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Hold on to your horse dogs and buckle your doggie seat belts, because May was a wild month with SO MANY year to date bests!
Here's a snapshot of our May happenings:
PLACEMENTS: We had 263 intakes (our highest year to date!) and 49 transfers to new fosters, for a total of 312 placements (excluding sitters and sleepovers). Notable placements include Gaston, Darby and pups, Clark, Benito, and Toro.
ADOPTIONS: We had 231 adoptions - our highest year to date BY FAR (41 over the previous highest)! Notably, the following dogs found their fureverhomes: Tinkerbell, Lakota, Almond, Rosanna, Chopper (301 net days), Princess (345 net days), Marty (370 net days), Willie Nelson (404 net days), Thaddeus (526 net days), Sebastian (550 net days), Mueller (1107 net days), and Whiskey (1180 net days).
STAFF WELCOMES & NEWS: Welcome to Eliza Mickens, our new Dog Foster Placement Team Assistant Lead!
VOLUNTEER WELCOMES & NEWS: Welcome to Anju Ramkumar, a new Dog Foster Adoption Coordinator!
SHOUT OUTS: Shout out to Daniel Barrett, a Dog Foster Care Team Coordinator! Daniel is an awesome teammate - always being super helpful and responsive. Daniel has recently stepped up on the Dog Foster Care Team helping the leads, keeping the team organized, providing great input when issues arise, learning new things quickly, taking the lead on new initiatives, and offering to put in the extra work. Not only is Daniel super passionate about our pups and our work, he also fosters a lot of harder-to-place dogs, most recently Trupa, Kasper, and Cicely and her huge litter of puppies that he found forever homes for very quickly. Thank you Daniel for being so dedicated to our team and to fostering!
HIGHLIGHTS, ANNOUNCEMENTS, AND INITIATIVES: -Year to Date Bests:
54 post-parvo placements! Highest number year to date by 22 post-parvo pups. Mad props to our onsite team, Audrey, Katy, and Eliza for helping our very full parvo ward move these dogs.
353 active dog fosters! Highest number year to date by 20 foster homes.
560 dogs in foster! Highest number year to date by 21 foster dogs.
263 new dogs intaked into the foster system! Highest number year to date by 17 intakes.
231 dogs adopted from foster! Highest number year to date by 41 adoptions (prior average was 170 dogs adopted from foster per month). Thank you to our awesome Dog Foster Adoption Team who’s been kicking butt and being super flexible with the surge in adoptions.
-46% of our foster dogs are new intakes which is on par meaning that we aren't just maintaining our dogs in foster, we are getting dogs adopted from foster and adding new dogs every month.
-We are also in the green when it comes to comparing last year to this year. We have grown our program by at least 11% in all areas we track.
-Long Stay Successes: APA!’s fabulous long-stay guru Jess Borda accumulated these stats:
APA! had a record breaking 14 300+ day dogs adopted in May! The majority of these dogs were adopted from foster (71%)!
Two 1000+ day dogs were adopted this month - both from foster (Mueller and Whiskey)!!
-Scooby’s Story: Scooby came to us a pretty typical space pull - just a dog needing a home like so many. When he showed up, we discovered that Scooby had a neurological condition that we hadn’t expected (suspected chasing tail syndrome), which manifested into some “interesting” behaviors. This significantly complicated his placement. Dog foster, behavior, and medical teams crowdsourced solutions, and we found a foster willing to work with us to help him. He’s thriving now thanks to his foster mom Alison!
-Bud’s (Edward’s) Story: We’re excited to announce Edward, who is now renamed Bud, found his forever home this week! Bud was a victim of animal cruelty. A neighbor in his owners’ complex covered him in lighter fluid, lit him on fire, and shoved him into a burning dog house. He’s a strong boy though, and luckily only suffered minor burns. Though he needed time to heal physically, his love for humans, dogs, and everyone around him shined. Even after all he went through, his eyes never stopped beaming with kindness. He went into a foster home with an APA! staff member, and he’s happy at home now with his new parents while he continues to heal.Thank you to his foster mom Jessalynn and his forever family!
-Our Dog Foster Care Team is working diligently on implementing the new system for scheduling Clinic appointments and providing valuable feedback to help improve the system. They now have access to a new appointment dashboard and will be copied on appointment confirmations to better track foster pup medical needs and appointments.
-Our Dog Foster Care Team Co-Lead, Pam Martin, has returned to fostering our most in-need pups (the Distemper and medical cases)! Pam is a god send for these pups, and we are so happy to have her back. We’ve had a slight resurgence of Distemper confirmed and watch cases, so we REALLY need our Distemper fosters and Distemper Angels now more than ever.
GOAL FOR JUNE 2019! -Senior Dog Adoptions! Our annual senior dog adoption event is here - Saturday, 6/15, with foster dogs at TLAC from 11:30-4:30. The theme is “Oldies by Goodies”. Be on the lookout for an invitation if you are fostering a senior dog (7 years old and up) that can attend high-traffic events; we will also be promoting Thrift Store exposure visits for senior foster dogs that need lower-key environs. Please spread the word far and wide and share our flyer on your social media, together with this listing on Do512: https://do512.com/events/2019/6/15/oldies-but-goodies-senior-pet-adoptions
-Given the new rule that we are no longer able to house animals from outside of Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays, Travis, and Williamson counties at TLAC, we must find a foster home for Cashew and Serendipity, two out of area dogs, by the end of June.
You can read all about Cashew here: https://www.austinpetsalive.org/adopt/dogs/apa-a-70116
You can read all about Serendipity here: https://www.austinpetsalive.org/adopt/dogs/apa-a-66734
Please email our Dog Foster Advocate, Audrey, at dog-foster-advocate@austinpetsalive.org if you are interested in meeting Cashew or Serendipity!
Onward and upward Fosters!
