Seattle Humane: The Humane Society for Seattle/King County: Kia Pet Adoption Grant Report

How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?

At Seattle Humane, we believe everyone deserves a chance to experience the love of a pet and the lifelong benefits of the human-animal bond. With this lens, we continue to expand our programs and services to impact as many lives as possible.

In an effort to remove barriers to saving lives, completing families, and keeping pets with the people who love them, Seattle Humane subsidizes adoption fees for harder-to-place animals and for low-income families that cannot afford the up-front cost of an adoption fee. This grant supported these very efforts.

Harder-to-place animals often spend more time in the shelter because of behavioral or health needs or merely due to their age. This grant allowed us to subsidize or reduce the adoption fees for these animals in our care, helping us place them more quickly in loving homes that were the right fits for them. This grant will have a lasting and significant impact on many families and their pets across the region.

How many pets did this grant help?

40

Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.

Honey Bun was transferred to Seattle Humane in November 2021, along with her eight puppies! All of her puppies were immediately adopted, leaving Honey Bun waiting her turn to find a loving home.

Unfortunately, as time passed, the shelter environment started to take its toll on this sweet girl, and she was becoming more and more stressed and reactive.

In addition to struggling in the shelter environment, Honey Bun had been diagnosed her with a chronic elbow fracture and an elongated soft palate. These issues made it more complicated to find an adopter willing to work with Honey Bun’s reactivity and to also understand her medical conditions.

Staff searched and found wonderful foster homes for Honey Bun while the adoption staff continued to promote her. Finally, in August 2022, an adopter named Christina was happy to take a chance on Honey Bun and bring her home for foster-to-adopt. And after Honey Bun had spent 308 days in Seattle Humane’s care, Christina made the adoption official in mid-September 2022.

With animals like Honey Bun, providing subsidized adoption fees is an important incentive to find homes for these harder-to-place pets. Honey Bun’s adoption fee was subsidized with the support of this grant.