Arizona Humane Society: Grant Report

How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?

Grant funds covered the adoption fees for 49 adoptable pets, including 28 dogs and 21 cats, who had been on AHS’s adoption floor for more than 30 days.

For many hard-to-adopt pets such as cats, pit bulls and Chihuahuas, adoption fees can be a barrier between these pets finding a forever home and staying in the shelter for an extended period of time. At the same time, it costs an average of $910 to care for each pet who enters our shelter because we are committed to helping the sick, injured and abused pets in our community and many require extended medical and behavioral treatment before they make it to the adoption floor. Thanks to the Petfinder Foundation’s support in helping us waive adoption fees for those pets who are harder to adopt and who face longer wait times on our adoption floor, we were able to place these pets into forever homes, helping to make space for more pets who are ready to find forever homes.

How many pets did this grant help?

49

Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.

Stretch Armstrong came into AHS at the beginning of January 2019 through our field team. Poor Stretch had been abandoned by his owners, and this had an impact on his behavior when he was adopted for the first time back in March. Because he had been abandoned before, he developed severe separation anxiety in his new home, tearing up blinds, ripping up the couch, and making a huge mess, all out of his fear that his new owners would never return. Because of this, his new owners ended up returning Stretch to AHS, unable to deal with his anxiety.

Stretch waited two more months and, thanks to the Petfinder Foundation, had a waived adoption fee! After waiting for months, Stretch found his new home with a wonderful couple who have dealt with separation anxiety in dogs before, and who work from home all day!