Dear Friend,
The holidays are upon us bringing family and (furry) friends together to celebrate the season.
It’s also a busy time where it’s easy to get so caught up in our daily activities that we forget what is really important. We find ourselves rushing around for the perfect wrapping paper or finding last minute gifts and this pressure prevents us from remembering the very real stress of local animals waiting to find a family to call their own. Your gift to BrightSide Animal Center will help struggling local animals find forever homes throughout the year, not simply the holiday season. In September a small, brindle-colored, stray puppy was brought to BrightSide. As part of our safe stray routine the staff worms and vaccinates the animals for common diseases, such as distemper and Parvovirus because we never know what kind of preventative care the animals received prior to our shelter. Though Biscuit was vaccinated upon arrival he was already incubating the virus and began to show Parvo symptoms within 24 hours. Fortunately for Biscuit, BrightSide Animal Center has the puppy isolation ward and medical staff necessary to treat viruses like Parvo in dogs and Feline Influenza in cats. After two weeks of treatment, including intravenous fluids and antibiotics Biscuit recovered and this beautiful pup was adopted by a military veteran.
BrightSide is here to help and the community knows it.
A young man brought us a tiny 10 day-old kitten in a shoe box. We treated him for heat exposure with fluids and oxygen. After this initial care the kitten was stable enough to transfer to a foster volunteer for long-term recovery, and eventually find a loving family. BrightSide also helps keep families together. Through BrightSide’s emergency pet food pantry we distribute roughly 5,000 lbs. of critically needed pet food, biscuits, bedding, and cat litter annually to families struggling to keep the household intact and their pets remaining in their homes. Kitten receiving oxygen