Ozzie and Friends Rescue: Orvis Dog Enrichment Grant Report
How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?
Our dogs have all been so thrilled and happy with their enrichment toys! These enrichment toys have been especially helpful during our adoption events. We bring a bin of enrichment toys and peanut butter to our events so that, if any dogs start getting too noisy, we can grab a toy and they can entertain themselves.
We have given our fosters different enrichment toys as well and the dogs have an absolute blast with them. Toys really help fosters make dogs more adoptable because they can teach their foster dog how to "drop the toy," "sit," "tug," etc.
Enrichment toys were always pushed to the back burner for us because we need our money for vet bills, medications, supplies, etc. It was amazing to have a chance to just go to the pet store and fill a cart with toys to bring back to the dogs!
How many pets did this grant help?
60
Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.
We want to showcase one of our long-timers, Hogan (first photo). Hogan has been with us for more than three years, and this boy loves toys! But he also loves to destroy toys, and is able to do so within less than a minute of getting a new one. After being with us for three years, Hogan finally went to a foster home. We had been trying to provide as many toys as we could, but with how destructive he is, we couldn’t keep up!
The Orvis Animal Care Grant helped us buy a stockpile of tough toys for our boy Hogan. He us absolutely thriving with his tough toys and he’s actually having a hard time destroying them! We found out that toys such as Kongs, he doesn’t tend to destroy, as he is too distracted licking the peanut butter out. Hogan’s foster is amazing with keeping up with Hogan’s training and practices grabbing toys while Hogan is playing with them so he doesn’t get protective over them.
Hogan is still waiting for his forever family, but he is thriving in his foster home and has a basket of toys he can choose from now. Hogan loves to play — and we mean loves to play. We have never seen a dog who loves toys as much as Hogan does!
