Second Chance Animal Rescue: Disaster Response and Recovery Grant Report
How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?
The money from this grant was used to purchase needed materials to replace the three layers of roofing on our main building's east side and roofing on our outdoor family unit. Because the Petfinder Foundation granted us this money, we were able to fix one side of our main building's roof over our cat room, medical isolation housing and medical lab. We were also fortunate to be able to replace the roofing on our outdoor unit, a family-housing unit used to house nursing mothers during the summer months and transformed for feral cat colonies during the winter.
This grant gave us the ability to house a family in need immediately following the damage of Hurricane Irma. Once we received the grant, we worked on replacing the family-housing unit's roof first, which ultimately gave us the ability to rescue a mother dog, Jemma, and her seven pups in need. We were then able to start work on our main building's roof on the east side. We were not able to redo our whole roof, so we started with the side that was most important: the side that is over our medical lab, isolation room, and cat room. Without this side of our roof being fixed, we wouldn't be able to house the 13 cats we currently have, or the three animals in need of medical isolation, and ultimately we wouldn't have been able to complete any medical care for our 20 animals currently on-site.
How many pets did this grant help?
Ultimately it will have helped numerous animals, but it immediately and directly helped eight: a mother dog and her seven puppies.
Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.
Jemma and her pups were our first rescues to benefit directly from the family-housing unit being redone. We were contacted shortly after the storm had passed about numerous displaced dogs, but Jemma was one who really hit us hard. She was a pregnant Shepherd mix who was about to have her babies at any moment. We were lucky enough to find a short-term foster while the roof was being replaced. Once we finished, it was just two short days before Jemma gave birth to her seven puppies. The first photo shows her in housing with her pups. She was overjoyed to have a double unit where she could feed, clean, and snuggle with her pups, but also be able to move away and have alone time when she needed it.
Since then, all of Jemma’s puppies have been adopted and have gone home for the holidays, and Jemma has gone home with one of our avid volunteers who fell in love with her from day one of her arrival. We can’t say thank you enough for this grant funding and granting us the ability to save more animals. At this time we are currently transitioning this unit for our feral cats this winter.
