Friends of Orange County's Homeless Pets: Grant Report

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

Training: We tried several different scenarios to try to get people to train their pets at little or no expense or effort to them. We know that with the proper training, pets are more likely to stay in their homes and not be returned or sent to the shelter for bad behavior.

We first tried asking people if they would like our training booklet, but very few wanted it. Then we asked if we could pay for puppy classes in their area. We provided them with an approved trainer and made it as convenient as possible. We were able to negotiate a cost of $99 per dog with several trainers for a basic six-week training. We had 15 people actually follow through and take their dogs to training. Our total expense was $1,425. Feeling like people just were not responding to this, we then moved on to rescuing dogs who just had training issues and were going to be sent to shelters or euthanized.

How many pets did this grant help?

It helped 17, and it actually saved two lives.

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

Cleo (first photo) was a purebred heeler whose owners left her outside. She was never taken for walks, never taught manners, and was dog-aggressive and biting when corrected. They were taking her to the shelter where she would have been euthanized because of her aggressive behavior. We sent her to a trainer ($2,200). She learned basic commands and eliminated dog-aggression and biting. She was then moved to a foster home and was out of control there – she had no house manners, was jumping on counters, and was in such an excited state and not listening to her foster. We realized that all the training in the world off-site is no match for actually living in the environment of the home. After being in a trainer’s home for one week, Cleo was adopted (second photo). Her new owner spent time at the foster/trainer’s home and with Cleo in the training classes.

Trevor (third photo) was rescued from roaming the streets, so we had no information on his history; it does appear he was chained somewhere. We had to trap him to catch him. He had no social skills, was aggressive when meeting new people, and was extremely frightened. We sent him to a trainer ($2,000). Originally the trainer said Trevor would be a good candidate for a sanctuary — it seemed he had no social skills and was afraid of life. After five weeks in boot camp, Trevor is now up for adoption. He is one happy guy and we are hoping to find him a new family soon. Meet Trevor: www.petfinder.com/petdetail/37080649

Without the Petfinder Foundation grant we would not have been able to rescue both Trevor and Cleo. We thank you so much for helping us help them.