We have exciting news from Pet Project Rescue to share with all of you! After 8 years of serving the community, we have determined that there is a need for change in what PPR is giving to our animal welfare system. Due to the large number of successful rescues in MN, adoptable animals are finding rescue in great numbers; however, there we know there is still more that can and should be done to reduce the number of animals facing homelessness and euthanasia. PPR is committed to working diligently to make this happen and leading our community toward becoming a no-kill state through two focused initiatives.

First, PPR has made the decision to move our foster program exclusively to hospice fostering. Our hospice program will continue to focus, as it has for been for the last 5 years, on rescuing and providing love and care to terminally ill dogs and cats from MN shelters. These animals that are traditionally overlooked in our shelters, because they are viewed as not adoptable and require much more funding to care for, putting them at a high risk of being euthanized.

While this is a change from the current foster program, it’s important to stress that rescue will continue to be a major focus for PPR through hospice fostering. We are currently working to get all our adoptable dogs and cats into forever homes, and we will continue to need foster homes for emergency cases, temp fosters, and hospice dogs and cats.

Secondly, PPR feels it is our responsibility to address the root of the problem and take actions toward ending animal homelessness. To do this, we will move the primary focus of PPR to spay/neuter programs to truly provide a solution to the issue of animal overpopulation and homelessness.

In MN we are very lucky to have a large rescue network of over 200 rescues focused on fostering dogs and cats, and the result of this hard work is reflected in our local shelters, which have had a significant decrease in the number of adoptable animals since the fall of 2015. However, to truly make an impact on the number of animals entering shelters, we need to go beyond rescue and provide spay/neuter services, especially for those street animals in our community and beyond. This is not new to PPR, as we are proud to have spayed/neutered over 600 Twin Cities street cats through our Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) program since its creation 6 years old, as well as funding spay/neuter for hundreds of dogs and cats in Mexico since 2008. But more needs to be done and we are ready to take on this challenge!

While there is an extensive rescue network in place, we’ve come to realize that spay and neuter programs for street animals are rare both nationally and internationally, yet with these programs we can prevent unwanted litters of dogs and cats from entering our shelters where they all too often are euthanized despite being healthy because they are considered adoptable.

We took a look at the numbers and while we rescued 224 dogs and cats in 2015, we were able to spay and neuter 495 animals, preventing on average 1,300 unplanned, unwanted and homeless dogs and cats that would then been in need of rescue. By shifting our focus, our ability to dedicate far more time and funding to spay/neuter will greatly grow the numbers of animals we provide support for.

PPR is in a position to move in what we see as a progressive direction and focus on spay/neuter as our contribution to reducing animal homelessness and euthanasia. We know that the additional efforts in our spay/neuter services will save and better thousands of animals’ lives near and far, and we are so excited for this opportunity to make an even greater impact.

We are passionate about saving lives through spay/neuter and plan to greatly expand our spay/neuter programming in the Twin Cities, in targeted areas in the US, through the Riviera in Mexico and beyond. We hope that you will share our excitement in the changes PPR is making to help the animals that need us most while working hard to be the solution to animal overpopulation and suffering. We are determined to expand our impact and continue to save lives for years to come!

Sincerely,

Pet Project Rescue Board of Directors, Maia, Lindsay, Christine, Sara and Maureen.

Join us on September 18th  at Ollu from 10am to 5pm to get your hands on brand new dog and cat items of ALL kinds! Toys, collars, leashes, crates, clothes, and every single other item you could ever imagine for your dog or cat, and a few things for you too!

All proceeds will help us fund the Lukas Project, our hospice program for terminally ill MN dogs and cats that we rescue from high kill shelters. They live out their days with love and comfort in our wonderful and caring foster homes. But The Lukas Project has no formal funding, so events like our Flea Market make it possible for us to continue to save and care for the dogs and cats most in need in our community. We hope to see you there!

We are so thrilled to be days away from shipping out Pet Project Rescue’s first ever calendar, Felines & Fellas!

With the sale of each Felines & Fellas 2017 calendar Pet Project Rescue will provide lifesaving care and spay & neuter services to hundreds of street cats in the Twin Cities through our Trap-Neuter-Return program, as well as fund our national and international spay & neuter clinics. PPR’s spay & neuter programs end the cycle of suffering by preventing future generations from being born into the hardships of street life, while also reducing the number of dogs & cats entering our shelter system. Together, with spay and neuter, we will end the plight of street animals from MN to Mexico!

To pre-order your PPR calendar email us at Info@PetProjectRescue with your name and number of calendars you would like to order. $14.99 per calendar!

A single animal can change everything for one person, and Lukas did just that for me. I found him alone, depressed, and in terrible condition at a local MN shelter in 2011. He was scheduled to be euthanized, and it broke my heart to think this old dog would die alone with a stranger so I took him home to be my foster dog, until a foster could be found.

It turned out he wasn’t old, and instead was suffering from Crohn’s Disease and just in terrible shape. His skin was literally rotting off his body, his nails were infected and falling out, and his intestines were in rough shape, but he was so happy and loving with every person and animal that crossed his path. He was showing us he wanted to live, so we dedicated ourselves to making him free of pain and starting on the road to recovery. He thrived on a raw diet from Woodys Pet Food Deli and he started gaining much needed weight. His infections responded to medication and he healed, plus he got some extra good meds to make sure he was pain free while he gained his health back.

A month into his recovery a woman contacted us about wanting to adopt him. We told her we didn’t know the prognosis and it may be costly, but she wanted to meet him so we said ok. As Lukas did, he won this woman over immediately and we made plans for adoption once he was stable. Just a few weeks later he moved into his forever home and was like a whole new dog! He ran, played, snuggled, learned to enjoy toys and ate like a king❤️ He had an amazing year in his forever home before the Chrone’s Disease took him, but through this process he opened my eyes to the animals in our high kill shelters that are terminally ill and had no options. I decided these were the animals I had to start a foster based hospice program for. As a result The Lukas Project was created for MN shelter animals in 2011. Five years later PPR has been honored to provide rescue and care to many hospice animals and we plan to continue until the need is no longer there! Thank you to all our hospice fosters past and present…we could not do it without you!

Our current foster animals are doing great in our care and responding well to treatment.

As of today we are caring for Maxie, a 15 year old cat that was given up due to heart problems. It turned out it was a condition she has lived with her whole life, and as of now she continues to thrive in her foster home and we are happy to give her a place to call home for her remaining days!

Bogie is our other hospice kitty and suffering from IBS and possible colon cancer, but is doing well on a managed diet and medications. His immune system struggles to keep up at times, but thankfully he is continuing to do well and is pain free and happy at this time!

And our current Lukas Project dog is Holly! She has diabetes that caused her to go blind, her pancreas to start to fail and also has mammary cancer, but all are managed well at this time and she is eating, sleeping well, enjoying her daily walks and her loving foster home. We do not know how long she has with us given her cancer, but as long as she is loving life and pain free we will keep on truckin’ alongside her!

Join us on July 9th at Urban Tails from 12-3 pm for a day of all things kitten!

• Snack on delicious bake sale goodies
• Boost those endorphins while you cuddle litters of kittens
• Check out Pet Project Rescue’s adoptable cats and kittens
• Win big on kitten races
• Make a specialty toy for your feline
• And so much more!
• FREE parking in the lot and on the street

After an amazing week in Cuba we are very excited to share our friend Sarah’s (of Sarah Beth Photography) post on our trip together to meet with a Cuban animal rescue and work together to better the lives of dogs and cats in need! We walked away so impressed with APAC’s dedication to Cuban animals, and we look forward to helping them accomplish their goals of spaying, neutering and vetting the animals of Varadero, Cuba.

So how can you help? Medication is the biggest need right now and we are collecting Frontline, Revolution, and Nexgard so APAC can treat fleas, ticks, ear mites, skin infections and prevent the all too common, but preventable heartworm. Want to donate any of the above meds? Email us at Development@PetProjectRescue.com

Don’t miss out on this great Cuba blog! http://sarahbethphotography.com/

Our monthly donors are truly saving lives, like the life of our senior gal Darbie! And that is why we are so excited to be able to announce that our MATCH for ALL NEW MONTHLY DONORS will continue until we reach $500 in new sustaining donors! With just $150 to go to meet our goal please consider becoming a monthly donor at just $5 or $10 a month to ensure Pet Project Rescue can rescue more special needs dogs and cats!

Darbie arrived to PPR as a round ball of sadness. She was 22lbs, when her little Bichon body should have been 16 lbs! Her extra weight was causing her a great deal of knee pain, and she was miserable. She began peeing blood just a day after she arrived to us, and we rushed her to the vet for a full workup and xrays, where we discovered she had a painful bladder stone the size of a golf ball!! Our vets jumped to action to save Darbie and removed the stone with great success. She’s all healed up, feeling so much better, and now nearing her goal weight! This 12 year young gal is enjoying her strolls around the neighborhood and her new found health and happiness. Darbie will remain on C/D food for her bladder health, Rimadyl for her knees, and will need check ins and xrays about twice a year to assure she stays clear of future stones. Thankfully, this adorable gal got her second chance in life with PPR, and hopefully a forever home to call her own very soon. We would not be able to provide the costly emergency vet care needed for animals with special needs if it was not for our amazing monthly donors.

When you become a monthly donor today your $5 will become $10, $10 will become $20, and so on, thanks to our matching gift from Dog Of A Good Society! PetProjectRescue.com/donate\

Darbie thanks YOU for giving her the chance to heal and know the love a forever home that she hopes she will find very soon!

*Warning* Some images are graphic in this posting.

It was January 18th, 2016 and I was once again back in Playa del Carmen, Mexico for my annual trip working alongside Pet Project Rescue’s Mexican rescue partners. It was the first day that I, along with a rescue friend and fellow PPR board member, saw Hawkeye, a little orange tabby kitten perched on a pile of discarded bricks, planks of wood, and various other trash. Granted, this is not an uncommon picture at any construction site, but what was uncommon was that Hawkeye looked like a happy, clean, and chubby kitten….often the opposite to what you see of street animals in Mexico. So the rule of thumb applied, when in Mexico, a country with literally millions of street animals, a rescuer does not save healthy, street savvy animals, especially those being fed as Hawkeye was.  So rather than rescue this clearly street smart and healthy kitten, he was trapped, neutered and returned (TNR) to his caregivers at the construction site.

It should be noted that he was not a kitten that was willing to interact with people, and always kept a safe distance from us.  I walked by him every single day for a month, and each time he would look my way, make eye contact, and then continue on is way, which was usually climbing and running around the piles of construction materials. The sight of him each and every day made me smile, and while I wanted to bring him home so badly, I had to remind myself to focus on the animals that needed me most, like the 4 tiny puppies I had found in a Playa park 3 weeks earlier and was nursing back to health in my small apartment until they flew to PPR’s home base in MN. So there Hawkeye stayed.

Then one day, as I walked to an early morning appointment I passed Hawkeye and he made eye contact as he did every other day, but this time his eyes looked dark, exhausted, watery, and just not himself. I thought, oh no, he has a cold, which in cats can lead to a number of other issues. I made a note to check in on him again the next day, to make sure he wasn’t getting worse. When I went back I couldn’t find him. This continued for 3 days, and I began to worry. Then as it happens, I was walking by his normal spot with a few other rescue people and I mentioned Hawkeye, and that I was worried he was sick. A local rescue volunteer then told me that someone had told her he was injured and people were trying to trap him to get him to the vet, but were not yet successful. We were literally steps from the construction site as she told me this, and when I looked up there he was, perched again on a pile of trash. But this was not the normal Hawkeye. He was thin, dirty, and clearly uncomfortable. As I approached him my heart sank, as I realized he had very quickly deteriorated, and as I got close enough to really see him I gasped at the site of his degloved jaw. The skin from his lip, all along his jaw, and back to his throat was torn off and pushed back to his neck. He was starving, in pain, and despite the serious injury he was still attempting to eat the dry kibble left out for him. It was a testament to his street skills that he has still doing as well as he was, considering the severity of his injury.

The group of rescuers knew right away that we had to do something, and we rushed to get a live trap, tuna, and supplies to humanely trap him and to the vet for the care he needed. We climbed through piles of trash, broken glass, and things I’d prefer to not even know what they were! He would come close enough to eat a bit of tuna off a fork, but would not allow us to touch him and would bolt at any attempt to get too close. It took 6 hours of constant check ins before he walked in the live trap, and we finally had him secure!

The sense of relief cannot be put into words, and when the very next day we had torrential downpours, I could not help but be so grateful he was not out in the elements, as he surely would not have survived.  Instead, he was safely with our partners at Coco’s Animal Welfare, getting 3 days of antibiotics and pain medication in preparation for his jaw surgery. To our surprise, nothing was broken, and the skin could be saved and reattached. The amazing vets did a fantastic job putting Hawkeye back together and in just 2.5 weeks he was fully healed and loving people! We still have no idea what caused his injury, but was likely a result of living among so much broken glass and garbage. Almost exactly 3 weeks to the day when I found him injured, the healthy Hawkeye was on a flight to MN and starting his new journey to find a forever home!

It’s has taken a village of rescuers to help trap him, overnight him until he could get to the vet, recover him at Coco’s, raise the funds to get him to MN, fly him to us, and foster him with Pet Project Rescue. That is a whole lot of people working hard to make this 6 month old kitten’s life a good one. Thank you everyone who has helped him get to a better life!

I cannot help but think that on January 18th mine and Hawkeye’s lives became bonded, and that it became my responsibility to look out for him. I had no idea what was to come from the very first day I saw that tiny, adorable kitten perched on top of his tower of trash, but when Hawkeye arrived to PPR on March 18th, I knew we had come full circle in rescue. So what’s next? Hawkeye will hang out with his foster mom for a couple weeks to settle in and finish out some basic vetting, like vaccine boosters. From there he will look for a forever home that will be the perfect fit for this very special young kitty, and live happily ever after.

To apply to adopt Hawkeye visit our page at http://petprojectrescue.com/adopt/adoption-application/

Animal rescue takes a village, and we are reminded of how very true that is every year when PPR comes back to where we got started, Mexico! Pet Project Rescue has had the pleasure of being part of Mexican animals rescue for nearly a decade already!! We have had the honor of working with some pretty amazing people who are accomplishing some even more amazing things for animals in need.  The Snoopi Project is one of those amazing programs that was set up by Kelly, an American, who is now a permanent resident of Playa del Carmen. The program started out as a simple plan to provide wooden dog houses and longer tie-outs to protect chained dogs from the rain and sun that is so common in this area of the world, but it turned into so much more!

Playa del Carmen is unique for Mexico, in that the city has a lot to offer animals in need thanks to the hard work of many people, like the high volume spay/neuter clinic that runs 6 days a week at Coco’s Animal Welfare, and the number of rescues set up to help street animals. But what so many of us don’t have the time to do in rescue is go door-to-door in our communities to find those that can’t help themselves. To help those people that are not seeking out assistance, but still need it just as much! It’s something lacking in the animal welfare community world wide, and the reason The Snoopi Project is so vital to the success of improving the lives of animals in Playa. What is even more exciting, is that this project can easily me duplicated and applied to any city, reservation, rural area, etc…everywhere in the world! So that’s why we wanted to share this project with all of you, in hopes that someone will read this and want to start a similar program for their community.

While The Snoopi Project provides shelter for chained pets, that are exposed to the elements, it also provides de-parasite meds, flea and tick meds, collars and tags, food, life saving vet care for the most extreme cases (when funding is available). But most importantly, they provide dialogue, education, and a platform to help local people, who are struggling themselves, and with this assistance owners are able to provide the best environment they can for their pets. It’s simple, it’s brilliant, and it’s working! To date over 150 dogs have been given shelter, dozens have been given life saving vet care (including getting spayed and neutered!), plus all of these dogs avoid street life!

We want to introduce you to just 2 of the 150 dogs this program has helped in the 7 short months since it was created! Rex was rescued just a few months ago from the streets, and was very thin. His new owner has worked hard to put weight on him, but she had very limited means to provide to herself or their dogs. She had set up a door to provide shade, but when the Snoopi Project came to give him a home they were also able to neuter him, which is a service they can offer through a partnership with Coco’s Animal Welfare. His life is improving each and every day now!

This is usually the part of the conversation where people ask us, why are these dogs chained? And that’s a good question. The reality is that Mexico is a very impoverished country, where people struggle to shelter and feed their families. These families often acquire a dog to protect their home, but very few people can afford a fence. A dog wandering loose runs the risks of being hit by a car, getting lost, or worse, so while living on a chain is not ideal, we are forced to acknowledge the limitation placed on us by extreme poverty. For these dogs, the tie-out and collar also provides more space, and is more secure.

There are also other issues to consider, such as homes don’t have doors, and if the people don’t want the dog inside that makes it really difficult to not have them on a tie-out. People often live in shared spaces as well, so their dog is not their neighbor’s dog, and therefore if “Blanco: the dog hops up on the neighbors kitchen table or nips a child, you may have a real problem on your hands! In cases where it can work, The Snoopi Project has built fences out of bricks and other materials to get dogs off chains. So as you can see, it’s a complex problem, without a single solution, but we do have the option to give the dogs shelter and a tie out with length to move around more freely and improve their quality of life.

Another need is often vet care for seriously ill/injured pets. The Snoopi Project met Manchas  last week when they were asked by Coco’s Animal Welfare Playa del Carmen to sponsor his weekly chemo treatments to treat him for TVT (A TVT is a transmissible venereal tumor that is common in unaltered dogs in Mexico). Machas has started treatment and will hopefully be back to health in the next few months. He isn’t in the greatest shape, but a dialogue with the owner is being had and assistance is offered thanks to donors to The Snoopi Project! Machas has a shot at better life that he didn’t have before, and that is what this project is all about, and he will be neutered!

You can learn more about The Snoopi Project on Facebook, and stay tuned for Pet Project Rescue and The Snoopi Project collaborations in the future!