Orange County Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Animals

Humane Education - Kindness Kids & Canine Literacy project

Kindness, caring, and compassion impacts people and animals alike. By instilling these values at a young age, we are teaching our youth how to love and respect all living beings. Students are also taught how to interact responsibly and safely with dogs, reducing fear and improving confidence. OC Animal Allies PAWS volunteers embrace new ways to help the Orange County Communities we proudly serve. The goal of OC Animal Allies’ award-winning Canine Literacy Program is to help reduce the anxiety students feel when reading aloud, improve reading fluency and reading comprehension skills, build self-esteem and confidence and to simply make reading fun. Studies have shown that petting a dog lowers both blood pressure and stress levels. This same response occurs in the reading session, helping children to reduce stress while reading aloud. Many students use one hand to pet the dog and the other hand to hold their book while reading to the dog who offers a calm, accepting and nonjudgmental ear. This unique experience is a wonderful way to motivate students and establishes marked and lifelong improvements in reading, speaking and comprehension. PAWS Therapy Dogs program volunteers and their therapy dogs visit classrooms and libraries throughout Orange County. The students are given activity books and are asked to share the activity books with their families. After participating, the students are encouraged to make posters illustrating what they have learned.

No Empty Bowls

OC Animal Allies’ No Empty Bowls program aims to assist individuals and family in the community who need are struggling to provide food for their pets. NEB can help them from going hungry or being relinquished to a shelter due to lack of resources. We acquire through donations or purchase, and warehouse food and pet related items that are then donated to local organizations who are already providing for and feeding our low-income community. “No Empty Bowls” provides low income animal owners with food for their animals during times of need. The program receives both in-kind donations of food and as well as budgeted money used to purchase food and to provide logistics (warehousing and delivery in some cases) to supply our warehouse for distribution to our community partners. Many people in our community simply need a “helping paw” with feeding their animals for a few weeks as they get back on their feet after losing a job, the death of a family member or recovering from an illness. With help from the community, we aim to prevent pets from going hungry or ending up at a shelter because their owner has fallen on hard times. Increasingly, we see people turn to us again and again for support. Our distribution partners pick up donated food and other available supplies from our warehouse to distribute it at their food pantries. As many clients seeking assistance typically cannot carry large supplies of food, volunteers will bag a smaller supply of food to distribute to them.

OCCATS

Our OCCATS (Orange County Cares About Cats) program provides feral fix spay/neuter vouchers and resources for trap-neuter-release (TNR). All feral cats living in our Orange County community today are descendants of once owned domestic cats that were abandoned. It only takes one generation of living outdoors for cats to become fearful of humans and unaccustomed to our touch, making it very difficult for them to become cuddly family pets once again. Our solution to the ever-increasing feral cat population in Orange County is twofold: First, OC Animal Allies offers our low cost spay/neuter program to cat owners making it easier for them to keep their pet cats indoors while also preventing unwanted litters that may be abandoned outside. Second, OC Animal Allies is part of the trap-neuter-return (TNR) process, which is recommended by feral cat advocacy groups as the most humane way to manage community cat colonies. Our OCCATS Feral Fix program offers information and resources to Orange County regarding feral cats and supplies vouchers that enable them to spay/neuter a captured feral cat before it is returned to its colony. This provides benefits to both the resident and the cat. A fixed cat will be less likely to get injured in fights and will not continue to endlessly give birth to kittens, increasing its chances of having a longer and healthier life. A fixed cat also means less noise and fewer cats over time.

PAWS Therapy Dog Program

Making a positive impact on the lives of those struggling with loneliness, anxiety or illness, OC Animal Allies PAWS Therapy Dogs program is central to our mission of supporting the community. More than 125 volunteers and their dogs spend time at nursing homes, psychiatric hospitals, hospices and children’s homes to help bring joy and encouragement to the disabled, bedridden or neglected. Our therapy dog teams conduct monthly visits to more than 30 facilities throughout Orange County, California. Averaging more than 700 visits annually, our PAWS Therapy Dog program helps strengthen the human-animal bond by sharing the love of a pet with those that cannot have their own. These visits provide a unique and wholesome social opportunity for seniors, children, and the community at large. PANDA (PAWS Assists the Needs of the District Attorney) deploys select PAWS Therapy Dog teams to help young victims preparing for trial in coordination with the Orange County District Attorney’s Office (OCDA). The PANDA unit utilizes carefully selected and trained members of our Pets Are Wonderful Support (PAWS) therapy dog teams to help comfort child victims of sexual assault and abuse while they meet with OCDA staff to prepare for their cases and trial. Volunteers and their therapy dog help comfort children during the stressful process of reliving traumas while they prepare for trial. The presence of a gentle and caring dog, makes the meetings more productive and provides victims with the unrivaled support of their gentle and caring furry friend. OC Animal Allies AirPAWS unit is our newest program for the millions of passengers traveling through John Wayne Airport (SNA). AirPAWS deploys experienced handler and dog teams from our PAWS (Pets Are Wonderful Support) Therapy Dogs program to make the often-stressful process of traveling much more enjoyable for passengers departing and arriving at our local Orange County airport. As Animal Ambassadors, our teams are on the ready to welcome visitors and locals alike to Orange County.

Animal Rescue Fund

The Animal Rescue Fund focuses on the mission of OC Animal Allies to directly provide support for animals in need. This aid is granted to qualified elderly, disabled and low-income animal owners, to assist with emergency and critical veterinary care. We promote responsible pet ownership and the humane treatment of animals and to reduce the number of animals killed in shelters. OC Animal Allies works to meet these goals through its ARF program by aggressively promoting the spaying and neutering of animals and providing financial assistance for for low income animal owners unable to shoulder the entire cost of the procedure. Spaying and neutering reduces pet overpopulation resulting in a decrease of euthanasia in shelters. Our ARF also provides emergency financial assistance to low income individuals who are faced with the heart-breaking life and death decisions affecting their animals based on their inability to pay. Without financial assistance many of these animals do not receive care and suffer or the owners are forced to turn them in to shelters.