Paws Cause Alert

The Dixieland Animal Care & Evacuation Center:

Paws to Rebuild: Making Tracks to a Brighter Future!

It's official! On June 1st our Tylertown shelter officially became the Dixieland Animal Care and Evacuation Center. The new name is symbolic of a new start for the facility, as well! We are kicking off an ambitious, critically needed $500,000 Paws to Rebuild capital campaign. The funds raised will enable us to make long overdue additions and improvements to the Dixieland Center and will make our Katrina recovery complete.

As you may recall, our Tylertown property was never initially planned or developed to support long-term animal care operations. In fact, we purchased it just a few months before the hurricane, as a potential evacuation site. As such, our crew has been managing to operate our programs and provide excellent care for our animals in extremely difficult conditions. We had originally hoped to fund major construction projects with proceeds from the sale of our property in New Orleans, but bad market conditions largely made that impossible.

Kicking off the Paws to Rebuild campaign indicates a long term commitment to the new programs, which evolved out of our Katrina disaster response. First of all, there is our Katrina Survivors Sanctuary - for rescued and displaced Katrina pets with special needs - some of whom may require lifelong sanctuary care at Tylertown. The Dixieland Pet Express, our ongoing pet adoption transport program, was also an unanticipated outgrowth of our Katrina disaster response. As we told you last month, that program has the potential to make an even greater impact for the animals of Louisiana and the region, if we can successfully build the infrastructure needed to make more transports possible. We believe that we can accomplish that worthy goal. And, of course, the Center has been providing disaster relief and evacuation services for several years now; we proved during Hurricane Gustav that the Dixieland Center can continue to play a critically needed role in protecting animals in harm's way and in providing relief after future storms.

As far as specific plans for the site, we'll be repairing and improving existing buildings, constructing new housing both for animals and caretakers, adding new buildings to aid with future evacuations, and more! We're excited to report that we have two donors potentially interested in buying needed, additional property adjacent to our existing site!

And as we move forward with needed changes at Tylertown, the ongoing fight against animal cruelty to animals - and returning a thriving HSL headquarters to the Greater New Orleans area - remains the core of our mission. In fact, there's an exciting new development on that front! We'll soon be reopening an office in the New Orleans area, which will serve as our statewide headquarters for investigations, campaigns and other programs. You'll hear more details about Paws to Rebuild in the months ahead, as we work to reach our $500,000 goal. Thank you for your encouragement, compassion and support!