YGRR C.A.R.E. Program

We’ve had a very busy quarter since I last reported to you, and almost all of it has been a good kind of busy.  Yes, there are still more homeless dogs out there, but the good news is that our outreach program is yielding benefits. 

For quite some time over the past few years, the number of dogs at our facility hovered in the low single digits.  While we may think this is a good thing, we have our own facility, with paid (very) experienced staff.  We’ve struggled about what to do with the declining numbers, which is why we instituted our recent outreach programs to see if we could affect the homeless dog population in a positive way outside of New England.

The short answer is a resounding “Yes”.  We actually do wish that there wasn’t a need for an organization such as ours or a facility like the one that we have, but we felt that there was a need that was different from our original charter. 

Reaching out to the Animal Control Officers and shelters throughout New England did give us positive results, but not as much as we had hoped.  Going through this exercise was good in other ways and we have sent a reminder to organizations that may have had a significant employee turnover since the last time we did this.  As it was, this was more of a re-introduction to a new group of people at organizations that we have been associated with in the past.

Expanding the our intake to Golden Retriever mixes has had a very positive result.  We now have more mixes than purebred Goldens at Riverview.  The members that we have contacted about possible adoptions have mostly been very positive and our first mixes have found loving homes.

Reaching outside of our traditional service area of New England has netted us an overwhelming response.  We have brought in a lot of dogs, mostly from down south, along with a few from upstate New York.  Many of these dogs have come in with multiple medical issues, but we are very enthusiastic about this as we believe they have come to the right place as we have the expertise to help them.  We partnered with some smaller transport companies who do transports with smaller vehicles.  These transports have taken longer, but the rides north for the dogs are more comfortable and humane.  Many of the dogs have hopped out of the transport vehicle and immediately given us welcome kisses.  These dogs have adjusted very well to Rirverview and once they complete their treatment, will be going to their forever homes.

We are close to capacity now at Riverview, and that will be changing soon with many of these dogs coming off “hold” and going home.

The picture I am including this month is one I took personally, instead of an official YGRR picture.  The reason I am including this picture is as an example of how successful the program has been.  This is Belle who, at the time of this writing is almost 15 years old.  She was left alone in an abandoned home for nearly 6 months after her family moved out.  She came to us barely weighing 30 pounds and is now over 40 and doing well.  She went home in late September with a retiree who is home all the time.  She has two cat sisters and they are all getting along very well.  She is in her loving forever home knowing what it is like to be loved because of your support.  Pardon the picture quality, but being with her is an emotional time and it’s hard to hold the camera steady.

Links:

• Yankee Golden Retriever Rescue

The dogs that come into our care do not usually have much say in the changes that they have been through, but they are usually unfailingly positive in their outlook and ability to adapt to the changes that they are presented with.  It is their spirit that drives us to care for the dogs that have come into our care and to find them the best home possible for their personality, physical or medical situation.

The animal welfare, rescue and shelter landscape has also been experiencing a change over the past few years.  At YGRR, we have been watching these changes before determining how we wanted to proceed.  After careful consideration, we decided to take three separate actions.

1. Expand our intake from only purebred Golden Retrievers, to Golden Retriever mixes.  Our Golden Retriever intake has been trending down for a while, providing us with the additional capacity to handle this change.
2. Send notification of these changes to all of the Animal Control Officers (ACO) and shelters throughout New England.  Without informing these key contributors, we may have missed bringing in a dog that needs our care, because the ACO did not realize we had adjusted our intake policy.
3. Expand our intake footprint beyond New England by forming partnerships with a few select organizations outside of our traditional service area.  Other parts of the United States have been experiencing an uptick in additional homeless Golden Retrievers and Golden mixes.  These parts of the country have not been as successful providing adoptive families.  We are working to initiate these partnerships to create a pipeline from these areas to Yankee.   We have the capacity and these organizations have a need for our help. 

We are very fortunate that we have both the facility to care for these dogs, but also that our staff has an extraordinary level of experience in dog care that leads us to believe that we will be very successful managing these changes.  As of this writing, we are starting to get word about a few dogs becoming available for us from these organizations.  We believe this may be like the babbling brook at the beginning of a stream and that more will be coming in the near future.

Also, please visit us at the new http://ygrr.org/index.htm later this week.  We hope you'll like what you see.

Links:

• Yankee Golden Retriever Rescue