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Are we already 7 days into March? Man, did February fly by, but not without some awesome things happening!
Here's a snapshot of our February happenings:
PLACEMENTS:
We had 214 intakes and 29 transfers to new fosters, for a total of 243 placements (excluding sitters and sleepovers). Notable placements include: Ruby Woo and long stays Cricket, Herbert, and Jazzy!!
ADOPTIONS:
We had 143 adoptions. Notably, the following dogs found their fureverhomes: Bogart, Severus, Xena, and long stays: Kibby (534 net days)and Echo (565 net days)
STAFF WELCOMES & NEWS:
Jamison Cornett was promoted to Dog Foster Assistant Manager!
Amanda Williams was promoted to Dog Foster Placement Team Lead!
Welcome to our new Dog Adoption Manager, Allison, on the Dog Program Team! She will be handling a lot of onsite adoptions, as well as creating an exciting new team to hopefully make foster adoptions more smooth and less time consuming for staff and fosters.
SHOUT OUTS:
Shout out to staff member Laurel Moulton, Dog Foster Medical Liaison (and long-time APA! volunteer and foster), for being a FORCE when it comes to training/mentoring volunteers and fosters and for her super liaison skills in funneling necessary medical information to our Dog Foster Teams! Laurel recently stepped in to save the life of a very young puppy who needed to be tube fed and also help train the pup’s foster to tube fed in the future, thereby sharing this important knowledge so we can grow our capabilities in saving neonatal puppies!
HIGHLIGHTS, ANNOUNCEMENTS, AND INITIATIVES:
In February, Austin Pets Alive! was a part of the American Pets Alive! Conference where we worked to spread our protocols and mission to the rest of the country, hopefully saving more lives just through educational outreach. Our Dog Foster Assistant Manager and Maddie's Dog Foster Program Mentor, Regan Goins, represented the Dog Foster Team doing several presentations.
Medical placements are up 28% from last month.
Behavior placements are up 42% from last month.
We have a new way to determine previously scheduled appointments and surgeries for dogs going to foster from TLAC/TT (with the help of other teams), so that appointments don’t get missed.
Dog Foster Team, specifically the Dog Foster Placement Team leads and Dog Foster Managers, will now be doing low-level behavior consults for dogs going to and moving between fosters.
While there was a brief uptick in Distemper-watch dogs, it is already dwindling down again with most of the dogs coming out of parvo ward not on Distemper watch.
Our ISO ward is back in use for temporary foster-dog holding due to the sharp decrease in Distemper-label cases onsite.
Our new Dog Foster Care Team volunteers are all trained up and operating independently! Way to go team!
We’ve significantly increased our surgery scheduling.
On adoptions, we’ve added a bunch of mechanisms to make the process go more smoothly, namely: (1) In the adoption application, there is a new notification/acknowledgment that the applicant must notify our Dog Foster Adoption Team once they have submitted the application. It’s a huge success, and has really cut down on the number of potential adopters frustrated with losing out on a dog because they didn't know to email after submitting the application; and (2) In the online profile, the inquiry response email, and the adoption application, we now have this disclaimer for all subject dogs:
PUPPIES AND OTHER HIGHLY-ADOPTABLE DOGS DISCLAIMER: Puppies and other highly-adoptable dogs (small dogs or desirable-breed dogs) at APA! are very high in demand and usually have several interested adopters. Inquiring about a dog, meeting a dog, and even applying for a dog does not guarantee that you will be able to adopt the dog. Only one household will be able to adopt each dog, which means all other interested households will inevitably and unfortunately be disappointed. Please consider this in your search and set your expectations accordingly. Please also consider that adult dogs do not typically have competing adopters, and they need furever homes, too! Additionally, APA! does not allow the adoption of dogs who are related (e.g., littermates or mom and pup) to the same household for behavioral reasons.
GOAL FOR MARCH 2019!
Let’s keep those #fosterhacks coming on our APA! Dog Foster Facebook Page! Ideally, we’d like to create an album so that all the #fosterhacks are centrally located for easy reference, so when posting, please include a photo!
Onward and upward!
