When The Going Gets Ruff Animal Rescue is a family-owned and operated non-profit animal rescue. We believe that no family is complete without a furry companion, so our goal is to help complete your family by matching you with your perfect pup(s)! We rescued our first dogs in July of 2019. We acquired two dogs that were in dire need of rehabilitation and brought them into our home. They were neglected in their previous living environment and had a lot of health concerns we needed to address. They were severely malnourished, starving, dehydrated, riddled with infected wounds and other issues. Natasha, President, and co-founder of WTGGR, had previously worked for a dog daycare and a dog rescue, so she had the experience needed to rehabilitate these pups and find them loving furever homes. The initial goal was to get these two pups healthy, find them homes, and then return to our normal lives, but we soon realized that we had a passion for saving dogs in need. Natasha was able to focus a lot on these dogs because she had recently left her full-time job and was on the hunt for a new career.
After multiple vet visits, medications, lots of food and plenty of love, both dogs became healthy enough to send to their new homes. The younger of the two dogs found a home without a problem and recovered very well from all of her previous problems. She was luckily adopted by a family friend, so we still get to see her all the time. Unfortunately the older dog, a senior pit mix, didn’t recover as well from her injuries because she was worse off and senior dogs take longer to recover. She requires daily allergy pills, arthritis treatments and medicated baths. We found that swimming in our pool is something she really enjoys and helps her arthritis so much. Because of her high needs and her wanting to swim, we decided to keep her as our family dog. Every day we look at her we are reminded why we do what we do and we are so thankful we have her in our lives.
After helping these two pups we were reminded how rewarding rescue work it. It is full of difficult tasks, hard decisions and some very heartbreaking situations, but none of that matters when you see how happy they are in their new homes. These two pups inspired us to start our own rescue, When The Going Gets Ruff Animal Rescue. Only a few weeks after getting these pups we began building our kennels. We promised our dogs would never live in crates, would go out 5+ times a day to play, always have full bellies, and always feel loved and safe. Those sound so basic and obvious, but unfortunately, many people out there do not meet those basic needs. We want every single one of our rescue pups to feel like they are our family.
We got our first group of dogs on August 25, 2019. They got flown to Boston from Puerto Rico. They all got adopted so quickly and we were shocked at the success and support we had. Only a few weeks later we received another group from Puerto Rico and they found furever homes just as quickly. We soon realized that we could help even more shelters and save even more dogs than we ever expected. Today we have rescued dogs from more than 5 shelters and have also taken in multiple owner surrenders from our local community.
Our goal is to not allow a dog to stay in our care for more than 1 month and so far we have done a really good job meeting that goal. Many dogs change their personality when they are in a shelter, especially if they are there for too long. They begin to get depressed or aggravated. Of course, we treat them like family, but they still have to spend a lot of time alone in their kennel and they are constantly around 10-12 other dogs. This can be an overwhelming situation for any pup, especially when they see all their friends leave before them and they are forced to make new friends constantly. We do everything in our power to prevent a dog from dealing with these situations. If a dog is with us for close to a month we try to find it a foster, reduce their adoption fee, promote them on Facebook and bring them out to local dog friendly places to get them seen. We are so thankful that this method has worked so far and very few of our pups have been with us for more than a month! This is great for many reasons. 1) We get to save more dogs because we are constantly freeing up space in our shelter and 2) We get pups out of a shelter environment and into their furever homes quickly, even the “less adoptable” pups.
We would not be as successful as we are if it wasn’t for the support from our community and all of our adopters. We are so thankful for all of the overwhelming support we have received from everyone. We have officially found forever homes for more than 100 dogs since opening! Like our Facebook and check out our website to stay up to date with everything we do!