Since starting Northbound Rescue, we’ve received a lot of questions like, “You started your own rescue?” “Are you adopting out your own dogs?” While the word “rescue” is in our name, Northbound is not a rescue in the traditional sense, but we certainly do help shelter animals in need of forever homes get the treatment and care they need and help them get adopted.
What We Don’t Do:
We do not pull a dog from a shelter and adopt them out ourselves. We like to view ourselves more as the “middle men” in that we help form the connection between shelter and rescues. We do not list available dogs on our website, collect applications or deliver dogs to adopters. We are always happy to help facilitate adoptions and help our shelters and rescues where we are needed, but we are not an organization that adopts out our own dogs.
What We Do:
Northbound rescue is committed to partnering with shelters in low-income, underserved, and rural areas of the South. These shelters often have a large number of animals with low local adoption rates. That means shelter workers are trying to stay afloat while cleaning kennels, administering medicine, feeding and taking care of animals who don’t have high chances of getting out of the shelter.
That’s where Northbound Rescue steps in. We partner with these shelters and offer to help them get their dogs out the door and into good homes. NBR will help by providing medical treatment (most often heartworm treatment for heartworm positive dogs, grant writing to help shelters get the supplies they need, and donations (monetary and items). Most importantly, Northbound Rescue also helps the shelters to form relationships with rescues who will pay a pull fee to take their dogs and find them forever homes in the Northeast. By assisting with rescue efforts, we help our partner shelters with all aspects of getting their dogs ready to send to rescue from ensuring all vetting is done to having photos and bios for listings to transport.
How Did We Come Up With This Idea?
Our co-founders had been volunteers with a group in Mississippi when they realized the shelter was struggling to stay on top of every day shelter duties and rescue efforts. They did not have a high local adoption rate and really needed rescues to take their dogs but were not able to keep up with what rescues needed from them to adopt their dogs out. Our co-founders decided to focus on helping this shelter form relationships with various rescues and stay on top of what rescues needed to pull the dogs from the shelter.
While Northbound Rescue isn’t physically adopting out dogs to their forever families, we are “rescuing” these dogs by getting them vetted and over to the groups who can be the ones to physically send these dogs home. As we always say, “it truly does take a village”. We hope you’ll continue to follow us and support us in our journey of saving more dogs.
