We nose you’ll love this 2018 impact update

Before we got our noses down and tails up working on the big hairy audacious goals we’ve set for 2019, we asked the PetRescue team to vote for their top achievements for pets in need in 2018. What we got back totally blew us away. 28 amazing milestones, achievements and record breakers, all worthy of celebrating. It was impossible to narrow it down, so here’s the full unabridged list, starting with the top nine (which we actually managed to squeeze 10 into).

But wait, there’s more...

• A mahoosive milestone was reached in 2018 - half a million pets adopted!
• $10m+ worth of goods and services delivered to rescue pets in the last three years.
• We were a Silver Rescue Supporter of the inaugural Companion Animal Rescue Awards, with our very own Vix as a judge.
• We launched a new listings API, that allows all our rescue members using Animal Shelter Manager (and other platforms) to push their pet listings directly to PetRescue, saving more time for their vital rescue work.
• The pet listings donation button was launched, allowing all visitors to the PetRescue website to donate directly to pets they see and fall in love with, but can’t adopt.
• We rebuilt the entire search functionality on the site, adding new search filters and consolidating search into our existing dev stack to make finding a match even easier.
• Adopter Profiles launched, giving rescue groups, shelters and pounds all the essential info they need while cutting down on the need for adopters to complete endless adoption forms for every single pet enquiry.
• The Shy Cats & Senior Citizens program helped some hard-to-rehome shy cats finally find loving homes!
• We brought together PEDIGREE and Woolworths for a major project that brought rescue pets into the national spotlight, and delivered $1 million of pet food for at-risk pets.
• We organised our first ever bird food donation… and had a legitimate reason to use an image of a rubber duckie in lederhosen!
• We made 1,845 commits to the PetRescue website codebase.
• The May 2018 food donation was the biggest in the program's history, with $1.3 million of food distributed to 256 of our rescue members.
• We partnered with the University of Sydney to recruit respondents for their PAWS pilot study.
• We partnered with the Australian Pet Welfare Foundation and industry leaders for first ever urban cat desexing research trial.
• We buddied up with Moose Toys to promote compassion for rescue pets to the next generation of animal advocates.
• We launched the Member News Alert email system, allowing us to quickly fire off message alerts to all our rescue members, so they never miss an opportunity.
• We launched an automated inactive group pathway to help ensure pet listings and Rescue Directory listings are up to date.
• We added confetti whenever a pet is marked as adopted, because although we know rescue is serious business, every adoption deserves a celebration!

With your continued support, we know more amazing things will happen in 2019 to create happiness and save lives.

For some extra good feels, read the story of sassy Susan who went through three foster homes and waited ten long months to find an understanding human that would accommodate her surly purrsonality. With extra help from PetRescue’s Adoptables program, this feisty feline found her perfect match.
 

Image credits: Jenko from Gumtree Greys; Kofi, from Maneki Neko Cat Rescue - image by Martin Bigmore; Paloma and Poppy, from The Fox Residence Guinea Pig Sanctuary; Woolworths Pet Adoption Day - Puffin, from Denise at Paws; Susan, from SAFE Avon Valley - image by Reverie Photography; Jess, from Morwell Pound.