How to Help Your Local Pet Rescue

Want to Help Your Local Pet Rescue?

As someone who works with a pet rescue I get asked how others can help their local pet rescue. There are oh so many ways you can help whether it’s donating your time, making monetary donations and more. We’re sharing some tips on how you can help and encourage everyone to volunteer or help in any way that they can.

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by Tailspring. Powered by Mom has been compensated for this post (of which we are donating to Three Little Pitties Saving Kitties) in exchange for this informative post of which all opinions are 100% our own. 

1) Volunteer Your Time From Home

Yes, there could be opportunities to volunteer your time from home. As mentioned I work with a pet rescue, Three Little Pitties for whom we adopted our dog Nyx from. They are located in the Houston area of Texas and well I am a long, long way from Texas. Yet I recently took on the position of being their Director of their newer cat program. 

I’m able to help out the the cat program which is called Three Little Pitties Saving Kitties from home by utilizing my skillset from helping out on the kitties Facebook page, putting calls out for donations, reaching out to companies for food donations and more. There are many ways you can volunteer from home just reach out to a rescue or your local pet rescue to see how you can help from home. 

Make sure to check out our Pet section for more helpful articles like our article Adopting A Rescue Dog: The First Seven Days 

2) Volunteer Your Time

If you can help your local pet rescue in person there are always so many ways to help out by donating your time. I’m not able to go in physically to Three Little Pitties (3LP) because I’m not there locally but I also can’t go in person to our local shelters because of the pandemic and I’m considered medically vulnerable. Those who can though there’s a ton you can help out with.

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Here are just a few examples:

• Feed the pets – while for example 3LP relies on fosters as we don’t have a “shelter” we do have a warehouse area set up for dogs and cats until we can find them foster families. We don’t want to keep them in the warehouse long as it’s nowhere near the same as being in a loving home. However, for this transition time and like many rescues they rely on volunteers to help with a variety of things like feeding the cats and dogs while in these transition areas.

• Clean out the kennels
• Do laundry (pet bedding, towels etc.. are always needing to be cleaned)
• Help to file or process paperwork, and other necessary tasks.
• Walk dogs to give them a break from the stressful environment of course exercise!

• Give cuddles and play with the dogs and cats and just give them some love, it’s a stressful environment for them and they need all the love they can get. 
• Good at photography? Take some cute photos of the kittens/cats and puppies/dogs to help get them adopted! I can’t tell you how hard it is to find good photos of the kitties to share!
• Recruit more volunteers

While doing these tasks is not exactly glamourous they are critical for helping to care for these precious lives. The rescue workers, many whom are also volunteers are out there literally getting the dogs and cats off the street, ensuring they get medical attention where needed and trying to find them loving homes when they’re ready. You are truly helping to save a life when you volunteer your time.

Many rescues also bring into their care pregnant cats and dogs and neonatal kittens and puppies without mamas. Often times they need bottle feeders for those neonatal kittens and puppies without their mamas so you can also volunteer to be a bottle feeder which leads me to our next way to help your local pet rescue and why it’s so important for them to be able to either buy and/or receive vital supplies such as a milk replacement for newborn kittens and puppies. 

3) Donate Much Needed Supplies

While monetary donations are of course always needed as I can tell you that those vet expenses alone really add up if you’re more comfortable donating supplies they are always welcome. Many rescues have a wishlist of items that they need. In fact, Three Little Pitties Saving Kitties has an Amazon Wishlist (as does the dog department) that has our most used items such as cat litter, cat food and more. You can keep an eye out for when items go on sale, coupon codes and more!

As mentioned earlier many rescues (if not all) may have neonatal kittens and puppies without mamas which means they may need to be bottle fed. This requires that they have a milk replacement. Tailspring is one such milk replacement and Three Little Pitties Rescue received a donation from them for both kittens and puppies.

You may be surprised at how many kittens our rescue has found either without mamas or mamas not being able to feed their newborn kittens. So many are living on the streets which means the kittens are born outside already endangering their survival.

Such supplies like Tailspring are needed for newborn and younger kittens like the ones shown below whose mama was not found with them. Fortunately between bottle feeders and their  foster family they were able to thrive and survive being on Tailspring. 

These young kittens as you can see loved the taste of Tailspring so it wasn’t hard at all according to their foster mom to get them to lap it up.

It is hard to get a good photo of kittens as they don’t tend to sit and pose for photos.

These sweet kitties had to originally be bottle fed and then were able to drink from plates and bowls as you can see above. Thanks to Tailspring they greedily drank the goat milk replacer and got strong enough to get out of the bottle stage and into drinking on their own.

Tailspring is a goat’s milk replacement which has many benefits to it to help those wee kittens and puppies.

Goat’s milk is sometimes it is referred to as the “universal mothers’ milk” because it is easy to digest across many animals’ species and provides rapid energy absorption. True mother’s milk is always the top option for our furry friends, but when it’s not available, goat milk is the very best choice to help them thrive. 

Tailspring’s milk replacement is also great for many more reasons and has so many benefits including the following:

Easy to Digest – goat milk has smaller fat globules and forms smaller, softer curds in the stomach than cow’s milk. This makes it easier for the neonatal puppies and kittens as it helps their digestive system to break it down quicker so they can absorb all those good nutrients. 

Real Dairy, Superior Milk – While Tailspring itself is formulated with additional nutrients that puppies and kittens needs, the goat milk itself already has 18% more calcium, 43% more potassium, 40% more magnesium, and 104% more Vitamin A than whole cow’s milk. Wowza!

This is amazing because of course we want our kittens and puppies to thrive and from bottle feeding the kittens to getting them stronger and stronger Tailspring has been helping our current litter of motherless kittens.

In addition to what we’ve already mentioned other needed supplies can be things like used towels, blankets and sheets. Many of us will have some lying around that we no longer need. Just launder them, fold and pack away for donations. You can also call local hotels to see if they have any bedding they’re discarding. 

4) Foster

Every animal rescue relies on foster families as mentioned they’re not like shelters where they might have a large building to house the animals. We need fosters to help give love to animals, many who were living on the streets, on the chain, never knew love and oh so much more. Fosters are critical and provide love, training and a safe space for cats and dogs to be well just cats and dogs. Three Little Pitties is always in desperate need of fosters and every foster we hear from say it’s the most rewarding (and yes sometimes hardest) thing they’ve ever done. If you live in the Houston, Texas area and would like to foster with Three Little Pitties Rescue please GO HERE. 

5) Corporate Matching Donations

If you do make a monetary donation to a rescue make sure to check with your employer to see if they match donations. It’s an easy way to give more money to a rescue. 

6) Spread the Word

While there are many, many more ways to help your local rescue (or any rescue) we’re going to end with this one that costs you nothing but a click of your mouse and keyboard. Get the word out on the rescue, share their Facebook and Instagram posts, tell people about them. We share kitties up for adoption, our needs and more on the Three Little Savings Kitties Facebook page which can always use more attention as it’s a newer page. It costs you nothing but a wee bit of your time. 

We hope that we’ve inspired you to consider helping your local rescue. If you would ever like to volunteer with Three Little Pitties Rescue please feel free to check out their website or reach out to myself!