A Tempe animal rescue once featured on a TV show dedicated to saving financially strapped shelters is shutting its doors due to a lack of funding and is scrambling to find homes for its remaining dogs before it closes June 30.

Volunteers of Ohana Animal Rescue have been working since January to place what had been nearly 50 dogs and cats, when financial troubles sparked concerns that founders would be unable to make payments on its building.

Most animals have been placed in homes and with other shelters, but 19 dogs remain, said Gabe Arroyo, who founded the Tempe shelter with his wife Dee in 2012.

“We could never get it to become self-sustaining,”  Arroyo said. “No matter how much we tried, we couldn’t get the base of donations to come in to cover the costs.”

In January, Ohana was featured on CW’s “Save Our Shelters,” dedicated to renovating shelters that otherwise could not afford a makeover. Ohana’s renovations included with higher-quality kennels.

More: Maricopa County shelters seek donations to cool dogs during hot summer

The work could not stave off the inevitable. Interim director Lidia Manov said work to place Ohana’s animals began in earnest in January.

“We have been working rigorously for the past six months privately — publicly the past 30 days, to find these dogs homes,” Manov, a longtime volunteer, said.

Hurt by fast growth

It all started with a pipe dream. That’s how Arroyo described seeing the building that would one day become Ohana’s shelter.

Ohana was founded in early 2012 as a foster-based rescue, and Arroyo said it grew quicky. By 2013, Ohana’s foster base grew to more than 200 pets placed with roughly 70 foster homes. 

Arroyo then purchased the building with the help of a family friend acting as a mortgage holder. Ohana had its rescue shelter. 

But Arroyo said he underestimated how much it would cost to pay for the building as well as keep up with the shelter’s operating costs.

“We were new to it, and we were a little bit naive,” Arroyo said.

Enter ‘Save Our Shelter’

Arroyo said he cashed out his 401K (approximately $35,000) to fund the shelter, and later signed the building over to the mortgage holder, paying rent in hopes of stabilizing costs.   

The move from mortgage payments to rent only extended the shelter’s life another year. In December 2016, the decision was made to start preparing for the shelter’s shutdown in June.

The last glimmer of hope was the “Save Our Shelter” episode, but it was too little too late.

“We were happy to do the program to bring some light to us and hopefully maybe be able to increase our revenue stream,” Arroyo said. “It just didn’t pan out the way we had hoped.”

Finding the right homes

When Manov became the interim director of Ohana, she, along with three other volunteers, created the Advocates on Behalf of Ohana Dogs Facebook page to attempt to find the remaining dogs and cats homes.

The process to adopt these dogs isn’t as easy as normal adoption.

“The ones that are left have quirks,” Arroyo said. “They need a certain type of human to be able to take care of them.”

He used Patches as an example. An Australian cattle dog/Shar-Pei mix, Patches can be aggressive with men, but she doesn’t have any issues connecting with women, according to Arroyo. 

If the dogs aren’t adopted by the end of the month, they are expected to go to other shelters, including the Arizona Humane Society. Even with the June 30 deadline fast approaching, Manov is confident the animals will all find suitable homes.

“We’ve had an enormous amount of public support,” Manov said. “We’re very confident we’ll find suitable placement for all the remaining dogs.”

For more information about adopting one of the 19 dogs, you can either text Manov at 480-206-3883, or you can fill out an application form at ohanaanimalrescue.org.

More: Shelter dog Daisy May finds ‘fur-ever’ home

 

Read or Share this story: http://azc.cc/2t2D5em