Heya peeps! 🦄
To be honest, my family never had much money growing up, and I was raised to be pretty careful and frugal... But recently, the cause that has been on my heart are animal rescues and no-kill shelters.
There are sooo many ways we can show love and support to the massive amount of dogs, cats, horses, small furry creatures, feathered friends, and other pets who are living in shelters and waiting in rescues for new homes. It doesn't have to just be financial donations. If you feel like spreading some love to animals this Christmas (or anytime), here are some ideas...
🐕🐈⬛🐎🫏🐖🐢🐠🐇🐀🐓🕊🦜
Volunteering Our Time
- Helping to run social media/websites
- Taking their adoption photos
- Transporting animals between facilities or to vet appointments
- Working and cleaning
Donating
- Pet food, hay, salt licks, and treats
- Supplies like leashes, harnesses, halters, blankets, crates, kitty litter, food bowls, buckets, troughs, etc.
- Toys or enrichment
- Financial donations that contribute to their healthcare, overall upkeep, medical equipment for the rescue organization, etc.
- Many organizations have an online wish list of desperately-needed items
Day Care
- Sign out a dog for a few hours or the night; take them for a walk in your local park, a hike in the foothills, or give them a quiet night's sleep away from the stressful and loud shelter environment.
Fostering
- Take care of a kitten, puppy, grown dog or cat - even possibly one recovering from surgery or giving birth - for a few nights, a few weeks, or until they find a home.
- Contribute to their socialization, training, and mental health, by keeping them in a loving home environment instead of the shelter.
- Actively advertise the available pet wherever the two of you go together.
Adoption
- If you can make the long-term commitment and have the available time, funds, and a compatible lifestyle, consider adopting.
- We can't save every animal, but we can save one.
This year, a rescue that saves a tremendous amount of free-running, unwanted, and injured dogs from nearby Native American reservations, requested dog crates on their Christmas wish list. I've been following the rescue for some time now, and hope to adopt from them one day when circumstances allow us to have more than one dog, so I talked to my boyfriend and we went ahead and sent them a dog crate for Christmas. It's not the most exciting way to support the cause, but it's what they need, and it's the most practical way we can contribute, right now. 😊
If you feel like helping out a shelter animal for Christmas, remember there are so many ways to show them love and care, besides adoption, or giving money.
Merry Christmas to any fellow animal lovers out there! 🎄🦌❄️ Thanks for reading.
A note regarding adoption vs. shopping for purebreds...
I am a huge animal lover, and adore seeing and identifying purebred dogs when I travel. But please consider the unfathomable amount of sweet and beautiful shelter animals available for adoption, if you are considering purchasing a purebred or designer dog or cat from a breeder or store.
Shelter dogs and cats can be just as well-mannered, trainable, and cute. They also have mixed genes which can mean they are far less prone to genetic disorders.
Yes, they may often already be grown, and yes, they may have trauma which can result in behavioral issues. However, if you're in a place to take this on, they are well worth the effort.
~ Sunset Snuggles
P.S. Feel free to use this thread to share pictures of your rescue pets!
🦄 Enthusiast 🏞 Travel Fiend 🐘 Animal Lover
🎄 Merry Christmas to my homies! ☃️