Evergreen Rabbit Rescue

Causes: Animals, Education, Health

Mission: The mission of Evergreen Rabbit Rescue is to:1) Educate the public about the health, care and behavior of domestic rabbits through pre-adoption and post-adoption support; rabbit care classes and veterinary referrals. 2) Support animal shelters in the Puget Sound area of Washington State by providing information and staff training, fostering shelter rabbits and promoting and facilitating rabbit adoptions. 3) Aid in and serve as a consultant for large-scale rabbit rescue and relocation efforts. Our Philosophy:We often hear well-meaning people say: "I could never volunteer at an animal shelter, it's too depressing!" The truth is that for some rabbits, a shelter is the first place they've heard a kind word, felt a caring touch and had a warm, dry place to sleep. Here are some other common misconceptions about animal shelters.Misconceptions Truths Shelter animals have been surrendered because they're damaged goods. Because of pet overpopulation, healthy purebred and mixed-breed animals are frequently surrendered at shelters. Shelter animals are on "death row." The adoption rates at animal shelters vary. Some are very low, but some are very high. Shelter staff are heartless killers. It takes great love for staff to care for the animals until the very end, whether the result is adoption or humane euthanasia. While we may not agree with all of their policies, we've chosen to support shelters because we believe that through cooperation, we can help increase the number of shelter rabbits adopted (thereby decreasing the number that are euthanized). In fact, since we've been working with the Seattle/King County Humane Society, the rabbit adoption rate has increased to 95-100%. Equally important, we also work to promote responsible pet ownership through outreach events and rabbit workshops in hopes of reducing the number of rabbits surrendered. We call this our "leaky faucet" philosophy. Rescuing individual rabbits is like catching the drips. However, this is only a temporary solution, it doesn't fix the underlying problems that lead to rabbit overpopulation. It takes cooperation and education to fix the leak.