The Daily News’ weekly ‘Neighbors’ series features one person from LaGrange and the surrounding area. This week we sought out someone who is making a difference in the lives of local animals, LaGrange-Troup County Humane Society Volunteer Kristie Hart.

LaGrange Daily News: Are you from here?

Hart: I am. I was born and raised here. I grew up off of New Franklin Road, and I currently live out by Kia.

LDN: How often do you volunteer with the humane society?

Hart: I have been volunteering with the humane society since February of last year. What happened was, my husband went for Valentine’s Day and made a donation in my name because he knew I’d rather have that then flowers, and from that they were like, ‘hey, you’ve got a truck can y’all pull for events.’ From that we’ve now taken on that we’re in charge of the mobile unit. It’s been good.

LDN: Do you have dogs of your own?

Hart: I do. I have a 16 year old named Bear Bear. We have a red bulldog that is about 9 (years old), and we have a 3 lb. little Chihuahua named Moxie that thinks she’s 90 lbs. We had one dog that – at our very first event, we had a dog that was Ellie May, and she has ended up going to live with my oldest daughter who is a school teacher and has her own place.

Dogs are our thing. Rescuing is my thing. It always has been.

LDN: What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

Hart: I rescue, then we ride motorcycles – my husband and I both have our own motorcycles. We love to camp. We camp a lot, and we just spend a lot of time with our family.

LDN: Where do you like to go camping?

Hart: We go to Shaefer Heard, just out at the lake. We have rescue donkeys. We have rescued some other things, so we have to be able to go home and feed everybody. People say, ‘you rescue donkeys?’ And I’m like, yeah. I love my donkeys. I’ve always wanted them. They are good girls. We are excited because we just had baby chicks hatch out, so that was fun. A lot of my friends’ kids like to come to our house because it is like a farm. They can pet the baby goats. They can pet the chickens. They can pet the donkeys. It’s fun.

LDN: Is there anything else that you would like to add?

Hart: I am just so appreciative of the support of the community (for events like Coldwell Banker’s Bow Wow Pet Adoption Event) because so many times these dogs – they end up at the shelter by no fault of their own. They are very good dogs, and all they want is someone to just love them. And I tell people that say, ‘oh, I can’t possibly come,’ even if you just come out and play with the dogs for an hour – just exercise and play with them – we have a very nice fenced in play area. If they could just come out and play with a dog, we understand that you might not can take them home, but they so need that exercise and play time. If we could get just 20 people to commit to just once a week exercising them that would be phenomenal.

‘Neighbors’ is a weekly series by the Daily News that highlights community members. To nominate a person to be featured call 706-884- 7311 or message us on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/LaGrangeDailyNews.