Education National 

PRAS Receives Shout-out from National Animal Welfare Organization for Increased Lifesaving Rates

K. Alston , , ,
Recently, the Best Friends Animal Society, a national animal welfare organization working to save more lives in America’s shelters, featured a post about the Peninsula Regional Animal Shelter (PRAS) on their Facebook page. Check out their shout-out to our shelter and amazing shelter staff below!
Peninsula Regional Animal Shelter, one of the largest open-admission shelters in Virginia, just finished 2020 with its highest lifesaving percentage EVER! Their lifesaving rate for dogs is nearly 90% and their overall save rate jumped from 72% to 84%! How did they do this? According to shelter staff, “we got out of our own way!”
Realizing that very few animals really need to [be] kept at an animal shelter facility, they saw fostering as a way to not only increase their capacity for care, but it offered the best option for the animals to thrive. They also wanted to get REAL WORLD observations on these animals, knowing that the current behavior of a lot of their animals was shelter-driven, and although the shelter staff are amazing, they can only do so much to duplicate a natural home environment for the pets. These observations in turn, helped get the animals adopted faster!
Another way they increased their lifesaving was to eliminate some of the barriers that not only deterred people from fostering, but created way too many hurdles to lifesaving. People looking to foster already had the most important requirement… they wanted to help the animals. With a new foster coordinator on board, they hit the ground running not only saving more lives (1, 214 to be exact for 2020), but also engaging with the public, and providing education and support throughout the entire process.
The moral of this story? The hardworking staff at Peninsula Regional Animal Shelter sum it up beautifully: “Try new things! Engage the citizens of your communities. They are caring, knowledgeable and want to save lives… just like we do! Dropping barriers to fostering was hands down, the best thing we could have done for our animals, organization and community.” 
Join us in celebrating this amazing growth and accomplishment! 
If you would like to learn more about how you can become a volunteer, foster or adopt a pet at PRAS, visit the shelter’s website or call 757-933-8900.