Española Humane’s $15,000 grant investment from national nonprofit Petco Love will enhance the shelter’s lifesaving work for animals in Rio Arriba County and Northern New Mexico.

Petco Love is a national nonprofit leading change for pets by harnessing the power of love to make communities and pet families closer, stronger, and healthier. Since its founding in 1999, Petco Love has invested $330 million in adoption and other lifesaving efforts. And Petco Love helps find loving homes for pets in partnership with Petco and more than 4,000 organizations — like ours — across North America, with 6.5 million pets adopted and counting.

“Our investment in Española Humane is part of more than $15M in investments recently announced by Petco Love to power local organizations across the country as part of our commitment to create a future in which no pet is unnecessarily euthanized,” said Susanne Kogut, president of Petco Love. “Our local investments are only part of our strategy to empower animal lovers to drive lifesaving change right alongside us. We recently celebrated the one-year launch anniversary of Petco Love Lost, a national lost and found database that uses pet facial recognition technology to simplify the search for lost pets.”

“Petco is an incredible partner, not just on a national level but on a local level,” said Bridget Lindquist, the shelter’s executive director. “The Santa Fe team goes out of their way to help all pets and reached out to us to coordinate pet food relief efforts during wildfire evacuations. They have huge hearts, and it shows with how they treat their customers and the pets their customers love. We love hosting our adoption events at the store.”

Lindquist said the grant will help further Española Humane’s lifesaving efforts in the region, which includes offering free spay/neutering to residents of Rio Arriba and Santa Fe counties, hosting vaccination clinics, reduced and fee-waived adoptions and outreach efforts.

In 2021, the shelter took in 2,644 pets, spay/neutered 4,603 pets for free, administered 11,853 vaccinations and microchipped 4,410 pets. Our save rate in 2021 was 87.8 %.

For more information about Española Humane, visit insert your espanolahumane.org. Learn more about Petco Love here: petcolove.org.