Humane Society of Southern Arizona resident Jenna enjoys a toy and leash courtesy of Mars Petcare.
Shelter life can be stressful for dogs like Jenna, an energetic young Boxer mix who’s been returned several times to the Humane Society of Southern Arizona (HSSA) in Tucson. That’s why the Petfinder Foundation is working with Mars Petcare to give pets like her toys, treats and other enrichment supplies to help them stay healthy and happy until they find the right family.
The HSSA, Pima Animal Care Center (PACC) of Tucson, In the Arms of Angels of Green Valley, and Pinal County Animal Care and Control of Casa Grande benefited from a recent friendly fundraising competition that we organized for 200 Mars Petcare employees.
A Mars staffer hula hoops for pets.
The Mars staffers broke into four teams of 25, each competing for a different organization in events such as a hula-hoop contest and leash-making competition.
The whole thing was a fun way for Mars employees to give back and for the Petfinder Foundation, which is based in Tucson, to support local adoption groups.
All four organizations received cash grants, along with leashes, cat scratchers, dog toys and pet food. The first-place winner, the HSSA, received a $1,000 grant; In the Arms of Angels received $500; and PACC and Pinal County Animal Care and Control each received $250.
Competing to see who can make the most leashes
“The Humane Society of Southern Arizona is so grateful for the wonderful donation and will be using the money to help care for our animals by providing vaccinations, food, enrichment and spay-and-neuter surgeries,” HSSA PR Coordinator Sara Gromley tells us. “It is especially helpful during litter season, when we need extra support to care for our little ones.”
PACC Adoption Coordinator Ellie Beaubien says the shelter will use its grant to buy leashes and cat carriers, which adopters are currently required to provide if they want to adopt from the county facility. Providing these to adopters will make the adoption process more convenient, Beaubien says (PACC will raise its adoption fees slightly so the program can continue).
Pima Animal Care Center resident Pear (now adopted!) enjoys her Temptation treats and canned Sheba food.
As a government-funded shelter, PACC just hadn’t had the money it needed to implement this relatively inexpensive but lifesaving policy. “This [grant] gave me the opportunity to provide something important to adopters,” Beaubien says.
Oklahoma City animal control officers rescued this kitten from the rubble around Moore.
After the May 20 tornado devastated Moore, Okla., the Petfinder Foundation rushed $15,000 to help Central Oklahoma Humane Society and City of Oklahoma City Animal Services Division cope with the influx of lost and injured pets. Intake numbers are finally slowing down – but with cat-search efforts underway, that the number is expected shoot up again.
“We are beginning our cat-trapping efforts on-site before they do the demolition, so we expect to bring in about 30 to 40 cats in the next few days,” Christy Counts, founder and president of Central Oklahoma Humane Society, tells us.
In addition to the cash grants, we worked with ThunderShirt to get the comforting shirts to displaced dogs, and with Wahl to deliver shampoo, clippers and other much-needed grooming supplies to the shelters. We helped Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, Inc. rush vaccines to the facilities as well.
As of yesterday, the shelters had taken in close to 130 displaced pets and reunited at least 60 with their families.
“We are still in the recovery phase, so things haven’t completely slowed down quite yet,” Central Oklahoma Humane Society Director of Outreach Amy Shrodes tells us. “But we are definitely a lot more caught up than we were this time last week.”
This girl was reunited with her dog at Central Oklahoma Humane Society.
A vaccination grant helped the Dog and Cat Shelter in Sheridan, Wyo., care for Taz.
It took Taz the pit bull almost a year to find the right family — but our a vaccination grant let the Dog and Cat Shelter of Sheridan, Wyo., give him all the time he needed.
“Thanks to people like you, we can keep animals as long as it takes to find them a forever home,” shelter co-director Sharon Johnson tells us.
We’ve partnered with Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, Inc. and The Animal Rescue Site on A Shot at Life … Join the 2 Million Pet Challenge! to help protect millions of shelter pets against disease so they’re more likely to be adopted.
We awarded the Dog and Cat shelter 200 vaccines to protect its dogs against deadly but preventable conditions such as distemper, parvovirus and adenovirus. We also provided 200 vaccines to protect its cats against common shelter diseases including panleukopenia, rhinotracheitis and calicivirus.
Valued at $4,470, the vaccination grant helped the shelter afford a year of Taz’s care and feeding costs.
“He’s one of those big muscular guys who could be a scary dog if you didn’t know him – but what a gentle, loving dog he actually is,” Johnson says. “He loves people, especially kids, and enjoys playing and going on walks.
“Taz gets along well with most other dogs and many people thought of adopting him but for various reasons it didn’t happen,” Johnson says. “Finally, a young gentleman adopted Taz and we have heard from him that Taz is doing very well.”
Taz’s new person reports that he goes hiking in the mountains and is very obedient and smart. Thank you for your donations, which helped make Taz’s happy ending possible!
First responders found Susie standing guard over a deceased man after the tornado hit Moore, Okla.
We knew Oklahoma shelters would be inundated slammed with lost, injured and frightened animals when the tornado struck. We knew that staff were working without power, water or Internet, so we called them and helped them apply for desperately needed cash grants over the phone.
The Petfinder Foundation awarded $10,000 in assistance to the Animal Services Division, the government agency tasked with being the lead local responder to the crisis. We awarded another $5,000 to the division’s neighbor and partner in responding to the disaster, the Central Oklahoma Humane Society. We have also worked with our partners at Thundershirt and Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health to rush Thundershirts and vaccines to the scene.
Working together, the two Oklahoma City organizations are caring for more than 150 displaced pets, and they have reunited more than 33 lost animals with their families, English said.
Amy Shrodes, director of outreach for the Central Oklahoma Humane Society, was particularly moved by the story of Susie, a 12-year old Schipperke-Border Collie mix. First responders found Susie standing guard over a deceased man inside a house in Moore, which was particularly devastated by the storms.
They assumed the dog was guarding her owner, and took her to an emergency shelter. They were surprised when Susie’s true owner came forward to claim her. The pair lived a half mile from where Susie was found watching over the dead man.
“It was just like a dog’s sense of protection to be by the person,” Shrodes told us.
Most of the displaced animals the organizations have taken in since the tornado struck have been dogs, English said. But as demolition efforts start, she expects more cats will come out of hiding: “Cats will be flying out of everything.”
This displaced kitten is waiting to be reclaimed at Central Oklahoma Humane Society. If his or her family can’t be located, the kitten will be put up for adoption.
The two organizations will pool their resources to house, feed, medicate, treat and comfort all the displaced pets. Our grants will help cover staffing costs, which are skyrocketing because the agencies have been working around the clock.
English’s staff was able finally able to go home and get some sleep last night. “It’s only been two days,” she said. “It seems like nine months.”
English said the grant money and supplies the Petfinder Foundation provided will go a long way. “I’ve never experienced that kind of outreach, that kind of service level,” she added. “It’s kind of unheard of.”
We gave a vaccination grant to the House Rabbit Network in Woburn, Mass. They couldn’t use it — so they paid it forward to their friends at the nearby Lowell Humane Society.
“We didn’t want to see the vaccines go to waste,” House Rabbit Network foster parent Aimee Swartz tells us. “So we just picked the humane society we knew could really use them and that we work with a lot.”
The House Rabbit Network won the grant by coming in second in the state during the recent Animal Rescue Site Shelter+ Challenge. Like all second-place state winners in the online competition, the network received 100 dog or cat vaccines.
Unable to use them on their rabbits, the volunteers who run the organization decided to give the Lowell Humane Society 100 FRVCP vaccines to protect its cats against the upper-respiratory infections most common in shelters.
“It’s great,” says Jill O’Connell, executive director of the Lowell Humane Society, a private, open-admissions shelter that takes in nearly 2,000 homeless pets each year. “We are a pretty small shelter, but we consider ourselves pretty high-volume. The majority of our money is spent on medical costs, so this allows us to spend somewhere else.”
Adopt lop-eared Abby from from the House Rabbit Network.
In the next Shelter+ Challenge, the House Rabbit Network plans to go for Massachusetts’ first-place prize — a cash grant, Swartz says. In the meantime, its vaccination grant will make a huge difference for nearby cats.
“We are just getting into kitten season,” O’Connell tells us, “and to vaccinate 100 cats is really going to help.”
Jack from the Humane Society of Sullivan County in Sullivan, Ind., has an adorable glamor shot thanks to the photography tips we offered shelter workers at the recent Animal Care Expo.
I got off the plane in Nashville, super excited be attending my first-ever Animal Care Expo hosted by the Humane Society of the United States. I was ready to meet hundreds of shelter workers from across the country, learn about the challenges they are facing, and figure out how we can help them do their hard jobs even better.
At the heart of my Expo experience was spreading the news about the Foundation’s One Picture Saves a Life program, which teaches essential pet-photography skills to shelter staffers and volunteers. We’ve partnered on the program with Underwater Dogs photographer Seth Casteel and our friends at The Animal Rescue Site, John Paul Pet and GreaterGood.org. The program’s central premise is a shelter pet’s chances of being noticed by a potential adopter rise exponentially when they are represented by an attractive photo.
Underwater Dogs photographer Seth Casteel taught shelter workers how to take better photos at the Animal Care Expo.
Again and again at the Expo I heard from workers who bemoaned their organization’s low-quality photos. They said that their animals’ pictures oftentimes showed them looking blurry, frightened and dirty. While some shelters said they counted on volunteer professional photographers to take pleasing photos, and an even smaller number said they have trained photographers on staff, most said they struggled to take engaging photographs that do justice to their temporary residents.
We pointed them toward the free teaching resources on the program’s website, http://www.onepicturesaves.com, and told them about our upcoming workshops. We invited them to a talk we hosted with Seth Casteel and cat-behavior expert Jackson Galaxy (they had terrific chemistry!). We cheered as Debbie Heller of Little Rock Animal Village in Little Rock, Ark., won a digital SLR camera and choked up when she talked about all the lives it was going to help save.
Seth Casteel presented a digital SLR camera to Debbie Heller of Little Rock Animal Village.
The Expo taught me that most Petfinder.com member organizations the Petfinder Foundation proudly serves are struggling to take good pet photos. They may have money in their budgets for pet food, electricity bills or an animal-care attendant, but photography funds are much harder for shelters to come by.
The One Picture Saves a Life program is closing that gap, though, by providing easy-to-implement tips, in-person workshops, and technology grants so that shelter workers have the cameras and editing software they need.
And already it’s making a difference. Humane Society of Sullivan County President Miranda Webster Hay, who took the above picture of Jack the kitten, said the tips she learned at Expo have yielded terrific results.
“I am so excited about this program, it is all I can talk about since I arrived home from the HSUS EXPO!” Hay wrote. “Meeting Seth and just showing him some of my pictures, he was able to give me such great pointers in 5 minutes! Two days of shooting with this lens (50 mm/1.80) and I am in heaven–I am so excited to be registered for the August workshop in Chicago.”
Rachel Rosen from Liberty Humane Society in Jersey City, N.J., also sent us this terrific photo of an adoptable pup that she took using the One Picture Saves a Life lessons:
Fresh is available for adoption at Liberty Humane Society.
“I put quite a few tips I learned at the workshop to use in this batch of pictures,” Rosen said. “The fact that it was cloudy made me realize how much easier it would be to shoot in the shade rather than in the sun like I did in the past.” (Learn more about adopting Fresh.)
As a former shelter worker who has struggled countless times to get the perfect shot of a squirmy critter, I was thrilled to promote this progressive program at Expo. Because of the generous donations we receive, we’re able to provide life-saving resources that shelters wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. Like the One Picture Saves a Life page on Facebook to see all this year’s success stories!
“It all started with Denny. He loved quilts. Although the colors or designs didn’t matter to him, he definitely had his favorites. Put a quilt on a chair, a floor or a shelf and he magically appeared to stake his claim, especially for naps.
“After seeing many pictures of cats on quilts on the Internet, I knew that I was not alone in thinking that cats on quilts make great photos and that they just need to be shared.
“In the fall of 2011, The Quilt Pattern Magazine (TQPM) started our annual Quilt Kitties Photo Contest. Subscribers were urged to send in pictures of their kitties on quilts and given the chance to win some great prizes donated by very generous kitty-loving sponsors! We even had a sponsor kitty – Miss Piggy of Kona Bay Fabrics.
Sponsor cat Miss Piggy, left, and 2011 Quilt Kitties Photo Contest winner Gracie
“However, because TQPM’s staff are all cat lovers and many have rescue cats, they took it a step further! They wanted to help cats, particularly the less-fortunate kitties who don’t have homes or who end up in shelters. They gave their readers an opportunity to donate to an organization that specializes in helping kitties.
“In the fall of 2012, the same wonderful sponsors, along with some new ones, rejoined TQPM for its second annual Quilt Kitties Photo Contest. TQPM was pleased to announce that the Petfinder Foundation had joined them in promoting this endeavor. Who could have guessed where it would lead?
Quilt Kitties Photo Contest 2012 winner Baby
“Wanting to give their readers a little something extra for their kitties, TQPM was the first to offer free, downloadable patterns for Kennel Quilts. (Find Kennel Quilt patterns here!) These quilts are 12″ x 18″ and are perfect for most cat carriers and cages. The plan was for readers to make one for their own furry friend and another for a local shelter kitty.
Kennel Quilts fit perfectly in cat carriers.
“Then, Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast and Kennel Quilts took on a whole new meaning. Several of the staff members, knowing firsthand how devastating hurricanes can be for people and their pets, contacted the Petfinder Foundation to offer help.
“Petfinder gave TQPM a list of affected shelters in New York and New Jersey. One shelter, St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center in Madison, NJ, delivered the quilts on a supply truck along with water, pet food and other essentials to people on the Jersey shore. They knew these people had lost everything and that a bright, new quilt for their pets would bring a little bit of joy. Another shelter reported that these donated quilts made everything look very bright and pretty. The volunteers and visitors were all talking about them.
“Because they fit the kitty Kuranda beds, which many shelters use, one shelter asked how we had known to make them the perfect size. As more quilts were delivered, the compliments continued to come in. Shelters were amazed by how many people cared. Strangers, yes; but ones who extended helping hands in times of need. The response was overwhelming, with more than 100 quilts made and sent from the United States, Canada and England. The shelters continue to receive quilts to this day.
“As a result of the overwhelming response, TQPM and the Petfinder Foundation decided to make this an ongoing project. Thus, the Small Kennel Quilt Team was formed.
“The TQPM Small Kennel Quilt Team is a volunteer organization that is available to respond when disasters strike. It is a way to join a larger effort in helping our animal friends in times of need by doing what we love. Sign up for the Small Kennel Quilt Team here.
“The team will supply Kennel Quilts to shelters. Free patterns can be downloaded from the TQPM site (download a free quilt pattern here) or you can design your own. TQPM will post members’ progress on the program web page and email updates to them. Members are not obligated to make quilts; they can sign up simply to receive program updates.
Zoey the shelter cat has her choice of quilts.
“If you don’t quilt, but want to be a member of the team, you are most welcome. There are other very important ways to help; one is to give a donation to the Petfinder Foundation, which will be greatly appreciated and well-used.
“This new venture is still in the formative stage. As time passes, TQPM and the Petfinder Foundation are sure to find new ways to help shelters and their animals. Join our ‘Passion with a Purr-pose’!”
Many thanks to Nan and all the quilters around the world who are working so hard to offer some comfort and cheer to shelter cats and their caregivers during times of need.
Ten patiently waiting pooches — including a pair of bonded rat terriers — have found families thanks to an Orvis grant the Petfinder Foundation awarded to a shelter in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Buddy, left, and Lucky were adopted together.
“This grant enabled us to waive adoption fees for ten of our ‘harder to place’ dogs,” Marsha Rana Wayman, Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region grants and corporate relations manager, tells us.
This extra adoption incentive helped recruit one loving home for both Buddy and Lucky, two 5-year-old rat terriers who were surrendered when their owner’s health faltered.
“Buddy and Lucky were not only featured as a two-for-one bonded pair — their single adoption fee of $65 was completely waived,” Wayman says. “The pair was happily adopted after a mere five days at the shelter!”
Percy’s foster family adopted him.
The grant also helped ensure a happy ending for Percy, who was brought into HSPPR as a stray with a badly fractured leg. Shelter staff immediately treated Percy’s painful injury and pursued his case as a cruelty investigation, Wayman says.
After Percy spent months recovering in a loving foster home, his foster family signed on to keep him for life. Not only did the grant underwrite Percy’s waived adoption fee, it helped pay for the medical care he needed, Wayman says.
After being rescued from a Rowan County, KY, puppy mill, this dog was checked by veterinarians.
After more than a year of healing care and thanks to financial support from the Petfinder Foundation, 118 small-breed puppy mill survivors rescued from horrific conditions in Rowan County, KY, are finally ready to join families.
“Enrichment supplies for dogs traumatized from living in a puppy mill are extremely important in training them to trust people and ready them for adoption,” Tim Rickey, vice president of the ASPCA’s Field Investigations and Response Team, said. “Without your generous support, we could not have provided much-needed socialization and positive reinforcement to the dogs we rescued.”
After the APSCA seized the dogs in October 2011, the Pefinder Foundation provided them with a $1,000 disaster-relief grant to help with the dogs’ rehabilitation and recovery. The rescued dogs included Chihuahua, Dachshund, papillon, miniature pinscher and poodle mixes. Several of the dogs were pregnant, and some were only a few weeks old. All were badly neglected: Many of them were covered in mold and matted fur, and they were suffering from infections, dental disease and other health problems. They were kept in cramped, filthy cages.
“We used the grant to pay for treats, toys and staff/responder time socializing the dogs,” Rickey said.
One of the rescued Rowan County puppies.
After the dogs spent more than a year in recovery, the owner of the puppy mill pleaded guilty to two counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty and one kennel violation.
“Since the case has come to a close,” Rickey said, “we could finally make the dogs available for adoption.”
The dogs were all transferred to partner shelters, and Rickey reported their outcome couldn’t be better: “Most of the dogs were snapped up almost instantly and are now enjoying loving homes!”
To learn about applying for a disaster-relief grant, visit here.
