2024- Year In Review
We were able to add a new and exciting venture at the end of the year with the launch of our new initiative, CASA PAWS (Promoting Animal Welfare Stories)! Education is a very important and often overlooked component in the effort to change the companion animal overpopulation problem. If we can teach the next generation to value and properly care for animals, our hope is that we can help shape the future of animal welfare in TN and beyond! We launched our first offering, “Doggie Do’s and Don’ts as Told by Cadence the Dog,” at the beginning of November and we’ve sold over 400 copies so far and we hope to spread the message far and wide in the coming year. We have plans to get the book into local elementary public-school classrooms. We received our first PAWS grant from The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee to help with that effort and we have applied for additional grant funding. We are planning to launch an additional three educational and engaging stories in 2025 and the illustration process is underway for our second offering now!
Friends of Lawrence County Animals invited us to do a book signing and join them for a radio interview at the end of November and Williamson County Animal Center invited us to a holiday event for children where we were able to promote our new book.
Robin and Laura took Laura’s foster dog Alvin on Local on 2 in December to help spread the word about Doggie Do’s! We are so excited to see where this venture takes us in the new year!
In 2024 we finally experienced our first year of growth on the transport side! After a pandemic led rescue boom in 2020, the following years have been increasingly difficult for transport with vast numbers of unwanted litters that have far outpaced the demand. We started seeing an increasing number of transport partners need to dramatically reduce or halt transports due to a growing need in their own communities. Each year of operation we’ve transported about a hundred less animals than the previous year until this one. Finally, we saw growth in 2024 and delivered our biggest transport year-end number since CASA began, with a total of 2,525 animals transported this past year! They primarily came from 40 shelters and rescues in 30 counties in TN and were delivered to 8 states. We crossed over 9,100 animals transported since we started CASA!
We also finally received the new Transit van that we had ordered 22 months prior to delivery! That led us to our first official van wrap! We’re excited to be transporting animals in this eye-catching design, courtesy of Carla Miles! It features several of the animals we’ve rescued over the years.
In addition to maintaining relationships with local rescues and transport partners, Brittnie aided several county shelters and rescues with hoarding cases and helped to get many of the animals placed with rescues. Not only are hoarding situations devastating for the animals trapped in horrible conditions, but they’re incredibly overwhelming to any shelter that gets called in to remove the animals. Most of our shelter partners are at (or over) capacity on a daily basis, so to be asked to take in 20+ animals in one day, many requiring extra medical attention, is very difficult. We love to be able to assist with rescue placement as quickly as possible to help relieve this burden from our shelter partners.
Benton County Hoarding Case
Our clinic operated full-time for the first full year to serve our local rescue community in addition to many low-income and senior residents. We altered over 4,000 animals in the past twelve months, which brings our clinic LTD number of over 7,100 animals altered since we opened our clinic in 2022!
We are slowly chipping away at our Capital Campaign goal to purchase a larger facility with separate areas to operate our clinic and transport hub. All proceeds from our CASA PAWS books will also help fund our new building. Thank you to everyone who has supported our efforts in 2024. We’re so excited to see where 2025 takes us!