Here at The Dogist, the entire month of October is dedicated to animal rescue. As you all know, rescue dogs are near and dear to #TeamDogist’s heart – we wouldn’t have Elsa, Simon, or Artie if it weren’t for the incredible organizations that helped save them. We celebrated rescue pups & rescue organizations all over the tri-state area for the entire month! All of the funds raised for The Dogist Fund during October were be split between four incredible rescue organizations – Animal Care Centers of NYC, Muddy Paws Rescue, SNARR Northeast Rescue, and St. Hubert's Animal. Not only that, but we also featured at least one adoptable dog on our Instagram stories EVERY SINGLE DAY, and ended up featuring over 50 adoptable pups.

“We’re the Animal Care Centers of New York and have been a non-profit entity since 1995. Originally our facility was run by the ASPCA but we took over the city contract. We’ve got the best of both worlds being a non-profit that’s still able to fundraise while receiving funds from the Department of Health and New York City. However, ACC of NYC has one of the lowest budgets in the nation – we have about $17.7M to serve more than eight million people. For perspective, Austin has $16.4M to serve less than one million people. We’re the only open admissions shelter in the entire city. That means we take in every animal, regardless of health, size, temperament or even species. We’ve had a couple of crocodiles and even a Tiger come through here. Basically any animal that’s loose and caught in NYC is brought here. Any exotic species are then transported to one of our sanctuary partners. From incubating premature born kittens to training dogs and helping them iron out any behavioral issues, we do it all. We are a big operation with over 200 team members including many volunteers. Dog trainers, groomers, veterinarians, surgeons, foster teams, dog handlers, cleaning staff and volunteers, it’s a lot of dog lovers under one roof working tirelessly to help animals in need.”

“It all started with Rachael, our Executive Director. She came from a background of music and broadway and started volunteering at a different rescue organization. She quickly realized that she wanted to do this on her own, and she wanted to try and do it even better. She started Muddy Paws in the corner of her living room – the first year, she set a goal of finding 200 dogs their forever homes, and they ended up having 764 adoptions. Now, five years later, Muddy Paws has helped over 5,000 puppies and dogs find families. We work within our foster network of more than 3,000 homes and practice a conversation-based, open adoption model where adoption is as positive and stress-free as possible. What sets us apart is our innovation in tech – we’re always looking to make things more streamlined and automated while still keeping it personal. We onboard our volunteers onto Slack, we use Zapier to automate processes like post-adoption follow ups, we backend coding to make our adoptable dogs page seamless with SalesForce, and we created an entirely new system called TailTracker to make adoption events flow. Our volunteers are really young and tech savvy, which is different from a lot of organizations. I think we break the mold as to what people picture rescue organizations to be like.”

“SNARR stands for Special Needs Animal Rescue and Rehabilitation and we’re turning ten in November. Our founder, Courtney, came across a dog named Frankie, who was deaf, and was inspired to build a rescue. He’s now one of her children. We focus on dogs with special needs – they’re paralyzed, have heartworm or heart conditions, have behavioral issues or are otherwise at risk for euthanasia. Some dogs are bigger and harder to place with families or are a bonded pair – not everyone wants two dogs. A lot of dogs come from down South from overcrowded shelters. My own dog had a shattered hip – it’s things like that that we support. One of our dogs, Audrey, had no back legs – she now lives with a musician and goes on tour with him on her wheels."

“We’re primarily foster based and have about 100 volunteers from all over. We incur the typical costs associated with spay/neuter, recuperation for malnourished dogs, and parvo cases. We just recently purchased a transport van (actually a school bus) that is currently on its way to Texas to pick up dogs. Lots of mom dogs come up with up to ten puppies, and it’s always great when the puppies get adopted, but it’s often the mom dogs that get left behind. Since we focus on special needs cases, we have a lot of extra medical costs and fundraising associated with it. We often take in dogs that got run over, and there was recently a dog that was shot in the head – surgeries for those dogs are expensive. The MRIs, CT Scans, and surgeries are thousands of dollars. We also maintain a water therapy program for dogs with mobility issues.There’s always money going out, so we always appreciate money coming in to help assist with those dogs.”

St. Huberts Animal Welfare Center

“We are a full service animal welfare organization – we’ll help you with whatever stage you’re at with your animal. If you’re looking to adopt or if you’re struggling to provide financially for your pet, we can help. If your pet gets lost, our Animal Control Officers pick up strays and help reunite them with their families. If it comes to the end of life for your pet, we can help you find resources along with helping connect you with our pet loss and grief group. People often believe the loss of a pet should be less than or different to the loss of a human loved one, but it's not – it's losing a family member. We offer public training programs for your dog – nose work, obedience training, agility training, and doggy day camp."

"We also provide safe housing for the pets of domestic violence victims. If someone finds themselves in a situation where they need to remove their family and there’s nowhere to place their pet, we will take the pet into foster care. 25-40% of people with pets will remain in unsafe situations if they have nowhere to bring their animals, and most domestic violence shelters don’t allow pets. Our Waystation Program, with over 90 partners, takes in 2-3 animal transports per week from down South, where the overcrowding and overpopulation is high, to the North where there’s more shelter space. We also have a youth task force that comes in and helps handle and socialize animals, typically high school students that are anywhere from 15-17 years old. They learn how to fundraise, how to have safe interactions with animals, and learn social media – it’s great for their future job prospects.”

We ended up raising $16,000 for NYCACC, Muddy Paws Rescue, SNARR & St. Hubert's! We also featured 52 adoptable dogs and helped 28 of them find their forever homes. We can't thank The Dogist community enough for helping us support this amazing organization!