Better Together Animal Alliance in Sandpoint assists pets and their owners

A Sandpoint resource for pets and their owners has a new name – and a broadening regional reach – with programs extending into Post Falls, Coeur d’Alene and Spokane.

Better Together Animal Alliance, formerly Panhandle Animal Shelter, made the name change and rebranded a few weeks ago for its work to keep families together and support the human-animal bond. The outreach includes a pet helpline at (208) 217-4453, its Temporary Loving Care program for emergency short-term boarding and a partnership that supports the Post Falls Animal Shelter.

Its farthest reach is administering the Home to Home Shelter Network to help people rehome pets if they’re unable to care for them versus the animals going into a shelter. The Home to Home program is used by the Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service along with about 60 shelters in the U.S. and Canada.

Information about the pets is listed on the program’s website and shared on social media. Potential adopters communicate directly with the original owners, who remain in charge of where the pet goes.

“We developed Home to Home here in Sandpoint because we saw an increase in owner surrenders – coming from all around the region – back in 2015, so we tried to come up with an option that supported both people and pets,” said Mandy Evans, BTAA’s executive director. “We launched it in 2016.”

At the time, a best practice was for shelters to offer two-week trial periods, but what happened afterward was difficult to track, Evans said.

“So we created Home to Home so we could give the tools and trust to community members to be able to rehome pets on their own,” Evans said. “That program is at SCRAPS as an alternative for people in the community to not need to surrender to the animal shelter, because I think we all agree it’s better for pets not to be in cages but to be in a home.”

With the SCRAPS example, if people call and say they need to surrender their pet, staff can offer for them to try the Home to Home program. Those people would then go to SCRAPS’ Home to Home page, create a pet profile, then a SCRAPS team approves it and posts it on Facebook and the shelter’s Home to Home page. The current owner does all the screening among responses.

“It gives the pet owner a peace of mind,” she said.

Reasons for surrendering pets might include someone moving overseas, a lost job or an older couple who discover they can’t care for a high-energy dog and want to find a home with a more active family.

“Most of the time it’s done for the benefit of the pet,” she said. … “It might be because someone dies in the family. We had one in Coeur d’Alene. Her dad had passed away, and a cat he had was his best friend. The daughter was allergic to cats and lived in Seattle. She felt really uncomfortable about surrendering the cat to a shelter and used Home to Home. She was the first successful rehoming. It just gave her such peace of mind that this little being that her dad loved so much was now in a new home.”

For about four years, the organization also has partnered with the Post Falls Animal Shelter regarding best practices, grant writing and offering more chances for longtime sheltered dogs. BTAA will take them to its shelter space in Sandpoint to free up Post Falls’ smaller space and offer a new audience for a potential new home. Other supports include consulting on animal medical needs and leveraging to buy supplies.

“Post Falls Animal Shelter is a police municipal facility, and we’ve had the benefit of a lot of education in animal welfare,” Evans said.

“We have one of the best shelter veterinarians in the country come and consult with us for a year.

“We have connections they may not have because they just haven’t been in that world as long. We’re kind of their entrance into the more complexities of animal sheltering, so we go out and talk about best practices, or if there’s a problem, they consult with us.

“We write grants for them and house their grant money for spay or neuter, so each of the dogs to be adopted can be spayed or neutered. We also write grants so they can go to education conferences, and we love to travel with this team. We are in the truest sense their partner.”

The BTAA is a “no kill” shelter, which means it doesn’t euthanize because of lack of space. Another of its programs, TLC, offers a way to support people who need to find temporary shelter.

“Basically, it’s for people who are in need,” Evans said. … “We’ve done this for a long time, but this last year, we partnered with Bonner General Hospital, because their behavior health department needed support for their patients who might need to be hospitalized. They tend to be socially isolated, which makes it really hard for them to have friends and family to lean on for care for their pets.”

It might be someone with a pet who needs to get out of a domestic violence situation or are in transition for other reasons, she said.

“We’re acutely aware that with COVID and the housing eviction moratorium – what is that going to look like for people? – our overall goal is how to be proactive for our community, and community for us is anyone in our region to support them by keeping that family together rather than just being a resource to support them when they figure out a family can’t be together. So we want to see, does it require temporary housing, vaccinations, just some training or advice?

“We do that through our helpline, and then if they do need temporary care, they’d come into our building, and we’d care for their pet while they’re in transition.”

Among its services:

• About 27% of dogs or cats brought into the BTAA facility comes from Kootenai County, while 7% are from Washington.

• 14% of adoptions are from Kootenai County.

• 10% of its adoption are by Washington residents.

Its Sandpoint-based Home to Home program is used by a number of Washington residents, along with local and other North Idaho residents, Evans said.

The BTAA facility had 37 dogs transferred from Post Falls in 2020 and 70 dogs in 2019; and 33 pets were rehomed using its Home To Home program through SCRAPS since last year. It assisted 86 pets from Kootenai County through its helpline in 2020 for everything from medical assistance to rehoming questions.

Under a recent donation match offer from a couple, BTAA can take donations up to $10,000 for its TLC program. All gifts made by April 30 are doubled. For more information on all its programs, the agency’s website is bettertogetheranimalalliance.org.