We often get that question. The truth is that we are and we aren't. As you may or may not know, Town Lake Animal Center (the only open admission shelter in Austin/Travis County) killed 10,916 pets last year.
Austin Pets Alive! was created to stop this needless killing. In the last 6 months we have saved over 700 animals from dying a certain death (we only choose animals from the shelter that are on the euthanasia list- meaning no one else can take them). So in that sense we are a rescue group but by taking only the ones set for euthanasia, we are not duplicating any other group's efforts.
BUT our true intent is to make Austin a No Kill City. And that is directly accomplished in two ways.
One way is by rescuing the animals that are set to be euthanized (anyone who has visited our adoptions, knows that there is nothing wrong with the pets we rescue, so their euthanasia would have been needless).
The other way is by helping people to keep their pets so they are not surrendered to the shelter and can't end up on the euthanasia list (see related post).
In order for us to be successful in the very near term (saving 700 out of the roughly 5500 animals that were put to death over the last 6 months is a success but we want closer to 90% this year!), we have to ramp up what we are doing in a big way.
What do we need to accomplish our goals:
We need a building to offer resources (can you believe we have done all this with no building?)
We need vehicles (each adoption site requires one vehicle)
We need donations (even with a volunteer army, we need money to care for all these animals)
We need YOU (for volunteering and fostering)
Please help us make 2009 the year that animals can count on living in Austin as means of staying alive!
