Stray Love Foundation Inc

We are a group of volunteers who assist stray, injured, abused & abandoned animals through rescue, spay/neuter, health care, feeding & adoption. Some of us (board members and volunteers) have been doing this work on our own for decades. As the need grew and the financial burden was becoming too much for us as individuals, I decided to form Stray Love Foundation.
Our current goal is to give stray or abandoned animals a fighting chance for a healthy happy life. And to reduce the stray and diseased animal population through spay/neuter campaigns and education. Our wish is to one day have a state of the art facility to house these animals (because we don’t ever want to have to turn an animal away) and also use it to educate children (especially) and some adults on proper and humane treatment of animals, the joy of having them as companions, the therapy they can provide and the importance of spaying and neutering. Our ultimate goal? Is to no longer be needed.
90 Percent of the animals we help come from phone calls for assistance. Usually the caller has picked up a stray or a stray has shown up at there home or work. Sadly sometimes we get calls from people who cannot afford to keep their animals any longer. (With the economy the way it is and our recent devastation from the oil spill, this is happening more and more often.)
Stray tame cats are collected usually without trapping. Stray dogs are usually befriended but sometimes must be trapped. We take the animals to one of our participating veterinarians to check and see if the stray is chipped and if so, we contact the owner. When they are not chipped or tags do not identify the animal we post “found” notices, contact veterinarians, PetFinder, Craigs List and use some social networking methods to try to find owners just in case the animal is lost. If an owner is not found we have them vetted and if healthy(1) we put them into our adoption program(2). if a stray animal seems dangerous in any way, we have it evaluated by professional trainers or one of our participating veterinarians to see if it will be eligible for foster care or adoption. If the animal is deemed a safe companion animal it is then placed in a foster home or boarded with one of our participating veterinarians or kennels while waiting to be adopted and/ or healing from sickness or injury. We use volunteers who are experienced in animal care and have been checked out thoroughly for our foster care.
We are often called because of feral cats. In this case, experienced volunteers use Havahart traps to catch the feral cats. Immediately after they are trapped they are transported to one of our participating veterinarians. There they will run a blood test first to be sure the animal is free of Feline Leukemia or FIV. If healthy(2), the cat(s) are spayed or neutered , the vet tips the ear (the universal symbol of a feral spayed or neutered cat) and are re-released in its original location. Stray cats & cat colonies are fed by volunteers or a responsible party at designated feeding stations, homes or businesses. We attempt to place or re-home any stray cats or kittens that are or can be tamed.
To fund our efforts we accept donations from individuals, we hold a fund-raisers of all kinds and are now seeking grants so that we can continue our work. The major cost, of course, is medical care for each animal. Dogs & puppies can run from $158 to $268 each and cats & kittens from $135 to $165... it varies depending on their needsand their history. These figures do not include pet food. That cost also varies from animal to animal. We have begun chipping all animals.

1 Animals that are ill, diseased, deemed unsafe, suffering or doomed to suffer and have poor or no quality of life are humanely put down by a one of our participating veterinarians.
2 Our Adoption Program consists of many venues. We hold adoptions at local pet stores (see photos attached), we have a website that has an “adoptables” page (www.straylovefoundation.com), We have a spot in he “Pet of the Week” page in the 7 Gulf Coast Newspapers in Baldwin County., we use social networking i.e.. Facebook (Straylovefoundation Magnolia Springs) and often send out emails a network of animal lovers from all over the country that will pass it on to others. One of our volunteers works for the school system and makes sure each child gets a notice to take home every time we have an adoption. All of this work is produced/donated by our board members, volunteers and supporters.