Salem's Hollow Animal Rescue: KONG Toys Grant Report

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

This grant has been an enormous blessing to our organization. It can be difficult, both financially and logistically, to keep toys on hand that appeal to different types of dogs. However, Kongs are always a hit with all of our dogs!

The large supply of varying sizes and types of Kongs makes it easy for us to always keep frozen Kongs ready for new fosters. We primarily focus on taking in dumped and abandoned dogs in Central Texas, so we never know the size or condition of the next dog we're going to rescue. The variety and ease of use of this grant is so helpful.

Additionally, we always use the Kongs as training aids and find them to be the most successful training aid we've used to date.

How many pets did this grant help?

25+

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

Last winter hit swift and hard in Central Texas and we took in more dogs than we had planned. We took in two mother dogs with two nursing babies right before Christmas.

The larger mother dog, Mabel (first three photos), got her own large Kong and we began training her puppies George and Pickles (fourth photo) with medium Kongs.

The smaller, Chihuahua-mix mom, Rosie, got a medium Kong and the tiny Kongs were perfect to begin training her precious puppies Chili and Pepper.

Everyone was adopted before Easter except for Mabel and George. So we had an Easter-egg hunt for Mabel and George (photos 5-7), with the grand prize being a yummy, stuffed Kong. We created a social-media post about the Easter-egg hunt on Instagram and Facebook and made sure to mention the Kong grant. All six of these dogs have now been adopted and continue to use Kongs in their new homes!