Gemma a former South LA Shelter medical dog

Reo the day he found out he was adopted!

It’s with great sadness that we received the news that Reo aka Oreo crossed the rainbow bridge.  His forever foster family gave him the best five months of life. He was a loved family member, and went on great adventures with his pack.

We all knew when we rescued this special dog, his time with us would be months, maybe a couple years if we were lucky, due to a large tumor that turned out to be thyroid cancer.

He had a very extensive surgery that removed all the cancer, at that point in time, but the cancer came back. His amazing family has already expressed interest in bringing another senior dog into their home.

As the City of Los Angeles shelters are able to find more and more homes for puppies, small dogs, young healthy dogs, it’s the senior dogs and the dogs with medical issues that often are the most overlooked and do not get adopted.  Therefore, when we search for dogs to join our adoption program, we look for the true underdogs.

Recently we took two new dogs, Astria and Phoebe.  Both dogs required surgeries to remove mammary tumors.  Astria’s surgery was so extensive, she required over a week of hospitalization.  Phoebe was alerted, with less than 24 hours before she was scheduled to be euthanized, we decided to bring her into our adoption program.

Both dogs are a great example of how LAAS shelter staff and rescue work together to save lives!

8 year old Astria spent over a year in the shelter

In order to save more senior shelter dogs, we need more forever foster homes.  To become a DDR forever foster, you open your home and your heart to one of our senior dogs who might not have a lot of life left to live.  Give them the best months or final years of their lives, and we cover the medical costs when you take them to our approved animal hospitals where we have accounts in place.

You could make it possible for us to save another dog like Phoebe, a dog that had hours at the shelter before being scheduled to be euthanized.  To see all of our adoptable dogs, check out our dogs for adoption, and fill out our questionnaire.  Let us know that you want to forever foster, and we will match you with a wonderful senior dog.

If you can’t foster, you can donate to help us cover the cost of each senior dog’s medical care.

On average, it costs $1100 or more for surgery, hospitalization and follow up care.  Thank you for your support!