Animal Allies of Texas: A Shot at Life Vaccination Grant Report
How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?
We received free vaccines for both dogs and cats. Our first mission was helping the City of Mesquite Animal Shelter. Animals in the shelter receive no vaccines. With the help of Dr. Jennifer Lavender and Senior Technician, Sara Wright, we were able to vaccinate and/or deworm every animal in the municipal shelter. AAT donated rabies and bordetella vaccines and Pyrantel. We vaccinated 78 dogs and 10 cats. Our second mission was the City of Sachse Animal Shelter. We also held a public vaccine clinic there on the same day, also administering heartworm tests for dogs and feline combo tests for cats. Microchipping was available as well. Dr. Lynn Ruwe was our vet for that day. We vaccinated 168 animals as well as giving complete vaccinations to the shelter animals. There were 12 shelter animals that needed vaccines.
Since we did not have as many cats in the shelters as we expected, we also helped two other cat rescue groups, Cat Matchers and Texas Pawprints, vaccinate their cats. Cat Matchers had just taken in 17 kittens who were able to receive two FVRCP vaccines each at 3 weeks apart. Texas Pawprints used 50 vaccines for their various cats and kittens.
We also hold a monthly low cost clinic at our storefront location and we used the rest of the vaccines we received at that clinic.
Since parvo and distemper have been rampant in our area this year, we really wanted to get into some of the shelters that do not have the funds and/or a veterinarian to do vaccinations. We were really happy to go to the Mesquite shelter and vaccinate. This resulted in some quality volunteer time for our people and also resulted in a friendship between our group and the shelter. We have pulled several animals from this shelter. Also, Dr. Lavender has volunteered to help with some triage training for the shelter staff. Animals were suffering in this shelter because of lack of training. We are hoping that animals who were vaccinated were more easily adopted and at least received a rabies and a first set of vaccines. It gave our members a sense of accomplishment and pride.
We also vaccinated many of our new intakes in our group with the free vaccines as well as booster vaccinations for others. This helped us to save money, freeing up funds for additional services for our group.
How many pets did this grant help?
We helped to vaccinate approximately 500 animals with the free vaccines.
Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.
Case and Colt were kittens who had run out of time at the animal shelter. Animal Allies of Texas moved them into our program. They were vaccinated with the free FVRCP/Leukemia vaccines. Both have been adopted.
