Our original plan for yesterday was to visit a few rural shelters in West Tennessee. We do this as part of our outreach to help train them to test for certain diseases in cats and dogs and to use microscopes and different test kits to identify those diseases. We also brought extra test kits with us in case they were running low or didn't have access to the funds to get them for themselves. We also intended to pick up 4 Pit/Catahoula puppies, a Terrier mix named Josie, and a female Doodle. You might have seen all of those dogs featured in our Instagram stories earlier this week.
When we got to our first stop, during our walkthrough before doing some protocol training, we saw a solo kitten that was so sweet we knew we couldn't leave her behind. Another Pit puppy and a young female Beagle also caught our attention. We made a plan to try to find fosters for them and knew we could swing back by our way home to grab them. So, we immediately put the word out on our socials.
Before heading to the next shelter, we made a stop to finalize an adoption in the area, plus drop another dog off at the vet for some much needed medical treatment.
When we arrived at the second shelter, we found more animals that were in desperate need of our help. If we had the funding and space to take more, we very well may have, but the small list of animals we could bring back with us included a Siamese mama cat and her three kittens. This is also the shelter that we were picking up the Doodle. If we had gotten there even one day earlier we could have saved another handful of dogs from euthanasia, but unfortunately we were too late and in these rural shelters with no space, we aren't always notified or have the funding that would help us help save these animals.
Our last stop of the night was a house that we were bringing medication to in order to keep their prevention up to date. We also got some more pictures of a dog needing a foster. They also had a small black kitten that we ended up bringing back with us.
So, needless to say, this story has some successes and some heartbreak. All of the animals in the photo gallery on our home page are in need of a foster, foster-to-adopt, or to be adopted right away. We are already bursting at the seams and we are also running dangerously low on funds.
We are so appreciative of our RARE community. Bringing these animals back with us meant incurring more costs we weren’t anticipating, but with our summer fundraiser started last week, we trust our RARE community to help us stay afloat. We quite literally could not do it without y’all. Please consider donating to our fundraiser so we can continue to help the animals in our care and in the future continue doing these rural shelter outreach days.
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