Forever Homes for Pets in Austin

Posted by courtney on Aug 6, 2010 in Blog | 5 comments

Austin Involved is all about collaboration.  Heck, that’s what we do every month – collaborate with other local nonprofits to educate and excite young people about finding their cause.  So we were totally psyched after a meeting this morning to learn more about a really cool collaboration between a handful of local agencies that is going to provide a lot of benefit for people AND animals in Austin.

Austin Pets Alive! has worked with SafePlace to create a program called SafePets, which finds temporary foster and living situations for animals whose owners are fleeing domestic violence.  In many cases, pets become a target of family violence, and abusers can threaten to harm pets as a way to keep their families from leaving.  SafePlace cannot directly take a family’s pets into the emergency shelter, obviously, but the SafePets program allows people to escape abuse AND protect their pets from retaliatory violence.  The program has now expanded to collaborate with Front Steps and The ARCH, Austin’s homeless shelter, to find temporary living situations for pets whose owners lose their homes and would otherwise have to surrender them.

So they need more people who can help!

Austin’s pet homelessness problem is made worse by the economic crunch, and APA!s Katie McCall tells me that more animals than ever before are being surrendered by owners who can no longer care for them.  The PASS program (Positive Alternative to Shelter Surrender) is in dire need of people to be “Good Sam”s and be willing to take animals into their home for a short period of time (usually anywhere from a few days to a few months).  You don’t even have to be an APA! volunteer to do it – you just need to have a big heart and a desire to help someone who truly wants to be able to keep their pet and just needs a little time to get on their feet.

There’s a community information session tomorrow from 2pm to 4pm at Austin Urban Vet Center (710 W. 5th), or you can email pass@austinpetsalive.org.  This is an amazing way to help our city’s animals, and keep more pets from becoming homeless!  We’re so proud of these three agencies for creating an amazing collaboration, and we hope you can become a part of it.