One Love Animal Rescue and Sanctuary: Senior Pet Adoption Assistance Grant Report

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

The funds were used to sponsor the adoption fees for six senior cats and one senior dog in order to help remove some barriers to senior-pet adoptions and help them become more adoptable, especially when compared to their younger counterparts, who tend to move into forever homes much more quickly than the senior ones do.

This grant played a tremendous role in allowing us to move senior pets into forever homes quickly. People know that senior pets often require more medical care and therefore, from a financial standpoint alone, often get overlooked. Being able to promote waived adoption fees made a world of difference in being able to place the senior pets we had in our care and as a result, that freed up foster space to take in even more senior pets in need of help and continue the cycle.

We often have senior pets posted for adoption for months before getting even a single inquiry about them, but as a result of this promotion, we actually got a comparable amount of inquiries on these senior pets to our adult pets!

How many pets did this grant help?

7

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

Tobo came in as a victim of neglect. When his original family decided to move across country, they let a neighbor know they were planning to dump him on the road somewhere along the way. Luckily that neighbor called us and we did everything we could to help.

Tobo was an older boy (we were guessing about 13 based on our vet’s analysis), but he still had lots of energy and spunk. Unfortunately, though, the vet did find some minor health issues that come with the territory of an older cat that would need to be managed.

Tobo was thriving in his foster home and doing absolutely amazing with his foster kitty siblings. He loved to play and cuddle and would do just about anything for treats, which was very different from the shy, scared kitty he was when he first came to us.

Tobo had some adoption interest, but went to a home with a large dog for an adoption trial and was not happy with the idea of having a big dog around. When we let the foster know it didn’t work out and that Tobo was coming back, she was heartbroken that the adoption didn’t work out for him and that he was having to move again after all the stress and trauma he had already seen in his life.

She expressed that she would love to adopt him herself, but that the reason she fosters is because she couldn’t afford the adoption fees currently. When we told her about the amazing opportunity this grant provided for Tobo, she instantly started crying and didn’t hesitate one bit to commit to keeping him forever.

Her family was clearly perfect for him and he was so happy to be reunited with his foster (now forever) family. What is even better about this story is that the family who did the adoption trial was so sad that it didn’t work out, that they decided fostering would be the best way to help other senior pets and find the perfect one that fits in their family forever, so even though we lost one foster to a foster fail (which we love), we gained another through the process, and this grant opportunity enabled of that and so much more. The One Love animals and family are so very grateful.