No Paw Left Behind
We are a registered charity (760642538 RR 0001)
We need your help to save the lives of those who have no one else
Our Mission
No Paw Left Behind is a completely volunteer-based, not-for-profit organization that helps animals facing euthanasia in Quebec and Ontario find rescue placements. Our main focus is on pound animals, but we are able to help even beyond. We do not discriminate for breed, age or medical issues.
How You Can Help
We rely on donations to help us save the animals and do issue tax receipts. We are always in need of transport crates as well, and have, on occasion, open volunteer positions. Please contact us at [email protected].
Why we are needed
We work as a buffer between our rescue partners and the shelters/pounds we work with. We do not adopt animals out ourselves but we do all we can to keep those our intake partners contact us about safe until a rescue spot is found. Typically, the intake partners we work with have municipal animal control contracts; this means that they have to take in stray animals regardless of available space at their facility. Usually, this means that animals cannot stay long because a steady stream of others is coming in. When adoptions do not keep up with the number of incoming animals, some space has to be made and we then are contacted to help create that space. Also, some animals come in with medical needs that the shelters are not able to meet; others just do not do well in such an environment and are not deemed to be adoptable as they are.
The shelters themselves also typically do not have the resources to contact multiple rescues themselves for all of the animals that are not adoptable but can still have good quality of life. And because the shelters are doing all they can to save as many as possible too, there often is not much time to get any animal out once we are contacted. It all comes down to saving as many as they can from the viewpoint of our intake partners (basically whomever they can help) and asking for help for the others. Our partners also typically do not have the resources to contact multiple rescues themselves for all of the animals that are not adoptable but can still have good quality of life. And because they are doing all they can to save as many as possible too, there often is not much time to get any animal out once we are contacted because they are always full.
Once we are contacted about an animal that needs help, we get in touch with our rescue partners to see what spots might be available and to discuss any restrictions that they might face. It’s been really hard for everyone in the rescue community since the beginning of the pandemic; fosters are hard to find, adoptions have slowed down, fundraising is difficult and the sheer number of animals that need help is overwhelming. In addition, we often do not know much about the animals waiting at the shelters.
If no immediate rescue spot is available if the animal needs to move out of the shelter to make room for the next one, we put them into boarding to keep them safe. In order to make it easier for the rescues to take them, we try to find out as much as we can about the animal once it is there. Typically, we only board dogs but we have a wonderful temporary foster for cats. In order to make sure that there are no underlying health issues our animals are seen by a veterinarian (often multiple times) to make sure that vaccines are up to date and to treat, or at least start to treat, any health issues. We also test the dogs that go into boarding for Lyme Disease and Heartworm to start treatment if needed and to minimize the surprises and possible costs for any intaking rescue.
