A Program Enabling Vulnerable Families Keep their Companion, Support Pets at Home

The Cause

Zoe’s Animal Rescue is a 100% volunteer-run, registered Canadian charity committed to the welfare, rehabilitation, rehoming, and veterinary care of animals, specifically canines and felines, in and around the Edmonton Area. We rely entirely on donations, grant funding, and fundraising to support our cause.

The idea presented here is to establish a program that enables the vulnerable, marginalized, low income families in our community many with mental health issues, including people on Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH), people with disabilities, people on social assistance of any kind, homeless people, unemployed people etc. keep their pets and care for them. We hope by providing this service we allow for families to stay together. These pets are often a huge support for their people and provide companionship and protection and contribute immensely to their mental health as many have no friends or family and their pets are their everything and their reason to get up in the morning.

The program will encompass a ;

Spay Neuter Return (SNR) Program, which provides free spay and neutering as well as vaccination and microchip for low income families

Helping Hands Program, which helps low income families with their pets’ health needs such as porcupine quills, car accidents or tumors that need to be removed. Without the helping hands program many of these people would lose their animals as they would have to surrender them or the animals would pass away and usually not in a peaceful way. The program also helps with end of life, euthanasia, for the low income families where the animal would suffer if we wouldn’t help them do this peacefully

Dog House Program, where we build dog houses and take them to vulnerable, low income families in remote communities so their pets can be warm for winters

Who Will it Benefit?

This program will help the vulnerable, marginalized, low income families in our community including people on Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH), people with disabilities, people on social assistance of any kind, homeless people, unemployed people and those that have been affected by the pandemic and various hardships rippling from the pandemic.