Keeping Pets And Families Together

The four women who formed The Family Forever Animal Foundation.

There can be many reasons why families surrender pets to animal shelters. Among the most common are lack of finances, humans losing their homes, special needs of their family pet, don't know exactly what's involved in pet care, allergies. Any time that a pet is surrendered is a sad time; certainly it's very confusing to the pet being placed in a cage or kennel, housed among other pets, who can be quite noisy and equally as distressed.

What if there were some way to help that pet and family stay together? Stephanie Harris, Stefanie Morrison, April Tubbs, and Jessi Van Pelt, were volunteers at a Central Florida no-kill shelter, where they had experienced the many different aspects of shelter life. They became aware of how families and pets were separated, "One of the truly frustrating aspects of rescue work was coping with the number of animals surrendered due to finances, housing, or simply lack of education....We realized that we could do more for our rescued animals if we found ways in which to keep animals and their families together."


That led to all four women forming THE FAMILY FOREVER ANIMAL FOUNDATION, which reaches out to help families resolve the issues which could lead to the severing of their relationship with their pets. This is not an organization which accepts pet surrenders. They do what's needed to keep humans and pets together, such as providing assistance with veterinary costs, temporarily fostering animals for members of the military on deployment, facilitating the introduction of new pets into their households, education about animal care, assistance with food and housing needs.

Since there were four women involved in building the organization, they could divide the tasks and functions. Jessi Van Pelt does much of the fundraising and creates educational materials; Stefanie Morrison provides a welcoming home to pets that are in need of fostering and her husband, Barton, provides legal assistance as the group's attorney; Stephanie Harris serves as secretary and has a special place in her heart for special needs cat; and April Tubbs screens adopters and fills in at any function that needs doing.

The organization, of course, encourages adoption, and they also accept contributions and post a wish list on their site. The group also helps to re-home pets in need, although they do not have the facilities to house surrendered animals.

One of the posters used for education by The Family Forever Animal Foundation.

Some information was obtained through this Pollination Project article: http://thepollinationproject.org/grants-awarded/family-forever-animal-foundation/.

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