Recently we had someone ask why our adoption fees were so much higher than many county-run shelters. While I cannot speak for all shelters, attached is the 2018 public shelter report from Raleigh which tells what each county-run shelter in NC operating expenses were.

We are an all-volunteer 501c3 non-profit rescue that relies on donations and fundraisers to take care of the animals in our rescue. Most of the animals we take in are in dire need of veterinary care. Just recently we took in a dog with a tumour that needed to be removed and was heartworm positive. So they will need treatment once she has taken her antibiotics for a month, a female shep mix that was not only pregnant but heartworm positive, a dog with a shotgun hole in his leg, a dog on death’s door that spent two weeks in intensive care and two dogs with chemical burns down their backs. The list is long but we feel that as a rescue, this is our main purpose. We do get some dogs that are surrendered to us that may not be in as serious physical need, but many times they are in emotional need. Recently we took in a four-month-old pup who goes in his crate to sleep but then acts like someone is going to hurt him when you go towards the crate. We work through these issues too to help these animals gain trust in humans again. We take in many either directly from owners or strays and hold the appropriate time to try and help keep the dogs from ending up at our local shelter, which has a certain amount of kennels and cannot continue to take dogs in once full, which in turn leads to them euthanizing dogs.

We are very fortunate that our county shelter has a very generous budget, along with a full-time veterinarian and a full-time vet tech. I have attached the 2018 public records of all NC shelters and you can go to Cleveland County to see the operating expenses there (2019 should be out by the end of this month). CCAS had operating expenses in 2018 of $1,148,369.00 according to the state records and it has increased since. We are very grateful our county is putting forth such an effort to help the animals that end up at the shelter and has the ability to do so.
As a rescue, we must take our dogs to the veterinarians like everyone else, pay whatever needs to be paid and if you follow us, you also know we take our dogs to specialists when needed. We do whatever is needed for them. We have had veterinary bills for one dog be up in the thousands. Our adoption fee is the same for each dog no matter how much was spent on them. We do tons of fundraisers throughout the year and we are fortunate to have supporters who believe in as we do that all lives matter, and contribute to our cause.
Out of 40 dogs currently in our rescue (currently, we have had over 50 at one time), 31 are in homes with fosters, where we also know if they are crate trained, house trained, dog-friendly, cat-friendly, kid-friendly and leash trained, etc. The nine in rescue boarding are also dog tested, have playtime with other dogs, work on their leash training, have a schedule to work on kennel training and have a trainer available if needed.
We have an awesome adoption coordinator who, on her own time and dime, goes over applications, checks vet references, does home visits and meets and greets to make sure the family and the dog are a match. We strongly feel most of the dogs we take in have gone through enough, whether it be physical or mental suffering and we want to do our best to find the closest to perfect home for each and every one of them.
Our dogs are with us until they find the perfect home. We do not euthanize any of our dogs unless they are “irremediably suffering, or rigorously defined.” We furnish everything for our dogs, give them medicine if needed (we have seizure, diabetic, and hospice dogs all on different meds), food, heartworm preventive, and whatever is needed until they find their forever home.

Hope this helps understand what we do, our passion to save lives… because all lives truly do matter.

When I first got involved in rescue, I had no clue what I was even trying to do. There is not a magic class one takes when they decide this is their passion. There is no written handbook as to this is how you do it. Thankfully, some really great people who were involved in rescue before me, and who we had become partners with trying to save lives, were more than willing to share their wealth of knowledge with me. I tried and continue to try to soak all the information they share up like a sponge. It has been invaluable to myself and Cliffords. They were and continue to be true rescuers, dedicated to the cause, and willing to help others who share the same passion to succeed. As it should be, the more rescues doing the right things, succeeding saving lives, the less that die, scared and alone.

I have also been very fortunate to have a couple of friends I met through rescue who have shared their wealth of knowledge on behaviors, training, positive reinforcements, with me. While I am by no means any sort of trainer, I have learned so much from these people. It has helped me to work with feral, frightened, injured animals (as many of you know, feral and frightened are the ones I am drawn to), it has helped me to follow my passion to save them all. While I realize that is a huge feat to try to accomplish, I do not want an animal to die simply because they were frightened or injured.

I think there are two thoughts with rescues on the verbiage, “we cannot save them all”.   One thought is what I personally consider “old school”, in that if you can’t save them all, don’t spend money on the severely sick or injured, but instead let those go, and help those who have a much higher rate of survival and adoption. Another thought, which is also how I feel and our rescue’s belief, is that all lives truly do matter and unless an animal is suffering irremediably, we should try our best to save him/her. Why should we decide to end a life that may be saved? One could argue funds, but again do we place money over life? I certainly hope not. So we try whether it’s a senior hospice animal, an injured animal requiring special surgery, whether they can see or not, have broken bones, heartworm positive, what is wrong is irrelevant, if it can be fixed, then we are going to do our best to fix it.

So our saying is, “that does not mean we cannot try”, in response to “you cannot save them all”.  Is it a hard mission? Yes, it is.  We sometimes lose a life when trying to save them, we sometimes give it all we have and they still don’t make it. It’s hard, it heartbreaking but at the end of the day we know we did all we could do.

The rewards of seeing one of these precious angels healing and then finding his/her forever home balances out all the tears we shed over those who do not make it. That does not mean the ones who we lost do not matter, it just means it keeps us balanced and able to continue on our mission of saving lives.  We do our best to save as many as we can and it takes a lot of blood, sweat, tears, fosters, volunteers, and funds. We are truly thankful for those who have helped because, without all of you, we could not do what we do.  There have been times we have taken in dogs without a committed foster, or without the funds, we may need, but it always works out.  The funds come in, the foster steps up, whatever the need, it seems to happen. I still remember Kaleb’s estimate on his surgery, how I gulped when I heard 7 to 8 thousand just for the surgery, not counting all his other needs.  I still remember one officer asking me what was I going to do, and my answer was to raise the funds. We did thanks to some awesome contributors and fundraisers. My personal belief is that the Good Lord above is watching over his creatures, and he is making sure they get the chance they all so deserve. It seems to always work out and there has to be some divine intervention for it to do so.

We currently do have a lot of animals in our care, whether in foster homes or rescue boarding and we still want to be able to help even more. There is such a need not only in our county, in our state, and beyond. There is a need for stronger laws against abusers and even stronger laws on providing proper care. Even with all the ones we take in, we are constantly getting phone calls, text messages, to help even more.

We also want to educate the youth. We already do mock adoptions at our events, teaching the children about vet care when they adopt a stuffed animal from us. We have puzzles, coloring books etc. with education about how to take care of your pets. We want to do more.  We need to help our youth learn compassion for our four-legged friends.

And back to my first paragraph, talking about rescue being my passion. I do not know when I finally realized this was my passion. Even though I have always had animals in my life. Always picked them up off the side of the road, gotten ringworm from kittens sat out in the road, almost picked up baby skunks, and yes, I move turtles to the other side of the road, facing the same direction they were headed.  I was never quite where I needed to be until rescue came my way. I have learned great restraint to be able to save lives.  There have been times I really have wanted to go off on someone, to physically hurt someone ( when you see starving pups consuming a dead pup to survive) but rescue has given me the strength to save those in need, to get them to safety and to medical attention, and control myself.  (one has to slow down and think about how to get the animals safe, not go on gut reactions and it is truly hard). But we involved in rescue do it for them, not us. Some days we do not feel like we can do enough, but we continue to strive to do more and more.

We will soon be embarking on a plan of action to help more, but for this to happen we need your help. We need you to foster, volunteer, share our posts, donate if you are able to do so, pray for the animals and to pray for us to have the strength to continue.  So please say those prayers for those with no voice, and ask the Lord to guide us down our next path, so that we may be able to save even more lives.

Stay tuned… more to come on C.A.R.E.’s next chapter … and remember it costs nothing to be kind to one another and to the animals.

Until they all have a home…. we will rescue.