Tag: adopt

Helloooooooo, Mabel!

Hello, World! It’s me, Mabel! The friendliest little ball of muscle you ever could ask for.

I’m a mix of old fashioned Staffordshire Terrier and something else….not sure what. Been used strictly for makin’ babies for most of my 4 years of life but I’m a liberated woman, now. Got spayed so that breeding gig is over for good, thank God! Folks at The Animal Support Project finally came to my rescue when they recognized what a fine gal I really am and how my life was being trashed by the people who used to own me.

I’m still learning my manners and started informal obedience training so I can learn how to be welcome in genteel society. I am VERY affectionate, very athletic and very food motivated so training will be alot of fun for me and my peeps. I can’t wait to demonstrate what I can do with a little bit of encouragement and shaping.

I LOVE car rides and I’m nice on a leash but sometimes I read some dogs dissing me and that makes me want to put them in their place. When I walk I kinda waddle and I grunt a little. It makes folks smile! And instead of a bark, when I get excited, I let out a squeal just like a baby pig! Everyone knows when I’VE got something to say!

It’s time for me to start letting folks know I’m available for adoption, so hence my big splash on PetFinder. I’m hoping to match up with a home that is ready to live an active lifestyle. So far, I’ve missed out on all the hikes and car rides and visits to Tractor Supply so I’ve got alot of living to do. Got the worlds’ biggest tongue and alot of enthusiasm so my kisses will knock a small kiddo over……. probably I should go to a home where there are no little or frail ones for me to accidentally damage. It would break my heart if I disappointed you, y’know.

We’ll be adding more photos and updates soon, so stay tuned, ok? And if you want to learn more about me, just give a call: 518-727-8591. I’m always up for making new friends so let’s do lunch!

August 8, 2020 By Melinda Plasse In Adoptable Animals, Newsletter 6 Comments Off on Helloooooooo, Mabel!

COVID-19 and The Animal Support Project

Right now, many folks are reading this message while still in isolation or quarantine or curfew. You may be wondering how The Animal Support Project will be dealing with the changes in all of our lives brought about by the arrival of the Novel Corona Virus and the Random Acts of Crime occurring here in the Capital region and throughout the state. Like everyone else, TASP faces some challenges ahead. We face a loss of revenue from having to temporarily call off our popular Fantasy Pet Photo fund raisers and our tag sales. Add to this an already-evidenced reduction in donations due to the financial stresses many of our supporters are facing after the State imposed mandatory shutdown of so many businesses in NY and then “vampires” decided to destroy what was left of local businesses. These are realities we can’t get around.

That being said, TASP is morphing to adapt as well as we can to continue offering the most support we can muster with available resources. For now, all personal visits to homes have been postponed. We’ve also had to curtail our activities in the local cities after dark due to curfew and the potential risk to our volunteers.  That means no adoption home visits, no visits inside the homes of ailing pets. This is the way it has to be in order to reduce risk of infection or injury to our volunteers and our community. By coincidence, our list of adoptable pets is very small right now and their continued care at their foster homes is perfectly alright until the situation eases. And just because we can’t enter a pet’s home doesn’t mean we can’t help pets who need us. As long as our budget allows, we will utilize all available technologies like video, photos, messaging and facetime to confirm financial need and explore the situations of individual pets so they can be directed to whatever proper professional care we can afford. We can also use video and photos to demonstrate and instruct on preventive care practices to help our community’s pet guardians do the best they can for their best friends.

Our ability to pay for professional veterinary procedures at this time is very much in flux with funds temporarily dried up, but TASP is actively seeking grants for worthy purposes like veterinary care and continuation of our Paws2Protect program that provides free Seresto flea & tick collars to financially needy dogs and cats. We also have expanded our pet food pantry stocking program to serve TEN food pantries across Albany, Rensselaer, Washington and Bennington counties. The Paws2Protect and Hoss Fund programs continue to serve as long as resources remain available and if one of our already-submitted grants is awarded to TASP, we will introduce yet another great program to our toolkit, The Vintage Club: offering vital veterinary services specifically for senior pets.

We’ve even found a way we can still run our Fantasy Photo EASTER CLINICS completely online, with an option for a mailed hard copy photo. So if you’d like an Easter/Spring theme photo of your best friend, just scroll down and click for the lowdown on how to make it happen. We’ve posted details of this new fund raising scheme with sample backgrounds right here on the TASP website, taking orders online and accepting payment through Paypal or by check. Depending on how the reopening of NY State proceeds, we may be holiding our photo clinics online for a few more months so stay tuned!

COVID-19 is an unprecedented pandemic situation that virtually every American jurisdiction knew would occur someday. Even so, it would have been financial and logistical folly for any nation to stockpile the number of devices and supplies needed for this scale of a disaster for the 102 years since the last great epidemic, the Spanish Influenza of 1918. The incident command system shared by local, state and federal agencies as well as 1st responders, businesses, nonprofits and institutions across our nation is the modular, scalable method for efficiently and accountably answering the challenges ahead that COVID presents. TASP will do our best to add our compassion, skills, experience and elbow grease to this response to prevent the suffering of our community’s animals. It’s what TASP is trained to do and we’re up to the task.

We wish all of you reading this a safe and healthy path forward. Please be kind, be brave, be objective and be smart. We WILL get through this and we will bring our animal companions with us to a wiser, kinder world.

March 24, 2020 By Melinda Plasse In TASP Blog Comments Off on COVID-19 and The Animal Support Project

Grrrrrrreat Reads – Not Just For 1st Time Adopters

 

It is exciting to find so many good books about pet adoption on the market. Those of us who live with adopted pets know how much they mean to a family.

 

If you have ever opened your heart to an older pet, here’s a book you’ll want to check out:

 According to William Hageman, Reporter for the Chicago Tribune,  “If you read My Old Dog: Rescued Pets With Remarkable Second Acts (New World Library) and don’t want to run out to a shelter and rescue a senior pet, you have a heart of flint.”  The book, written by Laura T. Coffey and photographed by Lori Fusaro, champions a sometimes-forgotten segment of the animal shelter population.  It contains some truly beautiful photographs of senior dogs and a very nice resource section for folks who make older dogs a part of their life. http://www.myolddogbook.com/

 

 

Perhaps the writer of My Old Dog will follow up with an equally well-built version about senior cats? Let’s hope so. In the meantime, we have an excellent book available now, offering the latest information on Senior Cat Care. Written by Susan Easterly, Your Older Cat – A Complete Guide to Nutrition, Natural Remedies and Veterinary Care is a veritable Bible of good information for anyone whose cat is reaching its sunset years. With easy to follow tables, resource lists and helpful hints, this book will help any reader get a grip on old-cat topics like the aging process, preventive care, natural healing options, chronic diseases and senior cat nutrition. The suggested reading list is most helpful and the photos are just beautiful.

 

At the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s an excellent book on how to raise a great puppy written by Dr. Sophia Yin. Dr. Yin died a few years back, but she left behind her a tremendous wealth of writings about positive methods in pet training based on the latest research. Being a veterinarian, Dr. Yin also tempers her writings with the physical drivers behind behavior. Illustrated profusely with photos and drawings that are easy to interpret, Perfect Puppy in 7 Days – How to Start Your Puppy Off Right not only can help someone raising a puppy to do it right. It also can help the owner of a young dog understand the reasons behind behaviors they may be seeing in their pet, and how they can best modify those behaviors without ruining the dog.

 

Since we like to be even handed in our reviews, we owe it to the felines and their families to mention an equally interesting and well-designed how-to book about cats by Pam Johnson-Bennett: Think Like A Cat – How To Raise a Well-Adjusted Cat – Not a Sour Puss  From how to choose a new cat or kitten to how to kitten-proof a home to how to help your vet diagnose your cat’s ailments, this book is the one cat owners will turn to again and again over the lifetime of their cat. There’s some exceptional material in here about how to not only train a cat, but how to modify and even eliminate undesirable behaviors your cat may have developed. Personally we might have liked to have seen a few more illustrations in this book to break up the text a bit and help the more visual learners in our midst to get the message; but with so much valuable information in this book, we can forgive the lack of images and appreciate the treasure between its covers.

December 27, 2018 By Melinda Plasse In Newsletter 5, Uncategorized Comments Off on Grrrrrrreat Reads – Not Just For 1st Time Adopters

Featured Adoptable Animal

Mitch’s Dogs

Please help us find good foster/adoptive homes for the Late Mitch Valerien’s dogs. We owe it to this wonderful person who helped so many, to do right by the pets she left behind. Details on each dog can be found on the Adoptable Animals page at the TASP website.

Thanks for caring.

CLICK HERE TO MEET MITCH’S DOGS.

April 28, 2018 By Melinda Plasse In Newsletter 4 Comments Off on Featured Adoptable Animal

Make Mine a Double! Copper’s Story

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Copper’s Story:

Howdy! The name’s Copper. And 10 years ago, I came north from Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. Back then, I was a handsome young buck of a purebred Coon Hound; just a year old an’ all full of myself. I lived till now with my family in the country, outside of Troy, NY. That’s where I met my pal, Charlie. I gotta tell ya, Charlie taught me everything about how to be a good dog. He’s been my best friend and mentor all these years. I don’t know what I’d do without him.

Now, I guess you could say Charlie and me are entering the “Sunset Years.” We take it pretty easy these days; most of our fiestas are really siestas, if ya know what I mean.  We spend most of the time lying outdoors, watching the squirrels make fools of themselves when weather’s nice or snoozing in our beds in the basement when the weather turns sour. Now and then I still like to go out to the woods and howl a bit, just to let the foxes and coyotes know where the property line is.

If it weren’t for the fact that my family’s moving out of the country, you probably wouldn’t even be hearing from us. But yeah, that’s right. The family’s moving to Mexico and they said if Craigslist couldn’t find us a new home, they’d put me and Charlie to sleep permanently. Lucky for us guys, a volunteer from The Animal Support Project saw our posting and brought us to foster care. TASP joined with PAWS (Pioneers in Animal Welfare – they’re old friends with TASP from the Katrina days) to work together on our case.

Things here in foster care are fine; the foster-folks are real nice and the food’s good. But I gotta tell ya, if me and Charlie could have our wish, it would be for a little more space and a few less dogs. Not that we’re complainin,’ but somebody asked what we dream of, so I’m just lettin’ ya know.

We’re both pretty healthy. Been vaccinated, microchipped and neutered. I’ve got a fatty tumor under my neck, but it don’t bother me and heck, don’t every old guy have a lump or a bump somewhere? At least mine’s harmless. And aside from a little stiffness in the morning, we’re plenty fit from all the years of livin’ out in the fresh air and getting’ lots of exercise.

Do ya think you have room for a couple of old farm boys like us, or if not, do ya know someone who has room for a couple of big lawn ornaments? If ya call, maybe we could talk it over. 518-727-8591. Or you can download an application right now if you CLICK HERE.

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December 4, 2016 By Melinda Plasse In Newsletter 2 Comments Off on Make Mine a Double! Copper’s Story