The Good News: Downtown Dog Rescue

phoenixwren (65)in #thegoodnews • 7 years ago (edited)

image from http://downtowndogrescue.org

Downtown Dog Rescue is an awesome org that serves people and animals in Skid Row and Compton in Los Angeles, focusing on homeless people and their animals, low-income residents, and also stray dogs.

They are not just another shelter, however. DDR does things like help pay vet bills so animals can stay with their "first home, forever home," and out of shelters. DDR has a shelter intervention program just for this purpose, since so many animals surrendered to shelters are so not because the human doesn't love them, but because the human DOES love them and can't pay for their medical care, and thinks if they give the animal up to the shelter, the shelter will take care of them.

They also arrange free spay and neuter clinics, and have sheltered dogs whose humans were incarcerated or who died. They have paid the fees needed to get your animal OUT of the shelter (like, if your dog hops the fence and gets picked up by animal control, in order to get them back you have to pay), and they have helped build a fence at least once (maybe more, I just remember seeing it on Facebook once!) for a dog who was an escape artist. They have provided legal assistance to keep people from being evicted due to their pet, and provide free obedience classes. They cover the extra costs in cases where there is a free spay/neuter clinic, but the animal needs other healthcare in order to get the procedure done: removal of a tumor, vaccines, bloodwork ...which are not covered in the free services.

According to a recent Facebook post, this past March they served 176 cases in their shelter intervention program, 165 dogs and 11 cats (they are a dog rescue but they don't discriminate! 😺). This month (April) marks the five year anniversary of their shelter intervention program, and they have served over 10,000 cases in this time!

From their website: "After many years of working on Skid Row, Downtown Dog Rescue expanded to offer services in Compton, where living can be a challenge for residents, crime is eminent, and the euthanasia rate among pets is among the highest in Los Angeles. Regular spay and neuter clinics are held in Compton Park, for example, and in 2011 alone the clinic sterilized close to eight hundred dogs. The euthanasia rate for Pitbulls at the county shelter dropped thirty percent that year, proving that free-to-low-cost services are a solution to the problem."

image from DDR's website