Wow! It’s been a month since we updated our Dog Blog! Sorry ‘bout that! The dogs have been busy looking for a loving home and we’ve been busy driving them!

We continue to do extremely well with our adoptions at the Farmer’s Market on Sundays. During our short 3 hour adoption, we were able to find permanent homes for 18 dogs (with careful screening of course) on 06/08/2008; and yesterday, 15 dogs. This is just the beginning! Wait ‘til we have our 7 day facility up and runnin’. We can’t wait! Our goal is to find at least 50 loving homes for our dogs a week when we have our adoption center. That’s 200 dogs a month! And 2400 lives you can help us save every year! We need your support more than ever! Please donate to our facility fund. We need $400,000 for our down payment on the new facility. We’re asking for everyone to chip in $10.   You’d be surprised how far we can stretch a dollar. If you can do more, that’s wonderful and we all thank you for it!

Here’s something else we’ve been working on. We’re asking for dog lovers who’d like to invest in real estate to contact us. You can reach Jennifer at 714-721-4221 for more information. The idea is to own real estate while supporting our rescue efforts. We’re also asking real estate investors and business partners who have a passion to support animal welfare to participate in our plan to create a community hangout for all dog lovers. See our flyer for more details. You’ll receive long term investment returns, tax incentives/ write-off’s, and best of all, help us save lives! As always, please consult your tax professionals (don’t you just LOVE disclaimers?).

Dr. Sam has also offered to let us set up an office at Ambassador Dog & Cat Hospital in Long Beach. We’ll be able to arrange for meetings with potential families during the week, have a place for volunteer orientations and office work, and best of all, host get-togethers to show you what our goals are and how you can help save another life!

We’re also actively looking and interviewing for foster homes and volunteers. Please fill out a volunteer form and mail it to us. We’ll contact you ASAP. Many volunteer programs are being developed. A teen volunteer program will be available within the next couple of months. Limited space is available so please send in your applications.

Oh, our dogs will have a regular spot on the “Pick-a-Pet” show on NBTV. We just taped our first show a couple of weeks ago. We will continue to give updates on our new facility goals on the show and feature dogs looking for a home. The show is on once a month. Our dogs are going to be TV stars! Celebrities have been adopting from us (Out of respect for their privacy, we will not mention names)! TV producers have been contacting us! Watch out, world...here we come. Please check back for “Rags to Riches” stories on Hearts for Hounds Dogs! See how they go from “The List” to loving arms with hugs and kisses!

Update 05/13/2008:

“Howie Do” from the Doggy Ranch! Being back in Long Beach is so awesome! Our first day back, we wanted to do Sunny California "dirt angels" on the ground. We're finding homes for the dogs again! Our first weekend back started out a bit slow but word is getting out we're back. We’re getting our weekly visit from our friends again. The dogs are happy. They seem to know they’re back "home", as strange as it sounds. It was very touching to see that rain or shine, there were people waiting for us at the Farmer’s Market every Sunday until we got back. Can you believe it? Every weekend for 6 weeks! That’s incredible! Yes! We feel the love! And we’re soaking it all in...every bit of it. =)

Long Beach Animal Control continues to be very supportive. John Keisler came to visit on our first weekend back with his family. I’m sure we will have a great working relationship going forward. We’re working really hard at building a facility for the dogs and creating a community "hang-out" for all dog lovers (Oh, pssssss...we think we found a couple of potential properties... cross your fingers)! As always, please call Jennifer if you have any fundraising ideas. 714-721-4221. We desperately need funds for our new facility. To see our potential sites: look here and here.

On a different note...we want to thank Pam King, a HFH volunteer, for getting people to donate towels and blankets for the dogs! We also want to show our appreciation to Jille Lucier, another HFH volunteer dear to our hearts. She heard about our need for a park bench for the dogs a couple of weeks back. Something we’ve been wanting for 2 years now but can never seem to justify the expense when the dogs need medicine and food. The dogs love them, we know the dogs love them, but there’s never money for something like that in our budget. Anyhow, Jille’s family asked her one day what she’d like for her birthday this year. She said she’d love to have everyone pitch in a few dollars to buy a couple of benches for the dogs. One by one, they all mailed her a check knowing it’s going to a good cause. Jille also arranged to borrow her brother’s truck and drove 2 hours to deliver the benches to the dogs on her day off from work! Forget the time and expense of gas now a days, Jille’s love for the dogs really touched our hearts! We want to thank her family (Phil & Drew- the dudes we go to when we need to borrow a truck now, Janine & Franny, Jocelyn, Pat, Linda, Kelly, & Katelyn.) We thank you soooooo much! And of course all the dedicated volunteers we have throughout the years. We challenge everyone to give big like Jille and her family. You’d be surprised! It’s not the dollar amount. IT REALLY IS THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS!

Update Tuesday, 04/29/2008:

WE’RE BACK!!! After weeks of leg work and phone calls, we received the blessing and approval from Long Beach Animal Control to hold our weekly mobile adoption event in Long Beach again. We will be receiving our Transfer Permit this week and will resume our mobile adoption at the Alamitos Bay Farmer’s Market on Sunday, 05/04/2008, at 10:30 a.m. Please come out and visit! We will be celebrating our homecoming all month! Please tell everyone you know...

We also want to send a big Thank-You to Susanne Delima at the Long Beach Animal Control. She has gone the extra mile to hold our hand through the permit process. We thank her for the speedy process and patience. Please send her a Thank-You note! They are not thanked often enough for what they do. We also want to acknowledge many folks that represent Long Beach and Long Beach Animal Control. Folks like John Keisler, Roger Hatakeyama, Mark Sandoval, just to name a few. Of course, there are many local businesses, city officials, animal advocates and rescue supporters as well...too many to name them all (...and that’s a good thing). Oh, can't forget about Dr. Sam. What can we say about Dr. Sam? Besides being a wonderful vet, he opened up his Whittier facility for us to meet with potential families without one bit of hesitation. That helped tremendously during the past 6 weeks while we were "homeless." We sincerely thank EVERYONE for the help and support. We couldn’t have done it without all the love and support. What we got out of this is that our dogs are well loved by our community and LOVE TRULY CONQUERS ALL!

Update 04/21/2008:

A big "Hello!" from the Hearts for Hounds Dogs (and the volunteers too). We had a wonderful Pet Expo adoption event. We found 28 GREAT homes for the dogs! How cool is that? We thank all the dedicated volunteers for helping us at the event. The volunteers deserve a huge standing ovation for spending a week preparing for the event and a week after the event getting everything reorganized and back on track. The hours were long but all worth it to see these little cuties go to a good home. We thank Bonnie for giving all the dogs a cute haircut and drive all the way from the High Desert Area so the dogs can find a home. We appreciate everyone coming out and supporting us. It was so nice to see our friends.

We miss all of you in Long Beach! We are home sick and want to be back in Long Beach soon. There really is no place like home! We are still working hard on our Transfer Permit in Long Beach and should be able to give you an update by next Monday. CROSS YOUR FINGERS! Please help us by spending 5 minutes each day this week on sending positive thoughts to all the animals in the world.

Update 04/10/2008:

Matilda's Foster Pups

The Expo is a great way for us to reach potential families outside of the Long Beach area. This year is extra special to us because we have tons of support from all of you and many new volunteers. We are looking forward to finding lots of great homes this weekend for the dogs.

As far as our Long Beach permit, we’ve decided to put it on hold until after the Expo. With limited resources, we felt we need to remain true to our mission- to find loving permanent homes for the dogs as soon as possible. We plan on meeting with Long Beach Animal Control again and hash out the details this coming week. What will happen, we still don’t know. What we do know is we need more support than ever! We have decided it’s time to build a commercial facility where the dogs can look for a home 7 days a week. Are you excited yet?

We figure if we were able to place 12,000 dogs in the past 10 years with a very tight budget and only 3 hours of adoption time on Sundays, we can do so much more if we have a permanent facility for the dogs. We would also love to branch out and hold training classes, a low cost clinic, and have an on-site grooming spaw for the dogs. We can keep on rescuing but we MUST do a lot more to promote spay and neuter to prevent needless suffering of these precious animals. We believe a training/ education center is the key. We also see many dogs turned into the shelter because the dog wasn’t "trainable". We think this can easily be corrected with some professional guidance. So, we have made it our goal in 2008 to search and set up a place for the dogs. It’s not an easy task but we are ready for the challenge! Anything for the dogs! This facility will not just be a safe haven for the dogs but a dog lover’s paradise for our community. What we are doing is just not enough anymore. It’s time to take Hearts for Hounds to the next level so many more lives can be saved!

Donate to our Facility Fund

Matilda's Pups

So, here’s what we need from our supporters: We would appreciate all of you passing the word out and help us generate funds. Log on to our website and donate toward our facility fund! And if you can find creative ways to organize fundraising activities, we’d be very grateful! You can run a block garage sale for the dogs, or have the kids help save the planet by collecting soda cans and give the recycling money to the dogs. Anything! Every penny counts! Anyone who’s willing to donate a property, a used car, or even $1, we would be one step closer to our goal this year. On our end, we are putting together a marketing group (all volunteers, of course) to get our name and mission out there. We want to pursue grants, corporate sponsors, and of course network, network, network! If you think you can help in any way, please contact us! Imagine if every one of our 12,000 HFH families donates only $10 (a cup of coffee and a muffin now a days), we would have $120,000 for a down payment on a facility. Remember, we are a non-profit organization and donations can be a tax write-off (here comes the disclaimer...consult your tax professional). What do you say? We say it’s about time!

Update 03/21/2008:

Thank you! Thank you! Thank You! We thank all Hearts for Hounds supporters for being patient with us. We have received wonderful phone calls from all of you and many kind words that keep us going. We want to make sure we share good news with you, not just the bad ones.

After many phone calls and a lot of leg work, Bonnie was able to work out the permit issue with Long Beach Animal Control. She will be meeting with them on Wednesday, 03/26/2008, to finalize the permit process. We’re hopeful that we’ll be back on track on Sunday, 03/30/2008, at the Alamitos Bay Farmer’s Market (awwww...home sweet home). Cross your fingers! And have your little pet buddies cross their paws for us too!

We do sincerely thank Long Beach Animal Control for working with us. A special thanks to Susanne Delima at Long Beach Animal Control for being so patient in answering our questions and concerns. They were able to waive the permit fee for us as well since we are a non-profit rescue.

Please come back for an update next week. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and look forward to seeing all of our Long Beach friends next weekend!

Update 03/18/2008:

We have temporarily found a new place for our weekly adoption. It will be at Whittier Dog & Cat Hospital. Our vet, Dr. Sam, has opened up his facility in Whittier to host our weekly adoption until we have the Long Beach issue resolved. It will be held on Saturdays from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Thanks again for everyone’s patience.

For more information on our adoption events, please go to our events page.

Special Notice 03/14/2008:

Hearts for Hounds is moving to a new adoption site starting immediately. Please continue to come and visit the dogs every week to support our rescue. We will have the new location posted shortly.

First of all, we want to apologize to all the lovely folks we see at the Alamitos Bay Farmer's Market on Sunday mornings. We have grown to love each one of you for visiting with us every week and playing with our dogs. Your bright smiles and kind words have kept us going in trying times throughout the years. Your love and support for our dogs made us feel at home in the city of Long Beach for the past 10 years. We're truly sorry we will no longer be holding adoption events in the city of Long Beach. We haven't quite figured out if we're feeling sad for the folks who come and visit our dogs every Sunday morning or feeling sad because we won't be able to see our Long Beach friends on Sundays now...

A big thank-you to all the volunteers, supporters (you know who you are), and the Alamitos Bay Farmer's Market for helping us. A special thank-you to Mark Sandoval, who has fought hard to keep our rescuing efforts alive in Long Beach. A big kiss to all the staff at the SEAACA shelter, where we rescue most of our little furry friends. We appreciate everyone's love and support! We are very grateful to have all of you in our lives!

As many of you know, on Sunday, 03/09/2008, we were asked to leave the Farmer's Market by Long Beach Animal Control. We were told that we cannot do adoptions on public property in the city of Long Beach. We MAY be able to do so on a private property if we obtain a "Transfer Permit," which will cost $500. We trusted that it was a big misunderstanding since we've been there for years and it would all resolve during the upcoming days.

On Wednesday, after many calls, Mark was able to help us in getting special permission to keep our adoptions going out by the Farmer's Market (a public area) instead of looking for a new location that is considered "private-property". The catch is we still have to apply for the permit.

We happily went to the Animal Control Department the next day to find out the application is pages long and takes 30 days to process. Our initial application fee is a non-refundable $200 and more to pay later; which we all know can pay for A LOT of stuff at Hearts for Hounds. We were ready to proceed but come to find out there's no guarantee the application will be approved in the end.

There are also many regulations that come with the permit. Although we appreciate the fact that Animal Control wants to keep tabs on all the dogs to make sure everything is kept in neat order, we find it impossible to have the man power to keep up with their policies.

At this point, we are choosing to leave the city of Long Beach. We see it potentially becoming an uphill battle with no end in sight. One rescue we talked to this week said they had to go to court to stay in Long Beach. Further, we cannot and will not waste an application fee on something that's not a guarantee. Our final deciding factor was that we won't be able to rescue more dogs and find them homes for at least 30 days until the application is approved- IF it ever gets approved. Until then, we will have little donations to survive on and pay our bills with, risking closing our doors for good.

Our main focus has ALWAYS been putting the dogs' well-being first, and it will ALWAYS remain so. Putting our emotions aside, the dogs are our top priority. We are choosing to spend our limited resources on making sure our dogs are healthy and find them loving homes. Our goal is to make our community a better place one dog at a time!

Let's help another child get their first puppy on Christmas morning, see an elderly woman feel 10 years younger after adopting an older dog that otherwise would have never found a home, or share a family's joy they haven't felt since their dog Snoopy passed on.

Again, we thank everyone! Please be patient with us while we make our transition. We will be updating as soon as we can on upcoming events. Please come back to our website often for updates.

Sincerely,
The Hearts for Hounds volunteers