ABOUT LOVE LEO
Love Leo Rescue is a non-profit dog rescue based in Los Angeles founded by Sasha Abelson.
We are dedicated to rescuing and rehabilitating abused, injured, abandoned, and forgotten dogs. Our team provides medical care, training, and other essential services to help prepare each dog for adoption and their forever home. Many of the dogs we rescue require complex surgeries and costly medical treatments, and we’re committed to seeing them through every step of their recovery.
In addition, we’ve launched a spay and neuter program that offers free surgeries to pet owners living in low-income and underserved communities. Through both rescue and prevention, we’re working to combat the pet overpopulation crisis and create lasting change.
Sasha has been involved in rescue work since moving to Southern California in 2006. Originally from the East Coast, she attended law school in Vermont and hadn’t realized the severity of the pet overpopulation crisis in Southern California. After a local rescue helped her place a stray pit bull she found on the street, she began volunteering with them weekly to return the favor.
Over the years, her passion grew, and she realized she wanted to start her own rescue—with a mission to give forgotten dogs a second chance and to provide spay and neuter services to low-income families. That’s when Love Leo Rescue was born.
Sasha
President/Founder
Amy
Program Manager
Amy started out as a Love Leo adopter and quickly turned into a foster. From there she found her place with the organization as our adoption and foster program manager. Amy has two of her very own Love Leo dogs, Arlo and Alfie.
Sara
PR & Events
Sara grew up on an animal rescue farm in Southern California where her passion for animals, specifically dogs began.
Sara owns a PR firm in Los Angeles and New York and uses her skillset to help Love Leo Rescue fundraise through events
and collaborations. She has 3 pups of her own but also fosters for Love Leo. She has been working with LLR since 2018.
Cassian
Decoding Dogs LA
Cassian Sandeberg (@decodingdogsla) has been Love Leo’s dog guru for the past four years and is an honorary Love Leo team member. He has been working with dogs for over 20 years and specializes in various behavioral issues.
Cassian provides a setup training session for our adopters in order to sure our dogs are set up for success with their new families.
Cassian focuses on correcting inappropriate behaviors as well as creating an effective way to manage their dog on a day to day basis.
Evelia
Project Supervisor
Evelia is truly the heart of our spay and neuter project. She grew up in South El Monte and for years witnessed the real life ramifications of not having accessible and affordable spay and neuter in her neighborhood.
Jenn & Brion
Foster Family
Jenn and Brion have been fostering for Love Leo for almost a decade now. Their first Love Leo dog was an older girl who had an ACL surgery and needed a quiet place to recover.
Since then they have fostered over 200 dogs for Love Leo and are one of our MVPs at saving lives. They live in Los Angeles and have four Love Leo dogs of their own.
Celia (& Family)
Foster Family
Celia (and family) began fostering in the spring of 2017 after losing her teacup chihuahua. She mourned her dog but decided to help out with a litter of 6 puppies! Since then Celia has fostered over 300 dogs and often multiple puppies at a time. She is our trusted puppy foster and can always count on her home to be a safe haven!
Catherine & John
Foster Family
Catherine, John, and daughter Samantha are pros when it comes to our shy and reserved dogs that need a little extra TLC. Sometimes their foster dogs take a little longer to be adopted and are often shut down, scared, or a little rough around the edges. They began fostering with Sasha in 2014 before Love Leo existed and have fostered over 70 shy dogs and helped them get adoption ready!
Kathy - In Memoriam
Foster Family
Kathy began fostering for Love Leo a decade ago. She loved nothing more than taking care of bottle babies: puppies too young to eat on their own and need to be bottle fed. Kathy would wake up in the middle of the night, and give them their feeding, which was required every three hours.
When Kathy checked into the hospital two years ago, the staff asked her what she did. The first thing she told them was that she fostered puppies for Love Leo. Adopters would send her updates on her former foster dogs and proudly shared photos with us. We lost Kathy in October 2024 but she will always be in our hearts and forever part of the Love Leo family.
OUR MISSION
Love Leo is a 501(c)3, foster based rescue located in Los Angeles. Many of the dogs we rescue are sick, injured, abandoned and forgotten. We have a soft spot for dogs that need special medical care in order to make it out of the shelter.
We know most adopters will not be able to adopt a dog from the shelter that needs a costly orthopedic surgery, or a puppy that is ill with parvo. We believe these dogs deserve a second chance.
In addition to our rescue work, we host a free/low cost spay and neuter program an underserved area of LA (South El Monte). We also host clinics in Tijuana Mexico. Rescuing one dog at a time is important and heartwarming work but – the more important thing we can do to make a difference in the pet overpopulation crisis is by providing spay and neuter services to those who need it. In addition to improving the quality of life for these animals and the people that love them, it is also the most effective way to reduce the number of stray and unwanted animals.
Love Leo was founded in honor of Sasha’s pitbull Leo who was rescued from New Jersey. His mother had been the subject of abuse and sadly did not survive. Leo went on to live a charmed life in Vermont and in his later years in Southern California.
Leo was one of the lucky ones, he found a forever home. The statistics are grim for pitbulls in the shelter. One study estimated that only 1 in every 600 pitbulls in the shelter find a forever home. In fact – all shelter dogs and cats have the deck stacked against them. Leo’s legacy lives on in every single life that we save. Consider adopting a dog or a cat and giving them a second chance. You would make Leo proud!