National nonprofit awards grant to Sumter's Windy Ridge Rescue

Windy Ridge Rescue received a $25,000 grant from national nonprofit Petco Love in support of its lifesaving work for animals in Sumter.

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 $375 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 Windy Ridge - across North America, with 6.75 million pets adopted and counting.

"Our investment in Windy Ridge Rescue 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 launched Petco Love Lost, a national lost-and-found database that uses patented image-recognition technology to simplify the search for lost pets."

Windy Ridge Rescue is a nonprofit organization that is alone in Sumter County trying to tackle the overpopulation of community cats through the Trap, Neuter, Vaccinate and Release (TNV-R) program. Many community colonies have young kittens who can be domesticated easily and are made available for adoption. Since 2017, Windy Ridge Rescue has found homes for almost 2,000 friendly cats, many placed in stable and protected outdoor living areas like barns and warehouses, and TNV-R'd almost 3,000 community cats.

"We absolutely could not accomplish as much as we have without this lifesaving investment and partnership with Petco Love," said Dana Fazekas, executive director of Windy Ridge Rescue. "We work tirelessly in Sumter County doing TNV-R and trying to better control the population of community cats. This partnership with Petco Love is crucial, as we could only accomplish a fraction of the spay and neuter surgeries we do each year if we relied solely on donations from volunteers and individual residents of the community."

For more information about Windy Ridge Rescue, visit windyridgerescue.org. Learn more about Petco Love at petcolove.org.

About Windy Ridge Rescue

Windy Ridge is a group of people dedicated to saving animals in our community from being euthanized in shelters, living as strays or ending up in abusive situations. Since 2016, the unpaid volunteers of Windy Ridge Rescue have found loving families for hundreds of previously unwanted cats, kittens, dogs and puppies. Their focus in Sumter has been redirected to primarily Trap, Neuter, Vaccinate and Release (TNV-R) of community cats while trying to find homes for the kittens who can be domesticated or those community cats who are friendly and found themselves part of a community colony. The group does still help dogs in the community by providing donated dog food and supplies to pet owners in need and sponsoring medical care when donations are available.

According to Fazekas, "At last count for 2023, we TNVR'd 792 feral community cats and found homes for 396 friendly cats and sent 60 friendly kittens to a like-minded rescue in the Northeast (we made four trips to transport them). We also paid for eight encucleation/entropiron surgeries, eight hernia repairs, three dental/teeth extractions and two amputations, among other things like respiratory infections that need medication daily, FIP treatments (84 daily injections) and watching ferals have kittens in the trap and then not being able to have surgery for weeks. It's exhausting, and we couldn't do it without this grant and without the volunteers and the help of the community."

About Petco Love

Petco Love is a life-changing nonprofit organization that makes communities and pet families closer, stronger, and healthier. Since our founding in 1999 as the Petco Foundation, we've empowered animal welfare organizations by investing $375 million in adoption and other lifesaving efforts. We've helped find loving homes for more than 6.75 million pets in partnership with Petco and organizations nationwide. Our love for pets drives us to lead with innovation, creating tools animal lovers need to reunite lost pets, and lead with passion, inspiring and mobilizing communities and our more than 4,000 animal welfare partners to drive lifesaving change alongside us. Join us. Visit petcolove.org or follow on Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn to be part of the lifesaving work we lead every day.