When Gail Strickler and her husband, Bill Jasper, decided to get a dog soon after they married, there was no question in Strickler’s mind that their new companion would be a rescue. Though none of Jasper’s dogs had been rescues, all of Strickler’s had.
“I said, ‘We have to get someone who needs us,’” remembers Strickler.
And so in June of 2018, the couple, who live in Kiawah Island, South Carolina, adopted a 3-year-old rescued from a dog meat farm in South Korea. They named the Sapsali (a Korean breed that resembles a sheep dog) Murray.
Strickler affectionately calls him “my little monster.” After she and Jasper treated him for heartworm and an intestinal infection, they fed him high-grade dog food, pumpkin and lasagna to help the skinny dog gain weight. Then they took him for walks on the beach, where he met up with other dogs. “Watching him come out of his shell was just amazing,” she says.
Murray is the fourth in a line of dogs, all of them shaggy, whose rescues and transformed lives have filled Strickler with joy. “When my dog is happy, when he’s running and feeling good, when he’s chasing a ball or chasing me, I’m happy,” she says. “The reward of knowing you’ve changed the world for this animal changes you.”
The reward of knowing you’ve changed the world for this animal changes you.
Gail Strickler
A lecture that pointed the way
Strickler grew up in Brooklyn, where she brought home strays, administered first aid to dogs hit by cars and volunteered at the local shelter. Around 1980, when she had just started working, Strickler attended a lecture by animal advocate Cleveland Amory in New York City that opened her eyes to a range of animal protection issues. Soon she was sending donations to Amory’s Fund for Animals and the Black Beauty Ranch sanctuary he founded in Texas, now both a part of the Humane Society of the United States.
In 2007, when she sold a textile and apparel company she led, she made substantial donations to animal welfare organizations, including the HSUS.
“The HSUS really inspired me, the way they go about getting change,” Strickler says. “I appreciate the way they work globally,” for example, through the work of Humane Society International, a ban on the dog meat trade was finally achieved in South Korea, and the work continues to end the suffering in Viet Nam, Indonesia and China.
An advocate for all animals
In 2009, Strickler became the assistant U.S. trade representative for textiles and apparel and negotiated an agreement (since broken) to end mulesing, the Australian sheep industry practice of cutting strips of flesh from the hindquarters of live lambs.
Outside of work (she’s now a consultant on global trade policy), Strickler helps animals however she can. She and Jasper volunteered with the Danbury Animal Welfare Society in Connecticut and in Kiawah Island, she’s volunteering with an oyster reef restoration project. Upon retirement, she plans to become more involved with animal causes.
Strickler says she’s arranged for the future: Under the terms of her will, all her money will go to groups that help animals.
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