Sanctuary animal updates:
Since our last update on February 17th, we have found homes for Kane, Chip, Johnny, Kenny, Ned, Badgee, Newby, Barney (again), Elmer, four of the puppies, and Mr. Big (one of our cats). Did you notice that name? Yes! Our sweet Badgee got adopted! Go Badgee! That is him in the picture with his new family, and the woman in back is Lace, who was the one who took care of him for us.
In the past two weeks we also lost two of our cats – Bramble who was elderly and died of renal failure, and Miles who died of cancer related to his FIV. We will miss you guys. Please see the memorials posted on our website. You can also submit a memorial for your own pet, or a loved ones pet. Very sadly we also had to put Champ down this past week. Champ will be very much missed by everyone at Pets Alive.

This week we also took in two dogs from a local animal shelter. Trevor (an Australian Cattle Dog mix) and Bagel (a beagle). They are both sweet dogs but space was limited where they were and their time was almost up. We are trying very hard to work with local shelters so they don’t have to euthanize if we have space here. No shelter wants to put healthy animals down. We were happy to be contacted about these dogs and we already have a home pending for one of them. One of these dogs looks like it is very chubby and very well loved. I can’t imagine someone is not looking for him. Does Bagel, the Beagle, look familiar to anyone? He’s very sweet. The vet estimates that he is between 5 and 7 years of age and he is available for adoption. Isn’t he cute?

Thank you volunteers
These past two weeks volunteers have stepped up to help us with our Sam’s Club pick up (thank you Marcy & Tom), a snow blower picked up and repair in progress (thank you Todd & Alison – and Mary Ann for the donation), and some data entry done (so far thank you Patti but we have many more that are coming this week).
We are currently looking for a Printing Company that can print some logos up for us at cost or inexpensively. We want to make folders with the adoption information, the animals medical records in it, along with some helpful information about house training and other related articles. We looked into companies printing this for us and to get just 500 made up it was over $800. OUCH. So we thought maybe we can buy some inexpensive folders and have our logo printed up and we can peel and stick it onto the folders. Any printers out there that can help us?
Thank you also to Gay Ann W. for the donation of a brand new computer, backup system, puppy bottles and milk replacement as well as a chip reader/scanner. Can’t tell you how much these things have already come in handy.
Puppies starting to go home
Our puppies are now available for adoption. You all remember the puppy births a few months ago? We had three litters in the same week as dogs arrived to our shelter pregnant! Well, they have started to go home now and boy are they cute! So far four have found homes and we still have about 18 left. If you’re interested (these are mixed breeds, mostly shepherd mixes of some sort) then please fill out an adoption application!
Horses Update
We are also looking for people to come and groom our horses. You MUST have experience with horses to work with ours this time of year, as our horses can be skittish. If there are any horse folk out there, can you come and brush out some manes and coats for us? I know it’s winter, and it’s cold, but some of their manes are getting very ratty looking and knotted and we really need to get them brushed out. You can move the horses to a stall to get out of the wind! Please consider helping, as we have a potential home for Heather, and her mane looks like it was run through a blender!
On that note, we had a serious incident with Kingfish this week. Kingfish is an elderly, retired, carriage horse from NYC and he has two clubbed feet in the back. He fell walking out of his stall and the way he fell was his front feet out of the stall and his back feet in the stall. He could not get up. We got to him quickly but moving him enough to get him uncast and able to get up on his own, without anyone getting hurt was quite a feat. We eventually did it and he was able to stand, very wobbly at first but quickly recovered. Whew. Horses on the ground are always frightening. We’re all glad he was ok and I must mention that our staff (Juan, Janet, Chris and Chris) showed up in SECONDS when I called out on the walkie talkies. Chris T. from cats is terrified of horses, something we all forgot as we asked him to hold a back leg! Poor Chris. He did very well though and never once mentioned that he was holding his breath through the whole ordeal.
When the ground thaws we desperately need an excavator. Can you help? Our fields are terrible for horses. There is absolutely no drainage and no where for water to run off. We need to get them reshaped so water can flow off of them and not freeze up into a lake during the winter, and into a mucky swamp in the spring. If anyone can help please let us know.
Are you a dog trainer?
If so we are looking to run some basic obedience classes out of Pets Alive. Contact us about working with us to do this. We will provide the place, the clientele and ask that you give us a portion of the fee in return. We’d like to be able to recommend some basic training courses to our adoptive homes!
Sponsors needed
Please consider sponsoring an animal at Pets Alive. We calculated that if everyone on this list would donate just $6 a month, we would have enough money for ALL our operating expenses. As it is, we have 120-150 animals here at any given time and we have only about a dozen monthly sponsors. Won’t you consider sponsoring an animal? To sponsor a cat it is just $20 a month, for a dog $35 a month and we could really use the help and your support. Please consider giving up just one cup of Starbucks a day…ok, that’s asking a lot…maybe that bagel with cream cheese, and donate that money to Pets Alive? We’re doing our best to help find good animals homes.
Help us fulfill this mission and the future goals of Pets Alive. Speaking of which, do you KNOW the goals of the “New” Pets Alive? Our plan is to be a resource for kill shelters in this area. To help them not have to euthanize healthy adoptable animals if we can help. We want to build a community of shelters to share our resources, so if we get something we can’t use, we can find a shelter that can use it, and to share good applications if we don’t have a pet to match the person’s request. We plan to start an education program to bring field trips of children here and to go to classrooms to teach about spay/neuter, that animals are sentinent beings and that dogs should live with you as part of your family. We want to make an impact and a difference in our community and for future generations. Please help support us in that goal.
Upcoming Events
St. Catricks Day – our event volunteers are at it again. Rusty’s Place is hosting “St. Catricks Day!”. Are you a cat lover looking for something fun to do the weekend before St. Patrick’s Day? Come to the “St. Catrick’s Day” event featuring felines from our sanctuary. The event will take place Saturday, March 15, from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. at Rusty’s Place in Ringwood, New Jersey.
The 4H Club is doing a project for Pets Alive. They are holding a “supply drive” at Minisink Valley Elementary and Intermediate School. It will start on March 10 and run until the 26th. On the 27th they plan to bring over everything they collected and we’ll give them a tour and let them meet some of the animals! We are really excited about this and want to thank the 4H club for choosing us as the beneficiary of their hard work! If your child attends Minisink we would welcome donations of bleach, laundry detergent, paper towels, feline pine cat litter, Iams (mini chunks) dog or cat (Iams Cat Professional) food, gatorade and water. You can see our wishlist here.
Girl Scout Cadette Troop 454 of Liberty is hosting a big adoption event at Betta Pets & Supplies in Monticello, NY, on April 19th, from 10-2. We will be bringing many of our dogs and cats to this adoption event and would love to see you there. Volunteers also needed to help staff it, pack up and unload. Please contact Jill if you can help that day.

Please consider helping us continue our mission
of finding homes for animals in need!