Emotional Rescue Founder Shannon Tarr first realized something was wrong when Emotional Rescue’s Facebook page was demonetized. The page, which has some 272,000 followers, served as the main income stream for the Hastings-based organization which supports the adoption of dogs with special needs through its ad revenue.
“People can watch the videos and know they are helping,” said Tarr about the model.
So when Tarr logged onto Facebook and discovered the account had been demonetized due to new banks being added outside of the U.S. and new people added as owners of the page, the issues facing Emotional Rescue were immediate.
To date, Tarr still doesn’t know how hackers got into the page. While Facebook locked down the page when the new bank accounts and profiles were added, getting the page back up and running has been a difficult process.
Since the de-monetization, Tarr has been grappling with how to convince Meta, Facebook’s parent company, that her page is back under her control and able to be re-monetized.
“It’s Meta. Who do you talk to?” Said Tarr.
Tarr estimates she has spent hundreds of hours waiting on and speaking with Meta and Facebook tech support trying to reboot the page. Verifying she was in fact the owner of the page is an extensive process that has included providing bank statements, tax returns and even facial recognition. “Everything but DNA,” quipped Tarr.
The process of speaking with agents, what Tarr dubbed Emotional Rescue’s “Meta War,” often involved typing out the problem Tarr wanted help with only to wait up to 16 hours for a Meta agent to actually respond. Once they did, Tarr had only give minutes to answer or would again have to start all over and wait.
Other times, agents would say conflicting things with some agents telling her some piece of information couldn’t be verified, then others telling her the page was ready to be monetized.
“The right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing,” said Tarr.
Fortunately, that patience paid off, with the Emotional Rescue Facebook page re-monetized on Dec. 22. What Tarr immediately noticed was that the income from the page was dramatically reduced, with posts earning just cents.
“It’s been a little concerning,” said Tarr.
According to Tarr, the group has already started a second Facebook page and even a TikTok page to fill that income gap, but the amount of donations coming in has buoyed the organization.
“We would make it that way,” said Tarr.
Despite that lowered ad revenue, Tarr wants supporters to know “No matter what happens these dogs will be fine […] anything else is not an option.”

Emotional Rescue
Emotional Rescue started in 2017 when Tarr heard about a litter of five sick puppies in Texas that needed support. Tarr had been volunteering in animal rescue organizations but knew that working with sick and special needs animals was a way that she could make a difference.
“Nearly overnight,” Tarr set up Emotional Rescue and took in the puppies, which were driven up from Texas to Minnesota. Each of those five puppies survived and were later adopted.
From there, the connection with dogs in need of homes out of Texas was established.
“Rescue is all about connection,” said Tarr.
Fostering rescue dogs needing special attention, from disability to sickness to a number of other ailments, can be a difficult proposition. They often require a longer-term commitment and it often doesn’t make sense for them to be sent to foster families who would otherwise take “highly adoptable dogs that get adopted in a week,” said Tarr.
Instead, Emotional Rescue and eventually its disabled dog sanctuary take a number of disabled dogs and provides care while seeking their forever homes.
Tarr learned about ad revenue as an income source from other rescue organizations with similar models. She worked to build a following, quickly surpassing the 10,000-follower floor to monetization for a Facebook page.
Even beyond the income, the ability to raise awareness about taking care of disabled dogs was attractive to Tarr: “It’s Important for people to know you can problem solve” with dogs who need special care.

Issues of being online
Emotional Rescue’s “Meta War” is not a unique issue.
From influencers to artists to freelancers, ad revenue can provide a much-needed income source for those with a following online. That income, however, often comes at the whims of algorithms, search engine optimization, and decisions made by billion-dollar companies that can upend business models overnight.
It’s “not unheard of for pages to be taken down without any real reason,” said Tarr.
According to Tarr, it was only after she made her peace with the possibility of the Facebook page never being monetized again that she “could sleep that night.”
In addition, being so prominently online has left Tarr open to some of the worst the internet has to offer. From death threats to filing restraining orders, Tarr has seen a spike in online vitriol, especially in the last two years.
Despite that, she is hopeful for the future of the organization: “Good things keep happening to me.”