Humane Society of Southern Arizona receives $100k grant supporting lifesaving efforts

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — The Humane Society of Southern Arizona (HSSA) received a $100,000 grant from Best Friends Animal Society to support lifesaving efforts for stray and in-shelter animals.

This comes at a time when the number of dogs and cats at shelters in Tucson has surpassed extreme capacity.

The grant will help speed up the process of moving homeless pets through shelters into forever homes and let the HSSA team up with places like Pima Animal Care Center (PACC) to tackle the high number of homeless animals in Tucson.

Today, there are over 150 animals at HSSA and more than 600 at PACC.

With the grant, HSSA will bring on a Lifesaving Outcomes Coordinator who will help with animal flow and implement "fast-tracking."

"Which is a way to identify an animal's needs the minute they come through our door and help connect them with those needs right away," Barney said.

HSSA CEO Kristin Barney tells me the coordinator will also rebuild their rescue programming with new partnerships.

"It's just working with additional rescue groups who might have time to have maybe more fosters or a quieter space for an animal to rehabilitate," said Barney. "So just finding options that are not a shelter for pets."

One partnership includes PACC, which recently had two large intakes of dogs.

"We have so many big dogs in need of foster or adoptive homes," Murdock said. "We're really excited about the potential for this collaboration with the Humane Society to work on finding all pets homes, but especially those big dogs where we're really seeing the most need."

Both PACC and HSSA say working together is the best way to have better outcomes for all animals in our community.

"The challenges right now are great and we need to work together to be successful," said Barney.