Media Alert: DDR is being featured in PETSMART Charities Quarterly Newsletter for Winter 2010. Here is your first hand peek at the newsletter!
How One Agency is Putting a New “Targeted” Spay/Neuter Grant to Use
⇨Agency: Downtown Dog Rescue
⇨Location: Compton, Calif.
⇨Targets: Pit bull terriers; low-income
and homeless dog owners
PetSmart Charities® last fall announced its newest grant guidelines and, within weeks, received more than 450 applications from animal-welfare groups across the country. As this application-review process begins to wrap up, a handful of agencies have already received funding and are putting their grant dollars to work.
One such agency is Downtown Dog Rescue in Compton, Calif. The agency received one of the first grants from PetSmart Charities under the new grant guidelines announced in September. The group plans to increase mobile spay/neuter clinics in Compton, Calif. from four per year to 16, providing about 700 sterilizations for the pets of low-income residents.
PetSmart Charities invited animal-welfare organizations to apply for targeted spay/neuter programs, which include efforts to sterilize owned pets by concentrating on an identified local need or problem. Downtown Dog Rescue will use the grant funds to spay/neuter dogs, primarily pit bull terriers, owned by low-income residents in Compton. Dog owners will be able to receive free spay/neuter surgery at the 16 mobile clinics. “Our goal is not to turn anyone away,” said
Lori Weise, founder. “We work closely with Los Angeles County Animal Control to identify and persuade people to bring their pets in. No one had ever done anything in Compton before, and now there’s a definite improvement. People are getting the idea that if they have a dog, they go to the clinics.”
Downtown Dog Rescue will collaborate with three mobile clinics to provide the spay/neuter services, and also will receive matching funds from the County of Los Angeles Animal Services spay/neuter fund. The use of this targeted spay/neuter grant funding is expected to reduce unaltered and stray dogs – notably pit bull terriers which, in the target area, are disproportionately surrendered to or impounded by local shelters and animal-control agencies.
Downtown Dog Rescue was selected as a grant recipient because of its well-developed collaboration with other key members in the community and its ability to provide baseline data on intakes from the targeted area and updated progress reports.
“We know we can’t be all things to everyone,” continued Weise. “But choosing a targeted area is a good way to see results. The park where we hold the mobile clinics lets us know that they see the benefits – there are no longer packs of dogs scaring kids. We are so appreciative of PetSmart Charities for helping to make this happen.”
