In early February, FIDO teamed up with Indianapolis Animal Care Services on proactive care and treatment outreach sweeps in the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood. This is an area with a lot of dogs, cats, and people in need of resources.
7 FIDO representatives each paired up with an animal control officer. 14 vehicles, loaded with pet supplies and educational information, hit the streets and alleys between Rural and Dearborn and between 25th and 30th Streets to share information and offer free supplies and services for pets.
We covered a lot of ground in a 3-hour period. While we encountered several pretty serious situations with dogs outside, we were also glad to find a lot of pets inside the warm house on this cold day. We signed up 12 animals to be spayed/neutered and vaccinated at the FACE Low-Cost Animal Clinic. We also gave out lots of dog food, several inside training crates, collars, leashes, and toys. We left our information in door-hangers at every occupied house in the entire area (that’s about 300 doors!)
We will be following up with a couple of fence projects after all the dogs in the homes are fixed. IACS will be following up soon on a few homes with care and treatment violations with dogs outside but no owner home. All in all, a worthwhile and productive day. We will do it all again next week to cover another 300 homes to the east of our turf today.
We are very grateful for our proactive partnership with IACS. We are all in this together to make our city a more humane place for pets and people to live.