The Philosophy here at GoodFellas Rescue:
What is GoodFellas Rescue?
GoodFellas is a 501 (c )(3) non profit charity that runs on public donations.
It is our Mission to Rescue, Rehabilitate, Retrain and Rehome while providing community outreach and education. Though we are not a breed specific rescue, we do focus more on bully breeds and the unique challenges and stereotypes that surround them.
We are dedicated to bringing education to our community and to provide support and awareness to our area through innovative programs and events geared towards responsible pet ownership.
GoodFellas aims to keep the number of animals low. This is for quality and not quantity of the care and training that we want our rescue animals to receive. All dogs are housed indoors, in a family, and placed in real life situations.
GoodFellas Rescue has the philosophy that you can save 100 dogs today and still need to save 100 dogs tomorrow until you start educating owners how to responsibly care for their pets. So although we do rescue dogs, we want our primary focus to be on education, outreach and community support.
With funding we plan to start several community outreach and education programs geared at promoting responsible pet ownership.
We want our dogs to be the best that they can be and hope to have the chance to train each one for their Canine Good Citizenship certificate. This may require outside help with training and evaluation but earning their certificate will further promote the positive side of the breeds we work with while also allowing us to encourage other dog owners to do the same. This type of training can lead to certifying our dogs as therapy dogs, service dogs as well as inspiring owners to get involved in agility and fly ball, activities that get owner and dog more active and healthy.
We want to begin working with local school districts to teach responsible pet ownership, safe dog handling and bite prevention in an age appropriate and fun way. We want to use our breed ambassadors to help children of all ages learn how to be safe around dogs, how to keep their dogs safe and how to grow into responsible owners. For older kids and teens we want to teach kids about the breeds that we work with and educate them on animal cruelty and neglect as well as the truth about dog fighting in areas that have a high bully breed population. We want to show some positive dog/owner activities. This may also include starting a 4-h group for low income areas where kids can work with our rescue dogs if they can not house or afford to own one.
We also want to offer training seminars to local law enforcement agencies about being a first responder on the scene where animals are present, how to apply the force continuum with animals and how to avoid dog shootings whenever possible with topics such as officer bite prevention, safe handling and humane alternatives.
We also want to offer educational seminars about bully breeds, dog fighting and how to identify and investigate claims of dog fighting.
We want to provide support in low income areas with free obedience classes for owners of bully type dogs, working with local veterinarians to sponsor free or reduced cost spay and neutering for bully type dogs as well as shot clinics and appropriate collars and leashes.
Education is the key to reducing the numbers of animals sent to shelters, abused and neglected as well as euthanized in our area.
With help in funding we can begin to do more for our community and provide leadership by example.
We Need Volunteers, Board Members, community support and donations to make these goals a reality. With your help, we can make our community a more responsible, educated and bully friendly place to be!
Some of our beliefs:
- Though we understand that there are a few and I emphasize a few, responsible and upstanding breeders, we strongly believe that spaying and neutering your dog is by far the most responsible thing to do. With the widespread stereotypes of bully breeds in this day and age, adding to the population seems like an illogical thing to do to say the least, yet irresponsible people keep allowing their dogs to reproduce like rabbits. Not only does this add to the numbers killed every year, it adds to the number abused every year. Responsible pet owners do not have oops litters. End of story. So yes we strongly encourage spaying and neutering your dog.
- We receive calls all the time asking if we can take owner surrenders. GoodFellas does not take owner surrendered animals, depending on circumstances we may make an exception. We pull from local rescues and shelters. These dogs arrive there for various reasons but all are in potential danger of not finding a good home. Some have a limited amount of time, some can not handle the stress of being in such a chaotic environment but all of them are of a breed that makes them either feared or hated by general society.
- Most owners have the ability to make things better for themselves and their dog by finding the time to work on behavior, socialization or training. Many have the ability to go above and beyond to make sure their pet never has to face being homeless. Shelter dogs do not have that luxury. That is the reason that instead of taking owner surrendered dogs, we will do all we can to offer advice and resources to the pet owner so that they can keep the dog in the home.
GoodFellas is convinced that education and outreach is the main key to changing opinions and attitudes about animal abuse, overpopulation and bully breeds in general. All of our programs are geared to bring awareness to those around us in as positive a way as we can. In order to do this, we need support from volunteers and donations.
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