AUSTIN PETS ALIVE

APA!'s high-volume, low-cost neonatal kitten nursery, the first of its kind in the nation, is designed to take in, bottle-feed and care for 100% of orphaned unweaned kittens in Austin and to help surrounding counties save neonatal kittens turned in to their public shelters. In traditional shelters, such young kittens had been euthanized because of the intensive care they need to survive. Working round the clock, staff, volunteers and fosters treat thousands of tiny 0-6 week-old kittens annually and adopt them out. In 2020, as the pandemic restricted in-shelter care, the nursery quickly established a foster network able to care for its tiny kittens, and succeeded in saving more than ever. Before 2020, the nursery was taking in and treating around 2,500 kittens. Since 2020, through a new focus on foster-based care, the nursery has annually saved up to 4,000 and has even seen survival rates increase.

APA!’s Parvo Puppy ICU officially opened its doors in 2010 as the first of its kind in the nation after an initial pilot stage, 2008-2009. Today, it remains one of the rare dedicated programs in the country set up to treat this deadly but treatable virus in shelter dogs. APA!’s ICU now quarantines and saves over 1,000 puppies yearly through its partnerships with other shelters, whereby they transfer ill puppies to APA!. The program is becoming a center for research into parvo and its treatment that will someday transform veterinary medicine and lead to thousands more puppies saved across the US. Through a sustainable treatment model based on the use of trained volunteers, this program treats puppies at about 1/10th the cost typical at a private vet, yet matches their survivial rates. Parvo ICUs like APA!'s have begun to be replicated across the country as professionals who come to APA! to learn how to improve lifesaving practices take home what they learn and create new programs.

APA!’s ringworm ward now treats around 500 cats and kittens a year and is critical to Austin’s success in saving shelter cats. The ward was started in 2010 to rescue cats and kittens at risk of euthanasia for having ringworm at other shelters, treat their skin and mend their spirits, and adopt them into loving homes.

Although ringworm is a simple fungus that is non-fatal, can be easily treated, and can be cured within a few months, it is a death sentence in many shelters across the country. By separating cats with ringworm from other animals and providing care and treatment, APA! is able to contain the fungus and ensure that ringworm kitties have a shot at finding their forever home. APA! collaborates with area shelters to pull cats with ringworm from euthanasia lists, and then houses those cats in a specialized cattery that allows them to play and be active while undergoing treatment. It is the program’s additional mission to educate adopters and advocate for these underserved cats, reducing the stigma of ringworm.

APA!’s Feline Leukemia Adoption Center opened its doors in 2011 to provide a safe haven for cats that have been diagnosed with Feline Leukemia (FeLV), with the ultimate goal of finding each cat a loving home. One of the nation’s few programs adopting out cats with FeLV, the ward also has become a center for groundbreaking vet research. FeLV affects a cat’s immune system and may shorten its lifespan to just 2-4 years after diagnosis, though many of the cats adopted from APA with FeLV have lived much longer. Because the virus is contagious, APA! keeps FeLV+ cats isolated from other cats who are not infected. APA! believes FeLV+ cats deserve a chance at life, even if their lives may be shorter and has developed partnerships with area shelters to ensure FeLV+ cats in the Austin region have a place to call home until they can find a forever family. The program typically takes in around 450 cats and kittens each year.

The Barn Cat Program is an innovative approach to helping both unsocialized cats and the community at large. Unsocialized cats, used to living on their own, unsuited to home environments and ineligible for trap-neuter-return programs, have typically faced euthanasia in shelters, but can thrive when adopted out as "working” cats. APA! partners with area shelters to save hundreds of barn cats a year, including ones with special medical needs and seniors. The cats are sterilized, vaccinated, microchipped, and adopted out to caregivers who offer safe outdoor homes at farms, ranches, stables, warehouses and greenhouses in exchange for natural pest control.

Dogs with behavioral issues, especially big dogs, are one of the last frontier's in saving all treatable shelter pets in shelters. Through its collaboration with other shelters, APA! takes in dogs with challenging problems and gives them a second chance by providing ongoing behavior support to help them succeed in adoption. Still innovating to solve the obstacles to both saving them and ensuring they have a good quality of life while in shelter care, APA! runs a menu of behavior initiatives. These include playgroups, volunteer dog walking and running programs, Canine Good Citizen Ready and Total Obedience Program training, and Behavioral Modification. The care extended to APA!’s dogs continues throughout their lives. APA!’s Follow-up Program provides free behavioral support to all APA! adopters for the life of their dogs, as well as to foster dog caregivers. Available support includes self-help resources, phone/email consultations, and one-on-one training sessions.

American Pets Alive! (AmPA!) is APA!’s national education and outreach division. At its inception, AmPA! organized an annual conference to teach shelter professionals from across the nation how to replicate the uniquely successful lifesaving programs APA! operates in Austin. It has since also become a center for national thought leadership in progressive animal welfare. From a pilot phase in 2016 until the pandemic in 2020, AmPA! was primarily devoted to operating the Maddie’s Lifesaving Academy, which brought nearly 1,000 professionals to Austin from across the U.S. to learn hands-on and in classroom work how to improve shelter lifesaving at home. Since 2020, AmPA! has served as the backbone for the national collaborative Human Animal Support Services project (HASS). The next stage in animal welfare innovation, HASS promises to transform how shelters across the U.S. provide services to people and pets in communities by moving the focus to preserving human-animal bonds.

Since 2008, PASS has worked to reduce shelter intake by connecting people with resources they need to help them keep their beloved pets, or responsibly rehome them when that is their best option. Through an email/phone hotline, PASS provides advice and information about available community resources to guide families in solving problems. The hotline fields ~700 inquiries a month and fulfills pet food pantry orders for over 1,500 owned pets. When necessary, PASS steps in to raise funds on a family’s behalf for a pet deposit or vet expenses, or to help with temporary boarding. Through its Facebook page, PASS regularly connects people who want to help with those who need help keeping their pets. Clients include people who have experienced a loss of income, illness, domestic violence, military deployment, or death in the family, as well as families forced to move to places that do not allow pets or require a pet deposit the family cannot afford to pay.

APA! specializes in saving pets with challenges, including ill or injured animals, very young pets, seniors, and pets working to overcome behavioral issues, and our adoption program must work especially hard to find them homes. Every APA! pet receives a pre-adoption exam and vet care in our skilled medical clinic, including vaccines, spay/neuter surgery, and a microchip. APA! also assesses each pet’s temperament and provides potential adopters with all possible information about their behavior. We maintain multiple, central adoption centers and convenient adoption hours. All available pets are listed on APA!’s website with biographies, photos, and videos, and they populate our vibrant social media pages. Special webpages are devoted to senior pets, medical needs pets, or those needing specific home environments, and trained matchmakers work to pair pets with potential adopters. APA! adopted out its 100,000th pet in 2022.

APA! has the largest private nonprofit foster network in the country, which is key to our lifesaving capacity. While our shelter space is limited, APA!’s foster programs have been able to flex to meet whatever need APA! has faced, including during kitten season and even in the face of regional natural disasters. The foster programs have become an especially valuable resource in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, allowing the move of most of APA!'s shelter population into foster care and even allowing APA! to increase its rescue work with shelters across Texas. Our programs typically see well over 1,200 pets at a time in foster homes and saw over 11,000 foster placements in 2022. We are now restructuring our operations to keep the majority of all our pets in foster homes by providing caregivers with much more extensive staff support and resources, and thereby significantly reducing the number of pets living in-shelter, where they are more stressed and vulnerable to disease.