LOVEPAWS was originally founded as a shelter intake prevention program in 2019 with a mission of keeping pets in homes and out of our local shelters through community outreach. Our outreach efforts are targeted towards helping pet owners in low-income and underserved communities in Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties, Maryland.
At the core of our community outreach services is our pet pantry which feeds nearly 500 owned pets and community cats every month. Our other services include distribution of free life saving supplies like ID tags, leashes and no-slip collars, training assistance, and our rehoming service that moves pets from home-to-home, completely bypassing the shelter. We also help support community cats while humanely curbing the population by providing colony caretakers with food from our pantry and providing spay/neuter subsidies to support TNR efforts. We also work with caretakers to provide medical subsidies for sick and injured community cats.
Our scope and mission quickly expanded to include pulling dogs and cats from local shelters, with a focus on the pit bull type dogs of Prince George’s County (PG pitties) targeted by a decades-old county-wide breed ban. This has allowed our organization to rescue and advocate for the most at-risk animals, the true underdogs in our community, in homes, in shelters and living in colonies. We are committed to stepping forward whenever we can and wherever the need is greatest.
LOVEPAWS is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization (EIN: 83-3122611). We are an exclusively 100% unpaid volunteer-based, foster-based rescue with our foster network spanning MD, DC, and VA.