Fort Bend County Animal Services: Disaster Response and Recovery Grant Report
How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?
This grant was used primarily to support the medical needs of the displaced pets coming into Fort Bend County Animal Services (FBCAS) after Hurricane Harvey.
Receiving these grant funds was invaluable to us and our new (February 2017) medical team so that we could offset the cost of all of these pets coming in with various medical needs from being exposed to the elements after Harvey. As you can imagine, our budget for our municipal shelter is very limited, and being able to access these funds helped us with these pets and to continue to care for the pets on-hand and who came in after the flood.
How many pets did this grant help?
This grant helped us with approximately 37 pets from Hurricane Harvey, in addition to a number of others who came in post-Harvey with minor medical conditions.
Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.
Remi (first photo) is a 2-year-old German shepherd girl who came to us in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Harvey on Sep. 5, 2017. She was picked up in the field with injuries including a uterine prolapse, black-light positive for lesions on her ears, and tick-infested. Here at FBCAS, she was treated by our veterinarian, who performed uterine-prolapse corrective surgery, treated her ear lesions, removed the ticks and continued antibiotic therapy. Because we decided to hold our Harvey pets for 30 days to see if we could reunite them with their owners, we were contacted by a great family who wanted to give Remi a temporary home for those 30 days. It was obvious that it was love at first sight and everyone was so thrilled that sweet Remi was able to not only fully recover from her medical conditions, she was also a very delighted foster failure. Remi and her family are living happily every after!
Sam (second photo) is another sweet but cheeky girl who was one of the first Harvey victims to come into our shelter. Sam was a special girl from the start. She also went to one of our 30-day Harvey fosters, and when she came back to our shelter to be spayed, we discovered that sweet Sam was suffering from a multitude of medical issues and was high heartworm-positive. FBCAS worked with Sam’s foster mama to provide financial support, courtesy of the Petfinder Foundation grant, to have Sam tested and treated at an outside vet clinic. Over the course of several weeks, Sam worked her way into her foster’s heart, and after the 30-day stray hold was up, she became a permanent member of the family. She continues to be treated for her heartworms and medical conditions, but is a joy to everyone she meets.
