About Friends of Virginia Beach Animal Care and Adoption Center
In early 2006, some Virginia Beach residents began a conversation about our municipal animal shelter they had recently visited. The shelter, completed in 1973 is in a very out-of-the way part of the city and unless you knew where it was, you were bound to miss it.
Due to the fact that the Virginia Beach Bureau of Animal Control is first and foremost, a law enforcement agency, there simply aren't enough hours in a day to protect the animals from cruelty, neglect or abuse in addition to trying to find homes for each of them.
These citizens asked what could be done to improve the chances of the animals that were taken there to find new homes or to be released into animal rescue groups and assist Animal Control by volunteering their time to promote adoptions.
That is how the Friends of Virginia Beach Animal Control was born-concerned citizens taking action to help the animals in our city.
Where to Begin?
One of the first tasks undertaken was to try and solicit donations of Kuranda Dog Beds for all of the kennels. Until that time, all the dogs had was a towel or an old blanket on a concrete floor to lie upon for hours each day.
An effort was started and in a few months time, each dog kennel had a new Kuranda Dog Bed with more on the way.
These beds are comfortable and according to some of the staff, ever since these beds arrived the dogs are a lot calmer, prefering to lie on the bed than to stand at the cage gate and bark.
Using the Internet
Another important tool we began using was the Internet to promote the adoptable animals that were available in our local animal shelter. Websites such as Petfinder.com, 1-800-Save-a-Pet.com and Pets911.com were all available, but these resources were not used to their full potential until the Friends of Virginia Beach Animal Control volunteers began showing up to photograph each of the adoptable animals.
With a new tool offered by RescueGroups.org called "the pet adoption portal", not only were we able to upload our pets to one website, we could upload them to virtually every pet adoption website in the country-inquiries and adoptions soon increased.
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Adoption Events
Friends of Virginia Beach Animal Care and Adoption Center are also active in local pet adoption events where adoptable dogs and cats are taken to local pet stores such as Petsmart to promote these wonderful pets to prospective pet adopters. These adoption events have helped find homes for dozens of pets that might not have beenso fortunate were it not for the efforts of our volunteers.