? Failure to understand animal behavior, Tiefenbrunn says. People get pets without understanding the needs of the animals, then problems develop and the adopters never form the essential human-animal bond.
Another factor that Tiefenbrunn says she fights in this community is a notion that animals are disposable – something she said is rooted in the local area's agricultural roots.
Some people surrendering animals at the humane society shelter just have no idea of the stress they're placing on those animals.
"If you can't make a lifetime commitment to an animal, you shouldn't be acquiring one," she says.
Susan Helmink, president of the CARE Center board, remembers how immediately interested Tiefenbrunn was in the idea of starting CARE, an organization that strives to reduce the homeless dog and cat population through education, and how willing she was to help organize it.
"She's been very driven to find ways to improve things for people and pets in this area," she says.
Tiefenbrunn has since proven to be a good manager and motivator, Helmink says.
"That, combined with her passion for animals, I don't know if I could think of a better combination for our humane society," she says.
Even in her leisure time, Tiefenbrunn never strays too far from what's near and dear to her heart.
She and her partner, Bill Leach, purchased 5 acres in rural Vermilion County a few years ago, planted some of it in natural prairie and go there on weekends with their two dogs, an English pointer and an English setter. Tiefenbrunn says there's a rustic cabin on the property, good enough to shelter them from the elements, and they do some clay pigeon shooting and let the dogs enjoy the land.
Her dream vacation wouldn't be all that different from those weekends, Tiefenbrunn says, then adds after a few seconds: If this is a dream vacation, running water, a big kitchen and a fireplace in the cabin would be kind of nice.