Sunday, April 6, 2014

Cause is Pack N Pounce Animal Rescue located in Ogden, UT

 Their website......PackNPounce Animal Rescue
 
Pack N Pounce Animal Rescue is not your typical animal shelter. Yes, they have dogs and cats... puppies and kittens... but they also have rabbits, birds, snakes, a rat, cows, horses...? OH! but wait! they don't have cages. They have foster families that take in the animals that the rescue accepts. They only accept animals that are non aggressive, friendly and trainable. Brenda Gordon screens each animal before they are placed with a foster family. The screening process involves so "manners" training; basic things like sit, stay, wait, don't pull on the leash and don't jump on people. All things that help the animal be adopted easier and have a better chance of staying with the adoptive family for a forever home.  
It all started with horses back in 1980. Brenda started rescuing young horses that were starving and had been rounded up. 
 These are some of the horses they have right now....
                                                 Jack
                                           BellaDonna

 Jack and BellaDonna good buddies!
The pony

Pretty soon she was taking in all kinds of farm animals, getting them healthy and finding them new homes. When she moved to UT in 2002 there wasn't as big of a need for farm animals to be rescued but there were plenty of other animals that needed someone to care about them. 2007 was a turning point; In December 2007 she heard the news about 13 puppies that had been dumped in a business’s dumpster in Riverdale Utah. Only one of the 5 week old healer mix puppies survived. The owner had wrapped 13 puppies in a sheet, then in a large plastic bag & tied it shut leaving them overnight to freeze to death. The next day they were thrown into the stores dumpster where they were found by an employee taking out the trash. Brenda's husband was almost as angry as Brenda was and told her she could quit her job and open the animal rescue thrift store she had always wanted to open so she could help more animals.


They still take in all kinds of animals....







How can you NOT love those little faces?!?

 This is Goliath, he is only 8 months old and HUGE! He ate a teddy bear head and it got stuck in his intestine. The vet saved his life with surgery but it cost $1000. The rescue is taking donations to help pay for his surgery, hospital stay and food.


Another thing that makes this organization different from any other animal rescue that I have heard about is their community involvement. The thrift store functions in multiple ways; brings in income, gives them an office, a place for people to volunteer, a place to drop off pets (when they have enough foster places), a staging area for showing pets to potential adoptive families. There  are 2 Easter Seals people who come 20 hours a week to work in the thrift store. There are also Proctor kids who come to work off community service hours. Brenda will bring specific animals to the thrift store on days that they have the volunteers, ones she knows each volunteer may respond to and connect with.



This is Brenda... she gets paid a whopping $1 a YEAR!!
In addition to rescuing and placing animals with an adoptive family they also help to educate people about getting their animal spayed or neutered, some of whom qualify to get the procedure done for free or $1. They have helped almost 2000 pets get fixed with grant money and partnering with "Best Friends Animal society".
The volunteers and some of the animals....



This is Becky, Brenda's sister and Cooper. Cooper is a peekapoo breed. He is part Pekingese and part Poodle and only a year old full of energy and personality (smiles all the time). Becky volunteers full time plus some to help with the thrift store, the animals and going to adoption events. 



This is Renee, she is one of the Easter seals workers with Snoopy a yellow lab. Snoopy's owner died in a car accident and the wife of the owner had to move into her children's house due to the accident and couldn't take Snoopy.


This is Mike holding 2 of the girls out of the litter of 7 American Bulldog puppies that came in on the "puppy transport". Below is one of their brothers.



                                                                                  




This little Chihuahua mix was taken from a shelter. The poor little guy has a broken rib that healed wrong and sticks out and an ear that flops, but he is a happy guy.


These 2 feral cats were brought in and will be kept in a barn for a few days and then released in a neighborhood to catch mice and rats. They will be fixed and have their ears clipped ears to identify that they have been fixed and if they are caught in a trap or picked up by animal control they are to be released back into their neighborhood.



One of the sources of donations each year is the Utah Renaissance and Fantasy Fair. This snake was taking a tour of the fair and was also up for adoption a couple years ago. 
 You may remember a couple years ago the story of an Ogden, UT man who called a shelter saying he had 60 dogs and needed some help. He really had A LOT MORE! The news reported that there were 149 but there were more then that even.
Amazingly Brenda and Becky remember all the animals they have helped. Brenda showed me pictures and videos of animals on her phone telling me the name of each one and where they had been adopted to!! In 2012 they did 370 adoptions and last year they did 388, so far this year as of April 6th they have done 110 adoptions. Here are some pictures that Brenda gave me:

This is Ivan, he is one of the 149 dogs... he needed surgery but is happily adopted now

Another of the 149... adopted to a family in CA