Thank you for a lifesaving year!

Gratitude. To our donors, volunteers and supporters we are grateful beyond belief.

Together with you, this year we’ve rescued and housed and cared for more than 60 dogs and cats, provided care and housing for seven pigs, built a network of partnerships around the region, and charted a solid course for the future.

Aska’s Animals exists to provide a progressive environment for animals through rehabilitation, adoption, education and community outreach. Our role is to fill a critical gap between shelters and permanent rescue—one that few organizations in the region can serve. It’s a piece of a big puzzle that is dynamic and ever-changing. Thanks to you, we are fulfilling our mission and your support has made our first year an exciting one.

2021 has exceeded our expectations. After receiving our long-awaited non-profit status in March of 2021, we got to work. In the past 10 months Aska’s Animals:

• Held free monthly animal behavior workshops for the community led by our professional dog trainer extraordinaire Krissi Goetz from JH Positive Training. One of the primary reasons people are forced to give up an animal is due to behavioral problems that are not addressed appropriately. By giving training support we can help keep more dogs in their forever homes and help all dogs and their people in our community have better manners as we share trails, parks and open spaces. We are expanding this program to provide one-on-one support for local families that need help with their dogs. All of our training helps us increase awareness about the benefits of positive training methods and our methods are science-backed.

• Laid the foundation to hire a part time animal coordinator thanks to the support of many of you who donated through the Tin Cup Challenge. This person, our first paid position, will allow us to help increase our volunteer animal care and move it from basic support to enrichment and training throughout the day. When animals leave our care they will be ready to enter the world as well socialized and well behaved pets eager to find their family.

• Built and put to immediate use The Puppy Palace, the first animal housing of its kind in the region, and bridge to successful adoptions. In conversations with our amazing partners at the Animal Adoption Center in Jackson, we jointly identified a need for temporary housing for puppies, and often their mothers. These unwanted litters, due to dogs not being spayed or neutered, come to us not old enough to be adopted but requiring a home and the around the clock care that puppies demand. While the puppies are with us they receive early puppyhood education to ensure that they are ready for their new homes upon adoption. Without this intervention these animals would have an uncertain life and would most likely go on to have several unwanted litters of their own.

While it’s been a big year, we’re looking ahead to the future. Our region needs more safe space for dogs and cats who are in transition between shelter and adoption. We have an engaged and motivated volunteer base who are eager to do more. Currently we can only say yes to one dog at a time who needs our help. And orphaned kittens are being nursed in a guest bathroom. As we look to additional space it is to continue to serve this need and enrich the lives of more homeless dogs and cats and assist our partner organizations with behavior support and other unique needs for the animals in their programs.

In addition to more space for our dogs and cats, we are also exploring an incubator for neonatal kittens. This year we’ve had more sick kittens than at any other time in our work (before our non-profit days when this was run as a labor of love) and more losses in one year than the previous 10 combined. An incubator can help these sweet animals in their early fight for life by keeping them warm and healthy while they are bottle fed around the clock.

As a dedicated partner in our work, you will be the first to know what 2022 looks like as we finalize our capacity plans and next steps around providing more support for animals in the coming years.

This end of year season we want you to know we couldn’t do all of this without your support. Our only ask today is that you help spread the word about animals in need and follow the daily comings and goings of our animal residents and human friends on Instagram at askasanimals. As always, you’re welcome to visit the farm to see our work in action.

We can’t thank you enough for your support—the year ahead looks bright.