Best Bully Sticks Rescue Spotlight: It Takes A Village Canine Rescue

If your dog is your baby then you understand the love and care put into raising a well-adjusted and happy dog. But what if your dog didn’t have you, then who would care for your baby? One rescue in Evansville, Indiana proves that sometimes it does “Take A Village” to raise a dog and bring them closer to their forever homes.

BestBullySticks.com spotlights It Takes A Village Canine Rescue, the winner of our most recent 1-Day Animal Shelter/Rescue Giveaway, and a rescue that runs the only no-kill shelter in their area. We talked with It Takes A Village’s Kelly Miller to learn more about this wonderful rescue.

When & Why did you start?
We started about 2 years ago to fill a need for rescue in our area. The numbers were astounding and we wanted to help cut down the drastic amount of euthanized animals.

What's different about your rescue?
For our city, we are the first and only no kill rescue, so our grand opening was a fairly historic event! We also operate a Thrift Shop out of the front of our rescue to serve as a fundraiser, which is a different concept for our area.

What is the greatest success story or "win" that your rescue has had?
Our greatest "win" was earning a $25,000 Pepsi grant that enabled us to open a facility in July. Up until that point, we were foster based only with no centralized location (other than board members' garages and spare bedrooms!) and while we had built a wonderful network of fosters and volunteers, having a building has allowed to us to help so many more dogs already and raise more awareness of rescues, just in the past 2 months! We are still mainly foster based because we believe these dogs deserve a nice comfy place to live and that it helps make them ready for a new home if they are used to carpet under their feet and the sound of the TV and family life. However, the facility has given us the opportunity to have somewhere for dogs to go in emergency situations - like death row dogs or abandoned puppies, etc. until we can find a foster family to nurture them.

What's the most rewarding thing about working at your rescue?
Watching the transformation of stray, scared, abused, and neglected dogs blossom into the beautiful, lovable (and full of love!) PETS that they become and helping their long lost forever families find them! We take no greater pride than announcing numbers of adoptions in the double digits!

What can people do to help your rescue?
We can always use foster families and donations - money (of course), time (we are nothing without our volunteers) and STUFF! We accept donations of items to sell in our thrift store as well as food, treats, toys (especially Bully Sticks) and cleaning supplies - we have a mantra around the center - there is no such thing as too many rolls of paper towels in a dog shelter!

Pictures and information about our adoptable dogs, adoption applications, foster applications and volunteer applications are all on the website. We have many fundraising events and partner with local restaurants to do a "Dine Out for the Dogs" event at least once a month, where they donate a portion of sales on a particular day to us. You can get coupons to these events on all 3 of our pages.