SICSA Pet Adoption Center: Kia Pet Adoption Grant Report
How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?
The 2023 Kia Pet Adoption Grant enabled SICSA to offer free dog adoptions for dogs weighing 60 lbs. or more.
As in many shelters nationwide, these are our hardest-to-place pets with the longest lengths of stay from intake to adoption. We ran a month-long promotion throughout September and found homes for five large-breed dogs as part of this event, which we dubbed "Go Big and Go Home!"
September was a particularly challenging month at SICSA. Our adoption and intake teams were both hit with a COVID wave, which affected over 50% of our teams the last week of August/first week of September. This obviously led to slower intake and limited adoption staff to help get animals out. On top of that, a CIRD outbreak in mid-September further limited dog intake.
Our overall dog adoptions in September were our second lowest of the year, yet large dogs remained consistent with the 2023 monthly average for large-dog adoption! We fully believe this is thanks to the Petfinder Foundation-Kia grant allowing us to waive large-dog adoption fees, and we couldn't be more grateful.
If not for the perfect timing of this grant, we have little doubt that our large-dog adoptions would have significantly dropped (if not come to a standstill altogether).
How many pets did this grant help?
5
Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.
Five dogs were successfully adopted during our Go Big and Go Home! promotion sponsored by the Petfinder Foundation Kia Pet Adoption grant. All five of these dogs were transferred from open-intake shelters where they were considered at high risk of euthanasia.
Of the five, two (Moose and Preston) had been available at SICSA for over a month, so we were especially excited when they found their forever homes. Both dogs’ adopters have followed up to let us know their adoptees are settling in well at home!
However, the standout adoption of the promotion goes to Vern, a senior hound (first photo). We estimated Vern to be somewhere in the ballpark of 8-9 years old. He was significantly grey in the muzzle already and had the beginning stages of dental disease, meaning his adopters would need to prepare to have a dental scheduled for him within a few months of adoption.
Given his age, size, and need for a dental, we expected Vern would be one of our “long-termers.” You can imagine our gleeful surprise when Vern was adopted after only being available at SICSA for eight days (second photo)! This is less than one third of our average (27-day) length of stay for senior dogs!
Vern may not have been with SICSA long, but our staff and volunteers fell in love with him quickly — we have a pretty big soft spot for seniors here. Needless to say, we all felt the significance and joy when he found his match without lingering in a shelter for long!
