Stay safe.

Support the shelter
to help us ...

...support the animals.

A Letter from Our Director  

Hello to all our friends, adopters, supporters and pet lovers. We hope you are staying safe and are getting to spend some extra time with your furry friends during this difficult time and required shelter in place regulations. We wanted to remind our friends that humans are NOT the only ones who are in desperate need of help during the coronavirus.

WE ARE YOUR local animal shelter. There's a place in your community where the hungry are fed, the homeless are sheltered, and the abandoned are given care. It’s your local animal shelter, right here in Sterling, MA. We provide comfort and care for our community's unwanted animals. We offer many other services too, for pets and their people. To do all this, we rely on the support of people like you. Here are a few ways you can help animals, especially those in our care. Give a little bit. Donate food, towels, old blankets and other needed supplies to the shelter. Lend a hand and become a volunteer. Find that special someone here waiting for a home and adopt! Help spread the word about our program. Be a responsible pet owner. Vote for the animals. Support legislation that protects animals. Report animal cruelty. Teach your children respect for animals. Spread the word. Help us help them.

We hope this newsletter finds you well, and your family members (two and four legged) safe in the midst of this confusing and worrisome time in our world. Here at Animal Shelter Inc., we are doing our best to adjust to restricted operations and transports, but just like each of you, we thrive on social interaction, and keeping our distance from our beloved volunteers, supporters, and adopters is a challenging adjustment to make.

Though our shelter is currently closed (we are very thankful that all our animals have been adopted or are in foster homes), our low cost on-site vet clinic is still extremely busy. The clinic needs to continue spaying/neutering to help the animal community and we hope by continuing our mission to spay/neuter the pets in our community will help avoid an explosion of unwanted animals being born into this disaster. However, by the time this newsletter gets read, we may HAVE to close our clinic depending on how our state changes things. Animals and pets are the very last creatures to be considered during a state/federal crisis/emergency.

From all of our staff to volunteers, kennel staff, clinic staff, and our partner shelters,
be safe, be thoughtful, and above all else, watch our for each other.
This pandemic is sure to stay with us long after its over.

We appreciate your support so we can
continue to help
during these difficult
times and save lives.

Our little shelter has been around long time. It’s easy to forget just how many disasters and tragedies we have seen our local and national communities through. Although our home is here in Sterling, MA, we consider each of our rescue partners around the U.S. to be extensions of our family network, and we feel honored to help.

In 2004, our Disaster Rescue Assistance Program was launched – where our disaster animal rescue trained shelter staff and veterinarians travel to natural and man-made disasters to assist animals in need. Rescue, recovery and rehabilitation are the main focus. The trips are 100% funded through donations. Our shelter is proud to have assisted after Hurricane Charley, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy.

• When Hurricane Charley hit Florida – we were the first vet team to arrive on scene to care for over 1,000+ animals being held at a regional stock yard set up as a temporary holding area for lost/abandoned pets. From farm animals to companion animals, our team of three spent long hot days taking care of hundreds of pets that needed urgent veterinary care.
• Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, and we were proud to step up to take all of the animals we could from the south. We also took four of our vet staff to help where we could and filled four extra large suitcases with as many medical supplies as possible.
• When Hurricane Sandy hit, thanks to YOUR support, we collected four vanloads / trucks filled top to bottom with pet and people supplies and hit the road, driving to NJ/NY to provide help and care for the overwhelmed shelters and staff, providing them with much needed supplies.
• We were there to help Puerto Rico after the back-to-back hurricanes hit their island in September 2017. We really needed to step up our efforts to help this island, and somehow through luck and hard work, we managed to coordinate one of the largest transports we’ve ever taken. Partnering with others our shelter led the effort to help our friends from All Sato Rescue. We had the pilots and planes donated and had to collectively raise $80,000 for jet fuel. Thanks to our supporters and shelters, we raised that money and within days had almost 200 dogs/cats flown directly into Worcester Airport. This was an event that had never been accomplished by our small shelter and all our staff and volunteers were so proud of the work we did. We also sent over 4,000 POUNDS of pet and people supplies back to Puerto Rico by cargo ship. Our All Sato Rescue program has been in operation since 1999, and many of you receiving our letter today are the proud owner/s of our rescued pets. It is one of our most beloved programs.
  
  In addition, we continue to receive transports from Puerto Rico to Georgia, the Mid West and up and down the East Coast, and many other states, taking in thousands of homeless, out-of-time and out-of-luck pets EVERY YEAR. Our adopters give many of them the first and last home they will ever know- and the first true chance at knowing what forever love means, and we thank you for giving these furry friends a new leash on life.

Over the years, our little non-profit organization has grown from an idea in the making to a thriving, flourishing adoption center and veterinary clinic. Between our shelter and on-site vet clinic, we serve approximately 5,000 pets and people a year and offer services and programs that have an immeasurable value in our community here and everywhere else we rescue from. Our on-site vet clinic provides low-cost spay/neuter (as well as other services) for our communities pets. Keeping the Massachusetts pet population compliant on spays and neuters at an affordable cost. Our Seniors for Seniors program helps our adopters 55+ find older pets in search of a quieter home. We offer adoption services for small animals, hold spay and neuter voucher days, and help facilitate owner surrenders of pets needing new homes.

In the last decade alone, our shelter is proud to have done just shy of 25,000 adoptions. That’s an impressive number, but the lives that have been affected by this number is harder to quantify. We know how proud it makes us to help our rescue partners around the country in their most dire times of need. In this tumultuous time, we unfortunately find the tables have turned.

NOW it is us, and we are reaching out to our beloved community and friends, supporters, to tell you that in this new crisis, we are now in need of YOUR help to survive. Recent government statistics state 90% of small businesses (such as ours, as we are NOT funded by the city, state or government) that are forced to close for more than 5 consecutive days will never open their doors again. We do NOT want to be part of that 90%, the services our shelter/clinic provide are truly life saving and we also perform a valuable service to our community and state – PUBLIC HEALTH. Without shelters such as ours, there would be stray animals all over our neighborhoods and there would be a huge public health issue on top of the current medical crisis with the corona virus! If you appreciate all of the work we have done in our community here and beyond, or the work we continue to do: the time to support us is now, or we may not be around to continue to do the work we feel is so important. It’s really that simple.... we need your help to save them. There are several ways you can help make sure we don’t have to close our doors after more than 40 years of providing important services for our community as well as saving tens of thousands of lives from all over the United States and beyond – and its as easy as 1-2-3:

1. MAKE A DONATION. The new "Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act" is due to pass April 3rd and it offers a new incentive for non-profit donations. It will let taxpayers deduct up to $300 in charitable donations from their taxable income. The CARES Act temporarily creates something non-profits have long sought, a “universal charitable deduction,” also known as an “above-the-line” deduction for donations. That means taxpayers can easily claim the deduction on their tax forms without having to go through the extra step of itemizing it.
   
2. SIGN UP FOR RECURRING DONATIONS. If times are tight for you too, this is a helpful way to show support without breaking the bank. Our recurring donations start at a minimal $10.00 a month. That’s it. With an easy cancellation process (if necessary) that allows you to make a commitment to help us a little bit every month. As we are finding, this crisis isn’t temporary, though many of us had hoped it would be. This crisis is ongoing, and we hope your support will be too. You can find both options at https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/sterlingshelter your donations OR check out our new Amazon Wishlist for items we are always in need of and expect to burn through once we are open and accepting transports.
   
3. Check out HOW YOU CAN HELP helping others. There are several dozen ways you can help and many are FREE, others provide YOU a way to potentially win various contests and more.

Learn more.

Stay aware.

Please make sure you don’t become a victim. Read more about avoiding Charity Scams During COVID-19.

Our shelter is a PROUD Guide Star PLATINUM MEMBER (the highest rating level achievable) and also rated for four straight years with Great Nonprofits.

Want to help the Shelter? Have you considered our Recurring Giving system. This convenient system allows you to automatically make a donation to the Sterling Shelter every month via credit card or checking account. This is an extremely powerful fundraising method that can allow the Shelter to save thousands of additional animals every year with a donation as small as $2.00 per month from you. Thank you for your support!