Augusta Delisi, 15, opens the memory box when she feels depressed. It's full of grungy dog collars, e-mails of encouragement and a newspaper clipping that featured Delisi and her rescue work. Even though it smells like wet dog, the box cheers her when she thinks of the lives of the animals she has saved.

Delisi organized her first animal rescue when she was 12. She was looking at www.petfinder.com, a national pet adoption site, when she saw a posting that said eight dogs at a shelter in Philippi, W.Va., were about to be euthanized. Delisi contacted the shelter to have the dogs transported to the Washington County Humane Society and persuaded her father to drive her from their Franklin Park home to the Washington County shelter to pick up the dogs.

She expected puppies but went home with eight grown dogs of different breeds clambering around the family's Chevrolet Suburban.

Shelters in the Pittsburgh area took the dogs, and Delisi was hooked on animal rescue.

"When people say I can't save all the animals, I say I can try," she said.

This month, Delisi's 59th rescued animal -- a pit bull named Ginger from the Stark County Dog Pound near Canton, Ohio -- found a permanent home.

Delisi now has a 6-foot by 6-foot kennel with padded flooring in her basement for dogs while she is acting as a foster owner. She has held fund-raisers and started her own Web site promoting animal rescue.

For her efforts, she was featured on the front page of petfinder.com and in an Illinois shelter newsletter. Two weeks ago, representatives from "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" asked her to send a video about her rescues.

While Delisi searches for permanent homes for the dogs, the animals become part of her own family. A freshman at North Allegheny Intermediate High School, she has five brothers and sisters, ranging from 1-year-old Isiah to 16-year-old Olivia. She has three dogs of her own: Daisy, a corgi; Roxi, a German shepherd mix; and Clover, a pit bull. Clover is the one dog Delisi's parents allowed her to keep from her rescued dogs.

Delisi spent two days making the video for "The Ellen DeGeneres Show." She included the story of the adoption of Lucky and Chance, found in a large trash bin and suffering from mange and parvovirus, a potentially deadly virus that attacks a dog's digestive system. She told the story of Harley, a Doberman pinscher mix, that could dance on his hind legs.

Harley was known as "Cage 55" when Delisi rescued him. He had been at the Stark County shelter for a year and a half without finding an owner. More than a year is an unusually long time for any animal to be at a shelter, she said.

"The dog wasn't even worth enough to give a name to," Delisi said. She named the dog -- every dog she rescues is given a new name, even if it already has one -- and said Harley now has a wonderful home.

Not every dog rescue has a Cinderella ending, though. Two pit bull mix sisters, Dolly and Molly, were euthanized at 14 weeks due to advanced parvovirus.

"They had never known love," Delisi said. "They had never been outside. I took them outside and they were scared. But they were so happy even though the world had been so cruel to them."

One unnamed shepherd mix she saw on petfinder.com was too large for Delisi to house, and the shelter euthanized it before it was adopted. That inspired her to write a poem, "Life of a Shelter Dog," about a trusting dog who is unaware of his fate when he is captured and euthanized.

Delisi adopts dogs mostly from Ohio and West Virginia, where shelters are crowded with hunting dogs. Once she traveled six hours to Virginia. She chooses dogs based on the time they have spent in shelters, their size and the immediacy of euthanasia. One animal she rescued was a stray cat.

If she hasn't arranged for a less crowded shelter to house a dog, she brings the animal home, cleans it up, adds its old collar to her memory box and gives it a name. To save money on veterinarian costs, Delisi waits for a day when her dad, Frank, can drive her and the dogs the hour to a reduced-cost clinic in Verona.

Once the dogs are ready for a new family, she takes them walking in Misty Pines Dog Park in Franklin Park and shopping at pet supply stores, with the dogs wearing orange and black "adopt me" vests. She hangs posters on bulletin boards and adds pictures to her Web site, which she started a year ago.

Delisi said she doesn't blame shelters or petition them to become no-kill facilities. She said she realizes it is impossible for some shelters to keep every stray. Instead, she places the blame on careless owners.

Jamie Metheney, animal control officer at the Pleasant County Humane Society in St. Mary's, W.Va., said she wished more people were like Delisi, who has adopted more than a dozen animals from the shelter. Delisi, Metheney said, is the youngest and only individual rescuer she works with to adopt animals.

Delisi's mother, Stephanie, said that during the first year, her daughter cried each time a family adopted one of her foster dogs. Now, she smiles and asks the new owner to pose for a picture.

Her mother said Delisi has been mature about organizing the details of rescues and two fund-raisers: Pennies for Pound Puppies, held at school, and Party for Pound Puppies, held at her house.

At the party, Delisi raised $450 and combined that with money she earned by baby-sitting to buy treats for animals at the shelters she visits, to spay or neuter dogs and to update vaccinations. On average, she pays $250 per dog in shelter adoption fees plus the costs of spaying or neutering and vaccinations.

She charges $150 per dog. She also asks about any pets or children before having the family sign a contract stipulating the family will keep the dog indoors and treat it with care. Pit bulls have a special contract that bars fighting.

After the dogs find a permanent home, she stays in touch with the family, watching the dog adjust from a shelter setting to a caring environment.

As soon as Ginger found a home early this month, a man called Delisi looking to adopt a beagle. So, after school, Delisi planned to be on the Internet, looking for a dog in need.

"When I did my first rescue, people said I couldn't do it," Delisi said. "I've shown them I can."

Each time a dog is adopted, she said, she is filled with a sense of accomplishment.

"That was one more life I saved."

For more information, visit www.augiesdoggiesrescue.org.