Animal Welfare Professionals

Happy New Year!

We hope your new decade is off to a great start!

Let's take a little time to reflect on the year that just passed while we look forward to the year ahead!

• Tell us something you're proud of that you or your organization achieved in 2019

  and

• What is something you hope to accomplish in 2020?

Launching our Hound Around Town field trip program is something I’m extremely proud of.

i look forward to launching our sleepover program in 2020. Here’s to get more pets saved!

Another volunteer and I put together a senior calendar for mckamey animal center in Chattanooga, TN.  We showed picture s of some of the senior dogs that were adopted

At the end of 2019 we started rolling out and retraining our K9 volunteers, and eliminating the "old" ways of training and no longer using choke chains.

2020 goals - Finish rolling out our restructured K9 programs, fundraise to fix our old rusted kennels, work towards creating an atmosphere where all of our K9 and cattery volunteers feel motivated and appreciated by adding team building training, demos and friendly get-togethers so everyone gets to know one another and works together. 

We got a grant to kickstart a doggy food pantry program at our shelter towards the end of the year with a launch date of 1/15/2020. We are in the process of finalizing the initial drop off locations for those who want to donate as well as scheduling volunteers. This will not take any food away from our rescue dogs nor be staffed by our paid staff. We are hoping to keep dogs in their homes when families can't afford nutritious food without shaming families who are in a difficult financial way. 

We also got our longest stay dog adopted! Rusty was with us for over two years and so far he's doing great.

We have partnered with a pet store for doggy adoption days and we did six of them this summer using only volunteers and got at least five adoptions every time. 

In 2020 we are hoping for more grants. 

I'm so proud that our nominee for American Humane's 2019 Hero Vet Nurse Award was selected as the national winner.  I'm also proud that we provided support to 58 other organizations and are now partnered with a local high school 'Helping Paws' Club. I hope to help them become true advocates in 2020. 

I also hope 2020 will bring some of the creativity & innovation described in this forum to our more apprehensive animal control facilities. It's still a challenge to get them to listen, much less implement new ideas. Go team! <3

Congratulations! That's quite an honor and I'm sure 2020 will see even more great happenings. 

Thank you! It so nice when we have an opportunity to celebrate in rescue and to thank those who help us. As you know, we cry much more than we laugh. The nomination was based on the Vet Tech's assistance with two very difficult cases. If you're interested, you can watch the Awards show broadcast on the Hallmark channel, the award is presented around 8:45 minutes into the broadcast: 

http://www.hallmarkchanneleverywhere.com/#/movies/2019+American+Humane+Hero+Dog+Awards

For a big goal, I'm hoping that we can revamp our adult dog foster program in 2020. Currently, it is not well-organized and involves a lot of extra steps where potential fosters are shuffled from one person to another. It is much harder to foster for us than to adopt from us! All the info transfers also mean people fall between the cracks because of delays in their training or lose interest. I'm hoping that we can get it streamlined and functioning more like our puppy and kitten foster programs, where there is much clearer direction, training process, and contact points.

Our sleepover and field trip programs have been slowly growing, and in 2019 we got some folks involved who were considering fostering for longer periods. I think demonstrating that a lower-barrier program is working for short-term fosters is also increasing staff confidence that it can work for all fosters.

You may be interested in the Adult Dog Foster Care group here on Maddie's Pet Forum! It's a group for coordinators and administrators of foster programs for adult dogs to ask questions and share ideas: https://maddiespetforum.org/group/adult-dog-foster-care/

I would like to expand so I can rescue more goats! https://www.gofundme.com/f/1v40iuve9c?sharetype=teams&;member=3489804&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer&utm_campaign=p_na+share-sheet&pc_code=ot_co_dashboard_a&rcid=b27aa58a16574315872a3ed9f65194f3

We are proud that #ThanksToMaddie, we SNR/TNR'd 198 feral and community cats in our community in our first year of trying the program.  Our goal for 2020 is to double that number in targeted areas if we can find the funding to do so!