Dogs can have it rough on Indian reservations. But Mary Williams and Luisa Alvarez are two former co-workers who are working to rescue dogs from Navajo reservations and find them new homes.

Williams has helped to lower the stray dog population in Crownpoint, NM by taking in about 420 puppies and dogs for more than three years and adopting them out to friends and taking them to no-kill shelters. The puppies she cares for go through about 40 pounds of puppy food a week, but she’s willing to do this because she hates to see them wondering around, hungry, wounded or dead on the road, she said.

Alvarez operate a similar dog Rescue in Fort Defiance, AZ., where she started taking in strays not long after moving there.

Both find homes for those dogs they can, and take the others to no-kill shelters: Albuquerque Animal Humane Association, Heart & Soul Animal Sanctuary in Santa Fe, NM, and the Humane Society of Boulder Valley in Boulder, CO.

Last year Navajo Nation Animal Control responded to 286 dog attacks and impounded more than 6,000 animals, including cats, said Olin Arviso, animal control manager at Fort Defiance, AZ. The shelter euthanizes about 80 percent of the animals. On the reservation, dogs are often abandoned in the wilderness, drowned, or left on the highway. Many just roam, attached to no particular owner.

When Williams finds a home for the puppies, she doesn’t ask for money, just a promise that they are taken care of. She will take donations of puppy food, old towels or blankets for when she has to deliver puppies at home.