By Matt Skoufalos
Annette Long traces a lifelong love of animals to her childhood in Piketon, Ohio. With two working parents, the family dog was a dear companion who brought a lot of fun into her life. Although Long was never allowed to keep as many pets as she would have preferred, the family did care for some eight peacocks, and helped incubate bobwhite quail that the game warden from the nearby nature preserve would introduce into the wild.
When she was old enough to volunteer with her area dog rescues, that’s where Long began to invest her free time. About seven years ago, after moving to Columbus, Ohio, she and her husband, Brian Raterman, were more able to work actively with rescue and foster dogs, especially bully breeds, and to fundraise for their care.
“I’ve always loved animals, and I am really drawn to dogs,” Long said. “I think they’re incredibly smart creatures. There’s nothing that makes me happier than to rescue an animal, and then find it the perfect home. I want to set the animal up for success and give it the best life that it can possibly have.”
Long discovered that she had an aptitude not only for helping to train and rehome rescue dogs, but for judging their temperaments and unlocking their personalities. She is able to modify her instructions based on how the dogs are motivated, sometimes shortening down to one-word commands. Inside the house, Long gets the attention of her deaf dog, Stella, by stomping her foot on the ground; when it’s time for her to come back from the outside at night, she signals Stella with a flashlight or the porch light.
“Animals are amazing,” she said. “If you really study them and study their behavior, they feed off your emotions. You have to work to earn that trust. You’ve got to keep it consistent.
“If you get a puppy that’s not a rescue, it’s much easier,” Long said. “But if you get an adult rescue dog, you can pretty much guarantee that you will not see the true dog until month three.”
Regaining the trust of a rescue pet builds strong bonds and takes an emotional as well as a practical investment of time. Long said she doesn’t regard rehoming a rescue dog as giving away a family pet, but as helping a friend start a new chapter of their lives. Occasionally, she’s had a “foster fail” — rescue slang for adopting a dog that was initially intended as a foster-only — but to this day, all the dogs Long has helped to get adopted have remained in their new homes.
“I have never had a foster dog returned, not even the most difficult ones,” Long said. “I have had a foster fail or two. It’s always in the bully family. Those are the ones that are hard for me to let go.”
In one year alone, Long and her family helped get as many as 50 rescue dogs adopted. The secret to their success, she said, was in being completely open with their new families, and giving the adopters “the full picture” to try to set the dog up for success. She also has a knack for capturing her pups’ personalities in her photography.
When she’s not volunteering, Long dedicates a significant amount of time to her own pack of nine dogs: Ashes, Clover, Crimson, Eddie, Klaus, Layla, Stella, Rico, and Winston. Most are bully and terrier breeds (Rico is a Bernedoodle, and Klaus is a Rottweiler), and Long says the size of the pack helps maintain order.
“It is a lot, but once they’re trained, they do an amazing job,” she said. “I do positive reinforcement. There are leaders, and then there are followers; once they are taught manners and discipline, they fall in.”
Long’s passion for training and rehoming her dogs is a natural extension of her love of learning, which extends to her current career interest in process improvement. As an MRI manager at Ohio State University Hospital, she is working on Lean Six Sigma projects, including an MRI optimization project. She hopes to obtain her master’s degree in the future, and has been encouraged by her supervisor to press on with her education.
“I’m reading the lean Six Sigma book and it’s the thickest book ever, and I love it, and I want to do more,” Long said. “My boss, Dr. Lauren Bergstrom, associate director of hospital imaging, has encouraged me to do many things that I have not been able to do before.”
Long’s career path has ranged from being an X-ray and CT technologist to working as a registered EMT; she said her positions have shifted as she’s continued to seek more professional knowledge and grow her career. At one point, she worked as a traveling MRI tech, and eventually settled down into a managerial role.
“In imaging, you work in the ER and it’s controlled chaos,” Long said. “When you’re out in the field, it’s you. I’ve changed quite a few facilities because I’ve always wanted to learn more. When I finally stopped traveling, I realized that I wanted to come to Columbus and learn more about MRI; as much as I could learn, that’s what I wanted.”
When she isn’t working or caring for her dogs, Long enjoys playing Dungeons and Dragons with friends, and she’s a voracious reader whose favorite authors include Patricia Cornwell and Lee Child. If Long ever needed confirmation that she was in the right line of work, she can point to her high-school guidance counselor and her love of reading for setting her on her career path: when the guidance counselors distributed books to help students find their prospective careers, hers fell open to a page on medical imaging.
“I thought, ‘That looks cool,’ and I went and studied for an associate’s degree in allied health,” Long said.
