Sanctuary animal updates:
Since our last update on March 1st, we have found homes for Rusty, Opal, Lego, Trevor, Ellie, Peanut, Nikki, Sid, Aaron, Rebel, Arby and 16 puppies! That is 27 dogs in all. Our adoption coordinator, Patti P. doesn’t get enough kudos for all her hard work. She gets paid for just 20 hours a week, but probably puts in double that. It doesn’t go unnoticed. Thank you Patti. (That’s Nikki helping Patti with some paperwork, and perhaps a sandwich!)
We ALSO found homes for two of our horses. Heather, our little mini horse went to a wonderful new home where there are two other minis. IMMEDIATELY when she got there, she trotted over to meet her new friends and they welcomed her very politely. One kick threat and one squeal and it was all over. They all went to the hay pile and started to eat hay together. They have been friends ever since.

This is an excellent home for her as one of the other minis has a similar condition as Heather. Heather has cushings and gets a special diet and special hay that is PERFECT for little Heather. I admit it was difficult to say goodbye to this little girl of ours, but she deserved to spend her twilight years with her own kind (being able to groom and be groomed is important to horses) and with a loving family. Good luck sweet Heather!
Foxy also leaves tomorrow to go to her new home. She will be the first horse of a 13 year old girl who has been riding and training since she was six years old. This sweet girl, Allie, was promised that if she behaved, did well in school and stuck to her work commitment and horse classes she could have her own horse when she turned 13. Her father, who had been hoping all these years that she would lose interest in horses BEFORE this promissory date arrived, came to us. Yes, we may have the prefect horse, I said.
As you may remember from one of our previous blogs about Foxy, this special horse remembered almost all her previous training,the first time that our horse caretaker rode her. Allie, the little girl, came up to meet Foxy and it was instant love! Foxy goes home to be boarded at her training barn tomorrow. We wish her well and are glad that she will be going to a barn that teaches natural horse-training methods (which we fully support!), and that she will be pampered in a way that she used to be with indoor stalls and outdoor turnout. Allie already has the basic principals down. When I asked her what she intended to teach Foxy first, she said “Well that isn’t as important right now. The FIRST thing I have to do is build trust with her. So that will be my goal in the coming months, to just build her trust and respect.” Right on Allie! Good luck Foxy. You are a dream come true for Allie. Make sure you live up to that! We’ll be getting regular updates too!
These past three weeks we also took in 29 more dogs. ARF came and took seven dogs to their facility in the Hamptons. The rest are on their quarantine period of fourteen days, but already four of them are spoken for as soon as they are able to be released. We took in two purebred Weimaraners that are just absolutely beautiful dogs. They are about four years old and are very friendly. You can find them on our petfinders dog page if you’re interested. Thank you Rose T. for covering the expense of the transport of 27 of those dogs here and for your continued support of them, and the horses Legend injections!)
We also took in seven cats since the last update. We are really not taking in cats. I was moved by their story though. Four cats were just temporarily boarded here. A woman emailed us in a desperate situation. She was thrown out of her home by an abusive ex boyfriend and had no where to go. Every place she called wanted $60 a night to board her cats. She couldn’t afford that. She had no place to go and all her friends were willing to help her, but didn’t want the cats. Could we help? I said yes. She asked for two weeks and I told her we would give her a month to get back on her feet. She picked her cats up this past weekend, and now has a new job and a new home. Pets Alive was happy to help someone KEEP their pets for a change, instead of fielding all the emails from people that want to give them up. It was a welcome change. Good luck to her and her four cats.
The other three cats we took in will be residents here. A shelter that strives to be no-kill was forced to have to start considering euthanasia. They appealed to all the shelters within an hour radius to help by taking just ONE cat. Pets Alive took two for them. An FIV cat that is semi-feral, but coming around VERY quickly and another cat that is very young, maybe nine months old (his name is Don) and a little shy but happy to be pet when he gets to know you. We also received a call from a woman that was just the nicest person. A stray had strolled into her home and settled down there. She already had four cats though and they were having none of it. She wasn’t allowed another cat either and it was at the point where she had to find a home for someone. She begged us to help and since she was willing to pay all his medical costs for neutering, testing, vaccinations and help sponsor him, we accepted that nice cat, Leo. Unfortunately, we also took back a cat that had been adopted a few months ago. You all remember Barney right? The cat found as a kitten in our barn, all alone? His owner became disabled and was unable to care for him suddenly. Our policy is to ALWAYS care for the animals we adopted out, for the rest of their lives, so some of our volunteers went to pick up Barney for us and bring him back here. He is available, once again for adoption.
Horse Update
Thank you for all the kind letters about our horse Blackie, who had to have his eye removed last week. Blackie is doing very well and came through his surgery with no problems. He doesn’t seem to miss the eye at all but we are asking all staff and volunteers that go to his paddock to be sure to speak to him as you approach so that he knows you are coming. He’ll adjust quickly but right now we do not want to spook him by coming up on his blind side unannounced. Blackie could also really use a nice grooming. He really loves to be brushed and we would love for someone to come and brush him up and make him feel good.
I am really glad that Blackie made it through this surgery. He is an older, but very affectionate and kind horse. We will be releasing him in a different paddock this time though, since Foxy (his long time partner) is leaving, we decided to put all our very old horses together. So now Blackie will be with Maureen and Kingfish. Our other very elderly horse, Moonray will stay with Noble since he adores Noble and I won’t break them up unless we have to. Our older horses definitely benefit from a good grooming. It makes them feel so much better to be groomed or bathed.

Dog Training?
We have found a dog trainer that will be running canine obedience classes from Pets Alive. The course is $250 and is seven weeks in length. It is all positive reinforcement training and during that time you will teach your dog to sit, stay, come, down, walk on a loose leash, off (no jumping), and leave it. The classes will be held on Tuesdays or Thursdays for one hour, fifteen minutes a session. If you would like to join up for our next class, please email training@petsalive.com with your preferred day of the week and we will set up a schedule. There will only be five or six dogs allowed in each class, so space is very limited. We will take members in the order they apply and the rest we will put on a waiting list for the next class, so please sign up as soon as possible if you wish to attend.
Thank you volunteers
Our ebay auction is back up thanks to Shanna. Click here: http://www.missionfish.org/NPMMF/nphomepage.jsp?NP_ID=3672 to take a look at all the great items we have up for sale. Shanna does this twice a year for us and it always raises money for Pets Alive. She takes care of all the pictures, the listings and shipping all these items out too. She is really amazing and I don’t thank her often enough for this. It is a ton of work and she really puts alot of time into it for us. Thank you Shanna!
Thank you Cathy and Becky for taking our laundry to the laundromat this week for us. We were really backed up with laundry, they saw it, grabbed it, stuffed it into cars and washed and sorted it all. They would not take a dime from us either. Thank you! You have no idea how much that helped here – especially moral! A room full of smelly, dirty animal bedding can wipe you out mentally as well as physically. BTW, we have new washing machines and dryers, but they are coin operated and that part needs to be disabled. Does anyone know how to do that? They are commercial Speed Queen washers and dryers and we need to get the dryers functioning so we can keep up with the laundry!
Thank you also to Gallagher Printing. Rita and Dennis made us up 320 logo stickers that we could use for our folders! They came out absolutely beautiful. We’re now giving out folders with all adoptions that have our logo and website on the front. Dennis wouldn’t take anything for this, and even covered the shipping to us. Thank you Rita and Dennis.
Thanks again to Patti M. for coming up again and again to help us with the data entry. We’re trying to get all the animals entered into our new system and she has single handedly gotten all the dogs done. We have to do cats and horses now and we also want to back-enter all the dogs that we have had here since January. If you want to help, feel free to come up any day between 10-4 and we’ll set you up. If I am not here, see Mary – she can set you up as well! Thank you Patti!
Thank you again to Rusty’s Place (Chris, Chuck and Tara) for hosting our St. Catrick’s Day event there! Once again our serial volunteers came through and Steve, Becky, Joyce, & Cathy made it all happen. Thank you so much guys. Additionally I would like to mention that Becky donates a lot of her time here and also very often brings tons of goodies for all the dogs and cats. Beds, toys, odds and ends. We never know what her car will be stuffed with but it keeps all the four legged critters thrilled to see her car! (and her of course!). Thanks Becky!
Remember we asked for fiberglass to help us with our dog door situation? You’re not going to believe this but an amazing donation resulted from that. Joe Sylvester from Creative Glass in Wyckoff NJ is not only donating all the fiberglass to us – he is cutting it to size for us! You can’t believe how this donation will help Pets Alive. We’re so touched and thankful for this. Please support this company if you have need in the future. This is a truly generous act. Thank you Joe!
Current Needs

Our current needs are for some fundraising help. Are you a grant writer? Are you an event planner? Do you run a girl scout or boy scout troop that might be willing to put on an event for us? It doesn’t have to be on a grand scale. Any small event that you can run – a car wash, yard sale, etc and donate the proceeds to Pets Alive would go a long way! Do you own a restaurant? Would you be willing to host an event for us? Please contact Jill if you can help! The picture to the right is the results of a mass neutering at Dr. Furman’s office. Your fundraising will help us pay our veterinary bill!
We are in need of paving our driveway to the kennel. It is currently full of potholes and ruts and we have finally accepted the truth that we need to get it paved. If you know of anyone that does blacktopping and paving, please let us know.
Email Sign-ups
Want to help Pets Alive spread the word? We have a mailing list and are trying to recruit more folks to email our newsletter to and gain more support. If your friends are willing, can you add your address book to our email list? (you can send the addresses to me, or you can just sign them up on the front page of our website). They can unsubscribe at any time, but make sure it’s ok with them first!
Don’t forget our upcoming events
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!