DeSoto Animal Rescue Society: KONG Toys Grant Report

How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?

The Kong products were used to provide enrichment opportunities to our foster dogs, especially those who are crated for long periods of time while their foster parents are working or volunteering for DARS.

They helped the dogs by providing hours of enrichment and lessened anxiety from crate boredom and separation anxiety. They also help with training and even exercise because they are so valued by our foster dogs.

How many pets did this grant help?

The grant helped about 12 dogs in our foster system initially, and because they are washable and reusable, they will continue to provide benefits to our dogs and future foster dogs for many years. All of our foster parents trust Kong products to be safe, beneficial and reliable.

Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.

The Kongs have been especially beneficial for Clementine, who has demonstrated a lot of separation anxiety, as well as resource guarding with both other dogs and with her foster parents. This little girl is extremely smart and not easily distracted, but fill a Kong with peanut butter or cream cheese and her focus is laser straight on that task alone. She also loves the Kongs without yummy additives! We’re using two of them to combat her resource guarding. Everyday exercises with these great tools have really helped her learn trading, releasing on command, saying please, etc. It’s worked wonders over these past couple of months.

Our foster parents and general volunteers are all grateful for the Kong grant providing these great products for our foster dogs. Our foster parents are generally responsible for providing the toys and training tools they use for their foster animals. Having this grant is especially helpful to those fosters who have a large turnover and therefore use a lot of resources.

Thank you to Kong and the Petfinder Foundation for choosing DARS for this wonderful grant.