How Organizations Value Volunteers
Apr 21, 2025 How do you determine the value of a volunteer? Is it through the dollar amount of a volunteer hour? The number of hours they give each year? Each Volunteer Appreciation Week, we celebrate the incredible impact of our volunteers—often by recognizing those who dedicate countless hours and by sharing the tangible difference their efforts make for the animals in our care. In 2024 alone, volunteers contributed 82,334 hours across all APA! programs. That’s the equivalent of 40 full-time staff positions. Their impact is felt...
Ways to Help APA! Save the Tiniest Lives this Kitten Season
Apr 17, 2025 With Spring comes an influx of kittens found in need and sent to our shelter – kittens so small and fragile they need bottle feedings and other care around the clock to survive. Austin is at the center of innovation with caring for and saving these tiniest of lives, but we need your help to help all who need us this Kitten Season. 1. Volunteer or Foster From feeding and nursery upkeep to transport and data entry, there’s an opportunity for everyone in the nursery or at home. No experience...
Thinking Outside the Shelter Walls to Support Dogs In Need
Apr 14, 2025 Austin Pets Alive! (APA!) establishes programs whenever a gap in the shelter system’s live-outcome strategy is identified. APA!’s programming played a key role in making Austin the largest and longest-running no-kill community in the country. One of the last challenges to address was finding a path to live outcomes for big dogs, particularly those needing behavioral rehabilitation. To meet this need, APA! launched its Behavior Program in 2012. Our Behavior team works with dogs on a range of behaviors, from leash...
What to Expect When Expecting Kittens
Apr 01, 2025 Cat carrier after cat carrier of tiny little mews arriving for intake. Streams of fosters coming and going as they bring kittens for exams or pick up a new litter to take home. Volunteers bustling around the nursery, doing chores and keeping kittens fed. That’s a typical spring day at the Neonatal Program nursery at Austin Pets Alive!. APA!, which pioneers innovative lifesaving programs designed to save the animals most at risk of euthanasia, accepts over 2,000 kittens into its program each year. Kittens come from...
Hays County Contract Update
Mar 25, 2025 Partnership between Hays County and Austin Pets Alive! for Pet Resource Center to Conclude Austin Pets Alive! (APA!) has announced the conclusion of its partnership with Hays County in managing the Hays County Pet Resource, Education, and Research Center (Hays PRC). The conclusion comes after the Commissioner’s Court voted to terminate the contract to re-evaluate how to proceed with animal services in Hays County. Since its inception in April 2023, this collaboration has been instrumental in providing essential resources to...
APA! Encourages People To Adopt During PetSmart Charities National Adoption Week
Mar 24, 2025 AUSTIN, TX – MARCH 24, 2025 – Pets are family, and can bring hope, companionship and unconditional love to their people. Adopting a pet in need of a home can bring joy to people and also impact communities, alleviating strain on overcrowded shelters. That’s why Austin Pets Alive! (APA!) will bring adoptable pets to the Southpark Meadows Petsmart, 9300 S I-35 Frontage Rd, Austin, TX 78748, on March 29 and March 30 from 12 pm to 3 pm for PetSmart Charities® National Adoption Week, taking place March 24 –...
APA!’s Shelter Pet Hospital Wish List
Mar 20, 2025 Since April of 2024, we’ve seen the reality of new facilities begin to take shape, with the ground breaking of our future APA! Shelter Pet Hospital. Now we are nearing the end of the construction of our hospital, built to serve the pets in APA!’s care, whether located at the shelter or in a loving foster home. With the walls up, the utilities on and the dedicated spaces meticulously planned, we need help furnishing the building with items like a stainless steel table, lockers, and shelving. We are looking to our...
Urgent Freeze Fosters Needed
Feb 18, 2025 Austin, it’s happening again! The temps are dipping into freezing and below starting today and lasting the remainder of the week. With the pending extreme winter temps headed our way we’re working to move 57 animals — 50 dogs and the current 7 Barn Cats to sleepover, foster or adoptive homes! While we do have working heaters in every kennel building, these are “open-air” kennels, meaning they can be drafty and being made out of concrete, not an ideal place to spend a night in these extreme...
Austin Pets Alive! Transport Program Saves 10,000 Lives
Jan 30, 2025 In early 2021, when Texas faced one of the most severe winter storms in its history, the Austin Pets Alive! Transport Program emerged out of desperation to save shelter animals across the state. What began as an urgent effort to move as many pets out of harm’s way as quickly as possible has since evolved into a full-scale program. Now, just four years later, we celebrate an incredible milestone: 10,000 lives saved! When our teams reflected on the work accomplished in February 2021, it became clear that this was more than...
The Trickiness of TLAC
Jan 28, 2025 Our main shelter, named Town Lake Animal Center and located in the heart of Austin, has provided a space for us to save so many lives. We’re grateful for this space though due to its age, it does present some challenges. We’ve been scrappy over the years with how we address those challenges, but there are limitations to what and how we solve them. Watch this video to learn more! [embedded content] Source: Austin Pets...
