2023- Year In Review

2023 has been a big year of change and growth for CASA. We decided that it was time to help our local shelter and rescue community in bigger ways by expanding our clinic hours to operate multiple days a week instead of just a few days a month. Spay and neuter is such an important part of what we do at CASA. It’s the only way to truly nip the overpopulation problem in the bud and fix the problem at the source. We’re excited that the spay/neuter work that we’re doing today will reap big rewards in the future of less unwanted companion animals in the Middle TN area. We were blessed to receive two grants this year from Mutt Nation and The Community Foundation of Middle TN specifically to help with our spay/neuter efforts.

We were able to offer community cat (TNVR) surgery days for the first time this year. We offered multiple days and helped over 300 cats in Maury County and Cheatham County with this important work. We’re excited to continue tackling the cat overpopulation problem with regular community cat days in 2024.

Our clinic altered over 2,200 animals this year. We have a very small and efficient clinic team and are able to alter an impressive number of animals for our size. Here are some of the amazing veterinarians who help us accomplish so much. We look forward to growing our clinic and team in 2024!

This was another difficult year for transport. We’re still seeing the ripple effects of the 2020 vet clinic closures and reduction in clinic services that have caused a massive backlog of animals waiting to be altered. That lack of access to timely spay/neuter has led to delays in our rescue partners being able to get animals altered for adoption quickly and has led to unwanted litters in communities across the country. Many people are also having to surrender their pets to shelters as they lose their homes or have to move to places that limit the number or breed of animals they can keep. Some of our transport partners had to halt intakes from out-of-state so they could focus on helping their local shelters. We applaud them for prioritizing their local shelters, but it has definitely been a hardship for us to lose outlets for our TN animals. The current climate makes it more important than ever for us to work on fixing the problem here in TN so there are less animals in need of relocation. Britt worked hard to find some new transport partners and we sent nearly 100 animals to her new partner in NY over the past few months. She also continues to network and build relationships with local rescues, and has placed nearly 200 animals locally in the past year.

We transported 2,329 animals this year. They came from 53 shelters and rescues in 32 counties of TN, and a handful of dogs came from out-of-state for transport north. We traveled about 80,000 miles this year to deliver our furry friends to new homes in 8 states! Our dedicated group of volunteers logged over 5,000 hours this year.

We had several media appearances this year with the support of News 2 and News 4, and we were even awarded the Local on 2 “Hometown Heroes” award in June!

There were a few other notable events in 2023. We received a donated SUV from the Vulcano family, which has helped us transport many animals locally! They are such kind and generous people. We were contacted in the fall by the Columbia Dutch Bros manager to be the recipient of their November Give Back day! Members of their team came to volunteer at CASA and they invited us to visit their shop on the give back day as well. $1 from every drink purchased was donated to CASA!

We recently received grants from The Community Foundation of Middle TN and Jossel Foundation to help support our transport efforts. All of those things were such a blessing to our organization. We were also selected to be a Best Friends Mentor Group to the Paris-Henry County Shelter in West TN. Best Friends provided funding for vaccines, spay/neuter and cleaning supplies to help increase the save rate at the shelter. We’re so grateful for opportunities to help others!

In other news, we launched our first Capital Campaign on 11/28/23 to start a two year journey to raise the funds to purchase a casa for C.A.S.A.! We currently rent a 1,400 sf space that we have outgrown. Now that our clinic operates multiple days a week, we have essentially doubled the number of animals that we help each year while our space has remained the same. It’s very difficult for us to operate a transport vetting day on the same day as a surgery day since we have a limited amount of space to house animals. Our goal is to purchase a much larger space that will allow separate areas to operate the clinic and transport hub. We were so excited to receive our first large donation on day one from DJP Memorial Fund! We are honored to name our future transport hub in memory of Daniel J. Parzych.

We’re so grateful to the donors and volunteers who make this life saving work possible, and we look forward to what lies ahead in 2024!