June 27 @ 8:00 am – 11:00 am
FREE microchips and LOW-COST pet anxiety medication for July 4th!
$
Tag: dogs
TCC Needs Your Help!
Hey, yall! We need to be honest with our community right now. 
We know this is long, but we want to explain.
Texas Critter Crusaders is in a very difficult financial position.
For the first time in a long time, we’ve had to seriously discuss limiting or closing intake because we simply don’t have the funds to keep saying yes at the pace that local animals need us.
It’s essential to understand TCC is a separate entity from the City Of Taylor, Texas Animal Shelter. We receive *no funding* from the city, yet we regularly up for foster needs, emergency medical care, TNR efforts, and other lifesaving support for *both* shelter and community animals. We don’t just “help” the the shelter. When we agree to take animals from the shelter into our foster program, we fully pay for their care. Food, litter, medical, you name it. It’s all on us! Our efforts also help keep animals out of the shelter in the first place.
This support is part of how our community continues keeping Taylor no-kill. When the shelter runs out of options, we’re often the safety net helping make one more “yes” possible.
But right now, funds are stretched dangerously thin.
These photos show just a small glimpse of the animals we’ve stepped up for recently. Their costs are listed with each photo because we want our community to truly understand the reality of our work. Medical emergencies, bottle babies, injured strays, parvo puppies, foster supplies, TNR, owner assistance cases — it adds up fast. And sometimes the costs can suddenly grow! For instance, we went in agreeing to a $3600 leg repair and spay surgery for shelter dog Luna, but after complications requiring in leg amputation, we’re facing an additional $6000 bill. Remember, this is only a sample of some recent animals to give you an example of the kinds of costs we encounter. There’s way more recent ones we don’t have space to include!
Everything we do at Texas Critter Crusaders is entirely volunteer-run and we rely on the support of our community to keep showing up for animals. 
We’re just a small group of volunteers with regular full-time jobs trying to do what we can.
We never want money to be the reason an animal suffers or dies. We never want to look at an injured, sick, abandoned, or orphaned animal and have to say we can’t help.
But we can’t continue without support!
Every donation, no matter the amount, truly matters right now. Even if we were just able to get enough donated supplies to cover the amount we spend every two weeks in our foster homes, it would make a huge difference in helping us conserve our resources!
We hold Supply Saturdays every two weeks where our volunteers hand out pet supplies to our foster homes and we’ve always got to make sure there’s enough to go around.
Donation link:
https://tinyurl.com/TCCDonationLink
Monthly giving:
https://tinyurl.com/TCCMonthlyDonations
Wish List Supplies:
https://tinyurl.com/TCCFosterUrgentSupplyList
Please help us continue being there for local animals when they need us most. 
If you can’t donate, please share to help us spread the word. We appreciate you taking the time to read this. It’s a lot, but we deeply care about our community so we want that community to understand. 
And we deeply appreciate all of you who step up time and again — your efforts do not go unnoticed.
July 4th Pet Safety Tips For You and Your Dogs and Cats
It’s that time of year – picnics, family, food and fireworks! It’s typically fun for all – unless you are a family pet. While many of us consider our pets to be part of the family, and we want to include them in our fun, some activities can be frightening, dangerous or even fatal to our beloved pets. Keep in mind that a dog’s sense of hearing is more than four times that of a human, and a cat can hear 1.6 octaves above the range of a human – so if it is loud for you, it can be extremely frightening for you pet. They don’t understand what is happening and will try to get away by any means – digging, climbing, running – even injuring themselves in the process. Below is a great infographic from PetFinder with a few tips to help you and your furry friend have a safe and enjoyable July 4th celebration – and many more pawsitively wonderful moments together. (And if you are thinking of adopting a pet this year, please check out a list of available pets on PetFinder.)
To Recap, Here are eight safety tips for this July 4th
- Be sure your pet is wearing up-to-date and visible ID tag on his or her collar at all times, and consider microchipping.
- Take a current photo of your pet just in case.
- Exercise your dog early in the day before the party begins.
- During cookouts, ask guests to play with your dog away from the flames.
- Keep charcoal, fireworks, sparklers and glow sticks far away from curious canines and felines.
- Keep dog treats on hand for those who want to give your pet food.
- Leave your dog at home with a frozen stuffed treat during the fireworks.
- If your dog is afraid of loud noises, leave gentle music playing to cover the fireworks.
Crusading for the Critters
Welcome to the Texas Critter Crusaders website! We are a small, passionate group of volunteers dedicated to helping fulfill the unmet needs of the animals at the Taylor, Texas, Animal shelter. We’re so excited to get this non-profit organization off the ground to help the animals! The Taylor Animal shelter is a small, city-run shelter, and like many (most?) shelters in small rural towns, they have very limited resources.
The staff and volunteers do an AMAZING job loving and caring for the animals that come into their care. As shelter volunteers ourselves, we saw a need and wanted to help even more. With the formation of this non-profit organization, we now have a way to help raise funds that are tax deductible for donors that can do even more to help with providing food, toys, medical care, outreach, education, and enrichment for the animals we all love.
We hope you’ll join us and get involved in a way that speaks to your heart. We’re just getting off the ground so we’ll need your help (and perhaps a bit of patience too) as we grow! Follow us and the Taylor Animal Shelter on social media, join us at events, contact us about volunteering, consider making a donation or any combination of all of those! The animals and the people who love them are eternally grateful!
Spot Goes to School!
Thanks to your generous support, Spot will be heading off to school to get much-needed training and other care to help him find a loving forever family. For those who haven’t met Spot yet, here’s a little about his story – and how your donations are helping him.
Spot is a beautiful, 8-year old male, Australian Shepherd/Border Collie Mix. He was abandoned by his owner almost a year ago! He has been with the Taylor Animal Shelter since July 6th, 2015.
The Taylor animal control officer and shelter manager contacted Spot’s owner who said she had moved from the area and planned on picking him up. Spot’s owner never returned to get him. After many attempts to contact the owner, we realized that he had been abandoned.
I think anyone who has ever spent time caring for shelter animals, in any role or capacity, can attest that from time to time you will meet certain ones with whom you feel an extra connection. Spot is one of those dogs for me. Many thanks to the caring hearts who will lead him home!
Some dogs develop behavior issues after being in a shelter environment for a long time, and Spot is one of those dogs who has just gotten very stressed out in this environment. Spot is a sweet boy but after having spent so long in a stressful shelter environment after being abandoned by the only owner he has known, he needs some training to help him overcome some behavior issues that he has developed. Even though the shelter staff and volunteers love him very much and have spent as much time with him as possible, the shelter is a very stressful place to be.
He needs training to let him know that things CAN be OK again and to help us help him find a REAL forever home. K9 Mastery has agreed to take Spot for extensive training, but he needs $2,500 to attend. Because this is a small, municipal (city run) shelter funded by a very limited small town budget in a tiny, rural town, the funds just aren’t there to help special needs animals.
There is something about Spot that speaks to me. He is absolutely adorable.
K9 Mastery is an amazing facility with amazing trainers! Thanks to YOUR support, we’ve raised the full amount (and a little extra) to be able to send Spot to K9 Mastery! ♥ The tuition will cover training, boarding, vetting (neuter, shots, well-care) and helping find the perfect forever person for Spot.
K9 Mastery is located at 414 Walnut Creek Rd, Bastrop, Texas 78602. If you would like to know more about the Taylor Animal Shelter, please visit them at their Facebook page.
Thank you so much for helping us help Spot!