helping pets

Jusani Culture is raising funds for New Mexico Pets Alive! through June 30th.

Thank you to Melissa Roberts, Executive Director of New Mexico Pets Alive! for interviewing with us! We enjoyed learning about New Mexico Pets Alive! mission and projects in helping homeless pets live on and are happy to share Melissa's knowledge, experiences and photos.

How many pets are currently under New Mexico Pets Alive!’s assistance?

Since June of 2011, we’ve been introducing No Kill informational resources to city leaders, shelters and animal control departments across New Mexico to help them learn new strategies for decreasing their shelter intakes while increasing their save/live release rates.  We encourage them to utilize this information gathered from some of the most successful shelter programs across the US, now saving 90% - 97% of their shelter pets, to help the lost and homeless pets in their care.  Simultaneously, we began to lay the groundwork to begin our own physical rescue efforts.  Our goal is to open New Mexico’s first large-scale Foster Care Program and Medical and Behavioral Rehabilitation Center, The LifeRaft Lodge along with at least one No Kill Adoption/Community Educational Center in each county across New Mexico.  We’ve just begun our initial fundraising efforts to help open our first adoption center in Albuquerque, NM and our Albuquerque Pets Alive! Foster Program launches the first week of April so this partnership with Jusani is perfect timing.  Funds from your program will help us with some of our first rescues of at-risk shelter pets in Albuquerque.

Does New Mexico Pets Alive! have any special programs that help save the lives of homeless pets?

With the help of caring staff, volunteers, leading animal foster care and medical and behavioral experts from around the country, New Mexico Pets ALIVE! is creating a unique program to meet this life-saving need for companion animals here in New Mexico and beyond called The LifeRaft Lodge - A Furry Friends Foster Care and Rehabilitation Center.

The LifeRaft Lodge will be a 'liferaft' for homeless pets who have no other options and have been passed over by other organizations and rescue groups. These animals are those which typically need some type of rehabilitation assistance. The facility will also be a 'Lodge', with a residential component, where resident volunteers live to assist in the on-site foster care of many of the animals in preparation for helping them to learn how to live in a home and allow them the next level of services to best ready them for adoption. Please visit the LifeRaft Lodge link to learn more: http://www.liferaftlodge.org/

How much on average does it cost to take care of one pet at New Mexico Pets Alive!?  Our Albuquerque Pets Alive! program is being modeled after Austin Pets Alive!, one of the most successful rescue/shelter programs in America.  We’ve learned from them to expect an average cost of approximately $350 per animal we save.  The typical traditional shelter spends $500 - $1000 per adopted pet so our work will save both lives and tax-payer dollars.

What are the most common reasons people give for giving up on their pets? If you mean, owner surrender, we’ve learned that many do not want to surrender their pet but feel they have no options and nowhere to turn for help.  Some have fallen on difficult financial times, are in transition and some are moving and are unfortunately finding out that we have far too many restrictions in our apartment rental companies across the country and they are being faced with rental obstacles that are difficult to overcome.  Some apartment companies charge pet fees instead of reasonable pet deposits and some even have pet weight and breed restrictions.  One of the most exciting programs we’ve learned from Austin Pets Alive! is a support program to help meet some of these needs called P.A.S.S. (Positive Alternatives to Shelter Surrender).  It’s another program we have in development right now, we hope to also launch in April.  The goal of the program is to help pet guardians access needed resources and programs to help them keep their companion animals.  When it is necessary, the program works to help re-home their pet rather than having them go into the traditional shelter system.  This helps reduce local shelter intake while preventing some of the undue stress on the pet.

What are the biggest challenges New Mexico Pets Alive! faces in being a non-profit Pet Shelter?  Here in New Mexico, sadly, we have insufficient funding for much of our state’s animal services needs.  Non-profits across NM have to do much of the heavy lifting in terms of both funding raised and programming delivered for our companion animals.  As a young developing effort, our biggest challenge is definitely raising the adequate funds needed to help fill in those programming gaps for our at-risk shelter pets.

How many pets has New Mexico Pets Alive! saved so far? That depends on who you ask I think.  We focus on doing the work needed to create positive, systemic change throughout the animal control and shelter systems here in NM so that we will one day become a No Kill state.  Saving a few animals is definitely worth it but we’re not satisfied with that.  Each of those animals ended up in the shelter system through no fault of their own and each one who is healthy or treatable deserves a second chance to find a loving forever home.  We choose to put our energy toward being the catalyst for large scale changes that will save all of the approximately 100,000 animals we are losing in NM shelters each year.  We know we can’t get to all of them fast enough, but as we working to fill the programming gaps in each city, in each county, we will eventually get there.

Do you have a great pet adoption story you want to share? My favorite is probably that of the 4-legged co-founders of New Mexico Pets Alive!, Sweet Pea and Kink.  Without them changing our lives, my fiancée and NMPA Co-founder, Kurt Schlough and I may not have arrived here to this calling so quickly. We fell into a rescue in January 2011 – an angel of a dog, Sweet Pea and her 10 pups who found themselves in a high-kill shelter with no one to take them.  Long story short, we took all eleven in when the pups were just 4 days old.  We soon learned Sweet Pea was ill.  The vet actually said Sweet Pea would not have lived another 2 weeks had she not been given immediate medical care.  She began intensive antibiotic treatment and the pups had to be pulled and bottle fed. We had the good fortunate of having alot of help along the way, and all 11 survived and were adopted.  Sweet Pea and one of her pups, who we named Kink because his tail was kinked when he arrived to us, are now part of our family.  We wake up every morning and their eyes remind us why we’re on this journey and why we must succeed for the rest of them.

Thank – you for this opportunity to partner with Jusani at this exciting stage of our development.  Our heartfelt thanks!

Every purchase helps New Mexico Pets Alive! through June 30!

Learn about the pet shelters we have helped so far! Click here

Who are we helping next... Click here