How animal rescue star Lee Asher lives his best pack life, and why he eyes Florida sanctuary

As he longs to expand his reach to Florida, renowned animal rescuer Lee Asher preaches kindness, spotlights the animals he knows inspire good people to aspire to be better and, maybe, even revolutionizes the concept of an animal sanctuary.

"We should have respect and compassion for all living things. All living things have a soul and a personality," said Asher, who grew up in South Florida and gained fame as the human star of Animal Planet's "My Pack Life" show that he parlayed into millions of followers on social media. "Hate, aggression, is never the answer, not toward animals, not toward people. There is no success reached that way."

Expert tips from Lee Asher:Animal rescue icon Lee Asher offers advice for people wanting to adopt a shelter dog

The reality TV series profiling Asher and the (now) estimated 200 dogs, cats, horses, llamas and other animals at three privately-run Asher House sanctuaries is but one chapter. His narrative is a quilt of vignettes from Asher's own past told in evocative, emotion-packed videos accessed by 6.3 million people on Facebook, 1.6 million followers each on Instagram and TikTok plus 593,000 subscribers on YouTube.

The story is rooted in a Broward County animal shelter where Asher, as a troubled youth, found solace. It includes five years' worth of road trips in a recreational vehicle from which he launched his campaign to rescue animals from unnecessary euthanasia. And now it plays out in three Pacific Northwest sanctuaries where a land-based Noah's Ark's worth of domestic but discarded pets live their lives in peace with freedom to roam — and provide rescuers and others a potential blueprint on how to do the same.

That's how, perhaps, the world sees it. Asher, 35, looks at it in simpler terms: He lives a life accompanied by the animals he loves.

"Most people that run a sanctuary, or a rescue, do it for similar reasons," he said. "The difference is that I live with all the animals. I spend every single day with them. Even when I am out of town I bring them along. There's nowhere that I go where it's just me."

Lee Asher:Animal rescue icon plans to expand his sanctuary concept across the U.S.

A troubled childhood, soothed by kinship with shelter animals

Asher struggled with severe attention deficit disorder as a youth. The inability to focus on lessons in textbooks and classroom lectures led to struggles in school, even in special-education classes, and isolated him socially.

During a recent appearance at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Asher spoke of desperation "to fit in" and feeling "very different" from his peers whom he watched succeed and thrive. The struggles worsened, and after a serious bullying incident, Asher was forced to change schools.

Around the age of 12, he said, he began visiting a Broward County animal shelter where he found consolation, and kinship, with the dogs and cats in the kennels.

"When I was able to be with the dogs, and they would go from being scared in a corner to tail wagging and me petting them through the kennel and I could see them happy; seeing them happy just completely took all my pain away," Asher recalled.

Asher began writing notes to the dogs and cats awaiting adoption or euthanasia, promising to one day provide them a home and secure future.

"These dogs had done nothing wrong. They were just unwanted," Asher said. "It was a huge eye-opener to me how many of these amazing, beautiful dogs exude love like this — that could be the best dog you could ever have — how many of them are going to be euthanized if we don't do something about it."

The realization generated a heightened level of empathy for animals and humans alike suffering from feelings of degradation, he recalled. And it sparked in him a sense of purpose and life focus.

He was suffering and could see the dogs were too. The remedy became obvious.

"If you're suffering, instead of moping around, instead of thinking how can I feel better, what can I do to feel better?, if you make other lives feel better when you are suffering, nothing will heal you faster," he said. "Nothing will make you feel better than by taking away someone's pain. Nothing."

Pet of the Week:After owner was arrested for abusing her, this pet of the week needs a loving home.

A life-changing cross-continental RV trip for Lee Asher

Despite the bonds with shelter animals in his adolescence, by 2017 Asher was trying to make a go of a career in financial lending in Southern California. But the pull "to live this life with animals" grew too strong to ignore.

Asher sold his belongings, bought an RV and began a two-year odyssey in which he visited animal shelters with his own pack of nearly a dozen dogs.

The 24-month road trip was then followed by another three years of intermittent travel that, all told, took him to 49 mainland U.S. states and large swaths of Canada. It also attracted Animal Planet producers — and the six-episode reality show "My Pack Life" aired in 2022.

The program spotlighted Asher's effervescent, energetic and ebullient personality. But the stars were the dogs who best spoke to the mission: Adopt those loving but discarded and abandoned pets on animal death row.

One of them was a caramel-colored pit bull, Stella, whom Asher adopted the very day she was to be euthanized.

"Those 11 dogs get to go in an RV on a trip around the U.S. and Canada and then those 11 dogs inspire more people to rescue than I could ever do," he said. "This is a beautiful, beautiful story of the impact these animals have."

By the time the show's run concluded, Asher had built up a social media following in the millions. And he turned to Instagram and YouTube to air his ongoing campaign for abandoned or stranded animals.

One of those he has featured is Matilda, a pit bull with a neurological disorder that makes her wobble as she walks. Despite the condition, which has markedly improved, Matilda has found acceptance at Asher's sanctuary and is another example that imperfection is no obstacle to love or happiness.

Lee Asher's tips on adopting a shelter dog or cat

The crusader has a simple message — adopt without fear but armed with knowledge and compassion.

The vast majority of animals in shelters, Asher insists, are not traumatized, starved or suffering extreme anxiety like the ones millions of Americans glimpse in television fundraising commercials aired by worthy animal rescues.

"That's the challenge," he said. "People think if they are going to go to a shelter they're only going to see the dogs you see on TV that are psychologically and physically damaged and too much to handle."

They're not, he insists. They are "amazing" and largely "perfectly healthy, housebroken and trained" animals that were quite expensive when first sold, he said, but for a multitude of reasons, were given up.

"People have to see that this dog they are seeing in a shelter largely came from a breeder," he said. "It's not like this dog was born in a shelter. This dog was thousands of dollars at one point."

What each animal does have, he said, is a distinct personality, its own idiosyncrasies and ability to return love — and he counsels people looking for a pet to invest their time before they spend their money.

"I think when you really want a dog, let that energy calm down a little bit," he said. "There should be a conversation about a timeline about how long you're willing to search for a dog at a shelter or through rescue before calling a breeder."

Visit shelters and scour rescue teams' websites and social media accounts for at least a month or, better, 90 days, and Asher almost guarantees a prospective owner will find an animal in the breed they are looking for. Once they do, step 2 is to take time to connect with the animal.

"I cannot stress this enough," he said. "People often say when you get a rescue dog you don't know what you're getting. With all due respect, when you get any dog you don't know what you're getting. You're getting a dog, You're not getting a robot. It's not like you're getting this thing with this automatic system in place."

His method is to be silent and spend "actual quality time" with the animal by observing them, seeing what triggers them, what they love, what they avoid and what they seek out. And to build the trust that allows him to train the animal and "influence them for a positive attitude."

"I just want that dog to know I'm not going to hurt you, I'm not going to give up on you, I'm here for you no matter what," he said. "And once that dog truly understands that, that's when that beautiful bond starts to happen."

Patience and effort sometimes needed with rescued pets

There is Lucy, a scarred golden retriever that was abused and abandoned, and Rain, the Dalmatian, who initially tried to bite Asher in a sensitive spot for men, and the four French bulldogs that he fervently negotiated away from a breeder intent on selling them. And scores and scores of others.

All have since thrived in Asher's sanctuary, and whose stories he has told on social media as examples of what is possible when you "lead with love."

There are videos of the iconic "pack walks," where he is a Pied Piper followed by an array of his rescues. He brings his four-legged and online followers on journeys through the wooded Oregon properties — with their idyllic streams and waterways — and running along the sand on Pacific Northwest beaches.

Each of Asher's posts presents a short story imbued with joy and resilience and glued together by hope.

But in an interview, Asher spoke of painful "darkness" that at times he concedes envelops his life's mission. Part of it is the conflicting emotions in the rescue process itself.

Asher's videos of initial encounters with the animals are celebratory and he bubbles with excitement and sports a broad grin. Not revealed, he said, is the darker side, such as his contempt for those he knows are lying to him about their treatment of the animal they are abandoning.

"It's really difficult to just kind of stand there waiting for it to be over and be able to bring the dog to safety," he said. "It's often quite emotional and it's really sad to know that people would do that to an animal that they are claiming they love."

Most often, Asher said, a pet is given up by an owner due to some unforeseen or unavoidable life circumstance. That realization is even more painful — the separation of a family from a pet they have loved.

"I am very happy to be saving them," he said. "But often I will break down and cry shortly thereafter. I don't show that part because I don't want the owners, the people who relinquished their dogs, their pets, to me to feel even worse about it. I don't want my videos to ever stop someone from doing that."

Pain of losing them can lead to self-questioning

Also not always shown, is the "long road to recovery" for the more afflicted animals, Asher said, adding solemnly that "they don't always make it."

The worst of the darkness, he said, is the next separation — when an animal he's come to love passes away.

Arguably the most traumatic was the loss of Janey, a German shepherd, with whom Asher said he "looked forward to a long life with." Janey suffered from a neurological malady that impaired her ability to walk but was otherwise functional and thriving. One night, she awoke Asher with startling and haunting noises.

"It was very gory was she was doing. It was out of horror scene," Asher recalled sullenly how Janey was smashing her head against a wall, blood spurting from her head.

"She was making these sounds that you can't even make up, these terrible sounds," he said. "You could hear the pain but you couldn't control it. I couldn't stop her. I had to put her down then and there."

The loss of Janey, and others, fuels self-questioning but never doubt about his passion.

"I really don't know sometimes if what I'm doing is good for me. It's just complicated," he conceded. "I feel like I'm really hurting myself mentally by seeing what I love most in my life, every two months basically, die. And sometimes in a really tragic, terrible way like Janey did ... but I don't regret the life I have."

And then there was Lilly, a St. Bernard that Asher said became his "rock" — the emotional ballast that kept him level at the most painful times.

He called her "a major light" who was an always-present reminder of why he chose this path, and continues on it.

"She had such a way of bringing out the best in me, really bringing out the little kid in me, the joy in me," he said. "She would make me laugh every day."

Lilly died this past Christmas — and as with the caramel pit bull Stella, who died four years ago, the losses left gaping voids but also generated important reflection.

"That truly made me realize you don't know what's going to happen," he said. "Don't waste a second, don't waste a day. That gave me this new type of energy, this new type motivation to bring out the best of myself."

Starting with the capacity to embrace again. The very day he lost Lilly, Asher rescued another St. Bernard, a 2-month-old puppy named Ranger.

There lies Asher's axiom about his life with the pack.

"None of us is in this world forever. The question is, how much good can you do in the time you are allotted?" he said. "As I get older, I wonder how come more people are not doing this; it's just this awesome gift, to be saving dogs and cats, and saving other animals."

A Florida Asher House sanctuary on Lee Asher's bucket list, but still years away

Living in Oregon, Asher still calls Florida home and plans an Asher House sanctuary here.

"I was raised in Florida. Florida is my home, and it was so good to be home," he said in a recent interview about his late November stay. "I would love nothing more, nothing more, than to open up a sanctuary there tomorrow."

But at the moment, his focus is on the success of a third location not far from his base in the Salem region.

Asher's goal is to continue to develop his Asher House sanctuary model. Rather than a warehouse, Asher Houses are homes on expansive estates with fenced-in ranges where animals are allowed freedom of movement.

The latest location in Portland — 140 acres in size, the second-largest to-date — Asher said is a prototype for how he would roll out a national network of Asher Houses by working out key challenges.

He is learning how to best manage spin-off locations from a distance. The Portland site is run by the founders of an animal shelter that he has known and collaborated with for the past three years, a milestone in the expansion vision.

"I trust them just as much as I trust the closest person in my life," he said.

For a site in Florida, Asher said he would need equally trustworthy individuals with a track record of success and then cultivate a bond over a years-long span of time, as he did with the Oregon site.

"That would be the next step, over the next couple of years, finding some people that we really like partnering with out of Florida and that we really trust," he said.

Besides the partnership, Asher said he is "extremely grateful" for the kinship with the community of people in animal rescuing, fostering and sheltering. And for the life he has.

"My home is the sanctuary. But it's not my home because it really does belong to the animals," he said. "And it's beautiful because I get to live this life with animals."

Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.