Pick Your Paw Animal Rescue is a small, grass roots network of 10 to 12 animal lovers working together to rehabilitate 6 to 10 rescued dogs at a time, until that rescue is ready for placement as a companion animal. We pull dogs from both local kill-shelters, as well as pulling from the New York City Animal Care and Control’s nightly “To Be Destroyed List”, and Miami-Dade Animal Services to be destroyed list as well. We are committed to providing spay/neuter, all appropriate medical treatment, foster homes/kenneling, training, socializing, and creating behavioral improvement plans for every dog who enters Pick Your Paw Animal Rescue.  Pick Your Paw makes a lifetime commitment to each dog to help them become stable pets and to match them to their best forever home.  Education of the adopter and general public are vital components of our program as we work to end the ease with which people give up on, and ‘throw away’ their family pets. Each dog that exits a shelter, a surrendering home, or a transport vehicle hears the same whispered words, “You are safe. You will not be hurt again. You will find your home, I promise you.”  In every walk, play date, CGC class, adoption event or adopter interview, this promise is made good. Our dogs are placed in foster homes, or boarded at a nearby kennel/day care. Dogs are fully vetted, providing the same level of veterinary care for our rescue dogs that we provide to our own family pets. We consult with animal behaviorists to address issues that dogs enters our program with in order to make them more highly adoptable.  Dogs have attended and graduated from Canine Good Citizen classes.  All applicants are carefully screened, including a comprehensive reference check (veterinarian and personal references), multiple phone interviews, and home checks.  Follow up check and calls continue past the adoption.  We provide support, advice, and continued contact for each adopting family.  Educating the public, one dog at a time, to create a different viewpoint of the pit bull terrier is also an integral part of our mission.

But does this tell you who we are?
 
We are volunteers, ages 18 to 50, with families, children, jobs, pets of our own, college coursework and crushing demands on our time, who CHOOSE to spend our time in the company of “thrown away” dogs to fulfill our promise to them.
We are really, really tired, and our houses are a little chewed. But it’s okay.
We are women and men who are constantly on the phone discussing dog digestive issues, and laughing that we have designated “poop scooping shoes”.
We are sleepless with worry over a mistreated pit bull, an exhausted foster, or a deaf dog that can’t seem to find his place in the world.
We are walking and feeding in awful weather at the barn, early on Sunday morning while our families sleep.
We are the people who struggle to maintain our poise when someone tells us they have purchased a pet store puppy. Then, we are the people who try to explain why.
We are those who call each other to share our amazing pride when a NYC basement kept puppy shows signs of understanding how to live in a family, or when a starved dog finally accepts food from a hand, or when our children say they want to be rescuers too.
We are hopeful that the next generation will be kinder to animals than our own, and we are raising compassionate children who understand that there is a “line” of puppies waiting for their family to find them, and that the line is too long.  Who are willing to share their Mom’s time with strangers and their homes with pit bulls and puppies that need to “figure it all out”.

Pick Your Paw Animal Rescue is a volunteer based, non profit, 501c3 organization.