Adoption Event THIS SATURDAY!

Just wanted to pass on some more information about our adoption event this coming Saturday. We'll be at Greensgrow Farm in the Kensington/Fishtown area of Philadelphia this Saturday (5/30) from 10 to 2 pm. As always, we love to have people stop by to give our dogs (and us) some attention. The address is 2501 E. Cumberland Street in Philadelphia. While you are visiting, please thank the Greensgrow staff for having us join them for the day; they've been fabulous to work with and we're very excited!

Greensgrow Farm, if you haven't been there, is a fabulous place. Every Thursday and Saturday through the summer (and starting this week), they host a farmer's market with a slew of produce, meats, cheeses, etc, that are locally produced and direct from the farmer. You'll also have the chance to pick up any plants that you haven't gotten into your garden yet. They have a fantastic selection of veggie, fruit, and herb starters, as well as flowers and plants for your garden. On top of that, their staff is amazing at giving out tips and suggestions for all of your urban gardening. Their website is: Greensgrow Farm.

And if you're looking for something specific, here's a list of what will be available this Saturday at the Market:

LOCAL PRODUCE:
Asparagus
Beets
Leeks
Radishes
Scallions
Spinach
Greenhouse Tomatoes
Yams
Strawberries
Spring Mix
Baby Arugula
Baby Spinach
Red Leaf Lettuce
Green Leaf Lettuce
Romaine Lettuce
Radishes
Alfalfa Sprouts
Pea Shoots
B+B Garden's Organic Produce (Saturday only): Radishes, Pac Choi, and a variety of greens

LOCALLY PRODUCED GOODS:
Fruitwood Farms' Honey
Patterson Farms' Maple Syrup
Blue Water Coffee
Lilith's Apothecary
C.O.P.A. Soaps
Metropolitan Bakery Granola
Antonia's Pierogis
Nature Soy Tofu
Ray's Wheat Meat
Vrapple
Hot Sauce
Apple Butter
Greensgrow's Pesto
Slowrise Breads
Tony Rolls' Baguettes
'Baked' Coffee Cake + Scones
North Port Fishington Vegan Cookies
MyHouse Cookies Scones + Brownies
Gilda's Biscotti
Spelt Flour + Noodles
and much more....

AS ALWAYS, you can also find local meats, cheeses, eggs, and milk from humanely raised, grass-fed animals in our fridges and freezer in the greenhouse.

We hope to see you there!!!

Upcoming Adoption Events

Spring is here, and with it comes warmer weather. What does that mean for us? It means we can finally start getting back outside with our adoptable animals at adoption events! Adoption events are a great chance for people to meet our animals and to get a chance to chat with us about the work we do. It's also a fantastic opportunity for our critters to get a day's worth of love and adoration! Since most of them are being fostered in homes with other animals, they rarely get 100% of anyone's attention for very long. Adoption events are the perfect way for us to remind them just how special they are! We are always looking for volunteers to staff our table at adoption events and to hold dogs; the more volunteers we have, the more dogs we can bring!

We currently have three events scheduled in the upcoming month or so; we'll update with more information when we have it. We'd love it if you can stop by to stay hello to our critters (and us). If you have a little more time, we can also use a few volunteers for each event. As we schedule more events for the summer, we'll keep you posted with dates and locations.

THIS SATURDAY!!!
Location to be announced

Saturday, May 30th
Greensgrow Farm in Kensington

Sunday, June 21st, 9-3
Location coming soon!

The cat affectionately known as Splat...

So on a pretty average Sunday afternoon, I got a call on my cell phone from the emergency service at the University of Pennsylvania Veterinary Hospital. A good friend of mine (and a weekend nurse in ES), Trish, was on the other line. "Would you guys be interested in taking on a high rise cat?" The veterinary profession commonly uses the term "high rise" syndrome to refer to cats that have jumped (or fallen) from a height that would easily be death of a less fortunate species. For some reason, cats that are immediately treated have a 90% survival rate after falling anywhere from 2-32 stories. Tiger, the kitty sitting in ES that Sunday, had fallen from a 6 story window sometime on Saturday. Unfortunately for him, no one had brought him into the veterinary clinic for 24 hours. Because Tiger didn't have any other options, Trish called us to see if we had a foster home and the funds to help treat poor Tiger. Luckily, I had just adopted out my last set of kittens and only had one other foster kitty, so I was game to take Tiger. And, thanks to the generous grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation, we did have the funds to fix him. I headed in to ES to meet this poor kitty and to get a sense of how bad he had been injured. As it turned out, he had broken his left hind leg pretty badly and had a bunch of abrasions on his mouth and tongue, as well as some degloving on his front left paw. We FIV/FeLeuk tested him, then loaded him up on painkillers and antibiotics for the night (since his surgery would have to wait until the morning) and then I took him home. That night, he got pain meds every 4 hours, and first thing in the morning we drove out to Sara's veterinary practice to have him worked up and, hopefully, fixed. After some radiographs, it was clear that his left hind leg had been broken in two places (at the knee and near his hip) and couldn't be saved. His front paw, although it looked terrible, only had one dislocated bone, which could easily be removed. A few hours later, Tiger awoke from surgery with on less leg and one less toe. For the next few days, we kept him on strong pain killers and antibiotics as we waited to see how well everything would heal. Luckily for Tiger, he's now doing great! He's moved from being on cage rest to having the run of a small room, and he's learning how to get around, climb on laps, and play with only three legs. He's still a little worried about sudden noises and movements, which isn't too surprising considering his traumatic injury. Hopefully, in the next few weeks he'll be healthy enough (physically and mentally) to go to a new home!

We've been busy...

Just because we've been quiet over the past few weeks doesn't mean we haven't been busy! The past few months have been pretty crazy for us, luckily all in good ways!

To start, this year we were awarded our first grant. Last year, we were nominated for this grant by one of our supporters, Jennifer Mayer (who is also an associate board member of the foundation) and wrote our very first grant application. The wonderful Nathan Cummings Foundation decided to award us $9,900 towards our general mission of rescuing homeless animals, especially those with medical needs, and placing them into adoptive homes. We are eternally grateful to this foundation for believing in our goals and helping us to save more animals. Because of this grant, we've already been able to save a few critters that we otherwise would not have had the funds to treat. Over the next few months, we'll be highlighting some of these "special" cases, who had no other options and were slated for euthanasia, and who we were able to save and place into homes due to this generous grant. Thank you again and forever!

While that news has certainly been at highlight of the past few months, it's far from our only accomplishment! Another one of our volunteers, Amy Lefever, a marketing and publicity guru, offered to help us to "get our name out there"! She's helped us to develop a marketing and publicity plan and took the initiative to develop a Cares4pets facebook page, which already has 36 fans!

In addition, our website has been launched!!! Jason Kraley, one of our supporters, has been kind enough to donate his time and design skills to setting up a website that is not only eye-catching and fun, but also easy for all of us techno-illiterate folks to update. It looks amazing and will hopefully also serve to help our efforts be noticed! We're still a little behind in getting it up to date, but many of our adoptable animals are finally listed!

Finally, I have to take a minute to thank Ashley Mosser and Christy Hoffman. Ashley, our resident Girl Scout, has been doing an amazing job collecting updates from all of our adoptive homes, organizing them, and putting them on both our petfinder site as well as our newly launched website. In a few months, we'll hopefully have a much more complete list of our previously adopted critters with new pictures and updates. Christy is one of our volunteers that started out as a foster home and has been willing to donate even more of her time to our organization. Christy has been updating our facebook site, learning how to update our website, searching for new grants, and emailing food companies to see if anyone is willing to donate dog and cat food to our organization. She's amazing; we already don't know what we would do without her!!!

But that's not all! In the past few months, we've also had a number of donation drives done for our organization; the Long family (also proud owners of on of our rescues) did a donation drive for us over the Christmas holidays and brought us tons of wonderful goodies; everything from toys and treats to lots of food! Local Girl Scout troops also put together a drive for us, garnering us a ton of blankets, towels, food, cleaning supplies, and more!

So as you can see, we've been super busy! We hope that the next few months will be just as exciting! We'd like to expand even more and start publishing a bi-annual newsletter as well as plan a fundraising and networking event (or two!). Thanks again to everyone who has helped make the past few months such a success!

Being a Foster Home

Because Cares4pets is a foster-home based rescue group, we don't keep our animals in a central shelter. Every now and again, we need to kennel a dog for a few days until we find it somewhere appropriate to go, but for the most part, all of our critters are in loving homes. It's really easy to take something like this for granted, but it takes a lot of time and effort to place animals in appropriate foster homes and to keep them there. In addition, fostering is a ton of work for the foster home too; teaching a dog or cat basic manners while learning about their personalities can be a daunting task, especially when one is not looking to adopt their foster animal.

Although each of us running Cares4pets can share our foster stories, it's hard for us to remember our first overwhelming foster experience. However, one of our foster homes just started a blog to share their first fostering experience with the world. It can be found here: Foster Home Blog. As all of us who have fostered animals know, the true reward from being a foster home comes when your animal finally gets to his/her forever home and settles there. Brutus, the first foster dog for FosterDogMom, just went to his forever home last weekend. In the next few weeks, we'll get pictures and updates from his new home to share with his temporary foster home. Already, FosterDogMom is gearing up for foster number two. For all the trials and tribulations, she and her family will be back for more!

On the other hand, running a foster home-based rescue group is hard for us as well. We are constantly on the lookout for foster homes, especially homes interested and willing to take on large dogs, pit mixes, cats, and special needs (medical or behavior) critters. Quite often, we find a great foster home, only to have them "fail out" of our foster program, meaning that instead of fostering, they end up falling in love and adopting the animal. That's wonderful for them, the animal, and us, but it also means that we are forever on the lookout for more foster homes.

If you or anyone you know might be interested in fostering for our group, we would love to speak with you! Please send us an email, and we'll give you more information and answer any questions you might have!

Babies!!!

In just one afternoon, we managed to acquire 6 puppies (5 girls and one boy) and 3 kittens. It's always a "mistake" to look around when we're helping out at local shelters, and last weekend was no exception. Shana was heading to the shelter to help with spays and neuters, so I asked her to take a quick look around to see if there were any cats or kittens in desperate need of foster, either because they were medical cases that needed treatment or because they were too young to stay in the shelter without getting sick. Shana asked one of the volunteers at the shelter, and it all went downhill from there. The conversation went something like this...

Natalie: If you see a cat that needs a foster home, let me know, since I currently don't have any foster cats.

Shana: They just told me that they need a foster home for two kittens; are you game to take two?

So I arrived at the shelter ready to take home two kittens, only to look in the cage to see that there were in fact three. And so, it's no surprise that instead of taking home one cat to transfer to Cares4pets, we ended up taking three.

The puppies were another story... We all know better than to walk through the shelter when we visit, knowing that something will catch our eye. The last time we visited, we left with a sheltie and two american bulldog mixes after promising ourselves that we wouldn't take anything home.

And so, since we have more than enough dogs in our program currently, Shana avoided the adoption rows. However, as she walking out the front door, she almost ran into a big tupperware bin with holes poked in the top. She opened it up to find a litter of adorable puppies inside. No note, no information, just a tupperware bin full of puppies.

And thus, in a matter of hours, we found ourselves with 9 more critters in need of homes. All in a good days work...

Doesn't anyone want an old Rottie?

When one of our volunteers saw two dogs running down the streets of West Philadelphia, she of course stopped to see if they were ok. They were both petrified and one of them was dragging a chain behind him, but other than that they were both friendly and healthy. After a few days of looking for their owners, it became pretty clear that whoever had lost these two dogs didn't want them any more. Momma Bear (as we named her) is a sweet, old Rottie. Her son, Buddha Bear, was mixed with mastiff. Being young and healthy (he was only around a year old), we found Buddha Bear a home pretty quickly, where he is being spoiled just like he deserves. Poor Momma Bear, however, hasn't gotten her lucky break yet.
When we first brought her in, we noticed that she always had a lot of nasal discharge and that her eyes seemed pretty uncomfortable. When we had our vet look at her, she was diagnosed with entropion, a condition where the eyelid folds back over the eye, causing her fur to scratch the cornea of her eye every time she blinked. This poor old lady lived the first few years of her life with painful eyes. Now that they've been surgically corrected, her eyes are much clearer and she's a much happier dog. But being a happy dog doesn't necessarily get you a home, especially when you're an old lady rottweiler. Momma Bear loves to be snuggled; she will curl up in her foster mom's lap for hours at a time. She doesn't ask for much; a few scratches, a few minutes of play time, and she's pretty much content. And yet, she sits in foster care, still waiting for her new family to come take her home. She's not a spring chicken, so we cross our fingers that we'll be able to find her a home soon, that she gets to enjoy being the love of someone's life, even if it's only for a few months or a few years. She deserves that much.