The Petco Foundation Honors Lifesaving Animal Welfare Heroes
You don't have to fight dragons, protect princess', and defeat aliens to be a hero. By definition a hero is a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities and Shannon Wells of the Kansas City Pet Project is all the above! Shannon does a little bit of everything for Kansas City Pet Project (which has saved nearly 45,000 animals since they took over the shelter in 2012) but most importantly she started their shelter's Parvo ward.
Canine Parvovirus (Parvo) is a disease commonly found in puppies that attacks either the intestines or the hearts muscles resulting in diarrhea, weight loss, or death depending on severity! The ward is very proficient and have around a 90% save rate of all the Parvo plagued puppies that they receive.
Shannon does this because it's a passion of hers to save dogs from this hearty disease and this noble and selfless act is exactly why she received the 2018 Petco Foundation's Unsung Hero Award.
The Petco Foundation honors lifesaving animal welfare heroes and published an article announcing all of the award winners who were picked due to their innovation, compassion and action in saving animals' lives. Among these giants were National Disaster Search Dog Foundation from Santa Paula, California receiving the Helping Heroes Award, Front Street Animal Shelter from Sacramento, California accepting the Innovation award for its "life saving solution to reunite lost pets with their families", Steven Latham of Shelter Me receiving the award for Love Amplified who was acknowledged for their spectacular marketing techniques, and many more wonderful awards presented to wonderful causes.
The beauty of this award ceremony is that all of these different and innovative acts are being put toward the same struggle and these usually faceless heroes are finally being recognized for the valiant efforts and in the process of these dogs being saved, they're saving the people who are saving them by bringing their life joy and accomplishment. In a world where homeless animals outnumber homeless people 5 to 1, each year around 2.7 million dogs and cats are killed every year from shelters being too full, where only 1 out of every 10 dogs born will find a permanent home we need more people who defended these animals and their wellbeing.
There are so many heroes that we feel deserve recognition for doing what they do best, saving pets! Here's a list of some of our other favorite heroes!alez/
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