Helping Hands Humane Society: Kia Pet Adoption Grant Report

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

Our shelter has been seeing record-high dog intakes since March 2023. In an effort to help get them into homes faster, we’ve been doing adoption specials and adoption events so that adoptions can have either fee-reduced or fee-waived pricing to allow more people in our community to adopt and help us continue keeping kennels open for those who need us. We used this grant to do a weekend adoption event over the Labor Day weekend. We were able to adopt out 61 pets at no cost to their families!

How many pets did this grant help?

61

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

Long-term resident Kelvin (first photo) came to our shelter in June 2023. He’s a quiet and gentle 3-year-old pit bull mix. Animal control officers had found him and he was very skinny.

We learned he took treats nicely and he’d get overwhelmed when other dogs would get in his face. He was sweet as could be and never jumped or barked in his time here.

We had tried everything to get him adopted – he was featured on multiple local media stations, volunteers had been giving him baths before big adoption days so he would look fresh and clean for anyone who visited with him, and we paired him up with a volunteer named Carolyn to come visit him regularly so he’d have a friend while he waited for his home.

During the KIA Petfinder Foundation adoption weekend, a family stopped by to adopt a new friend. They met with three different dogs trying to decide and then finally met Kelvin. He had been here over 70 days and was patiently waiting his turn. They decided INSTANTLY that they loved him and that he would fit with them just fine (second photo)!

Kelvin was able to find the perfect family that he deserved, thanks to this grant and the adoption event!