Exciting News Just for You!
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.
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