Animal Help Now

For the record, today is the first day that Pet Help & Rescue is fully functional and available to 98% of the US public. Please, please help us get the word out - share this! - so that our beloved animal companions will have a dramatically better chance of surviving disasters, whether raging wildfires, hurricanes, apartment fires or any number of threats. Saving our pets from disasters means working with our neighbors. That's the premise of this app.

We are thrilled to announce the availability of the beta version of Pet Help and Rescue (PHaR) for Android devices.

The PHaR app, available across the US, offers the most effective way to evacuate your pets to safety when disasters strike and you aren't home.

We urge you to download and install the app (tap the link below or search the Play Store for "pet help and rescue"), and then experiment with it.

Feel free to test all aspects of the app, including sending emergency alerts. Just be careful about using actual home access info during your experimentation.

Please send any feedback to [email protected].

Pet Help & Rescue (PHaR) - Apps on Google Play

Young Barbara and Anna from Waynesville, Missouri, used Animal Help Now to find help for these baby brown bats whom they rescued from the side of a busy road during a storm. When they saw the six cold and wet babies, stranded in the rain with no nest or mother nearby, they decided they needed to help them, so they put them in Barbara's hoodie and took them home. They knew they needed to keep the babies warm, not to feed them, and to find someone qualified who could help. They called AHNow and, following the instructions on our phone message, used our website to connect with Firefly's Wildlife Rescue. Unfortunately, the rehabber was three hours away, but the girls convinced their friend, Cody, to drive them there with the babies. It was worth the journey. The bats are doing well and will be released in the wild when they're ready. Thank you for your compassion, quick thinking and commitment, Barbara, Anna and Cody! 🦇💕
(Please note it's important to wear gloves when handling bats and other wildlife, for your safety and theirs.)

Please watch for wildlife if you're traveling this holiday weekend! In addition to downloading the Animal Help Now app, you can prepare for wildlife emergencies by packing a rescue kit (see the "Resources" tab at https://ahnow.org/). But be safe! Don't attempt to rescue an animal if doing so puts you in danger.


Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

🐦Millions of birds are migrating through Colorado right now. Remember to turn your lights out during peak migration time. Turn off or dim exterior lights between 11:00 pm and 3:00 am to help birds safely navigate the dark skies. Bright lights confuse and disorientate birds, causing them to fly miles off course and sometimes perish from exhaustion. Simply turning off or dimming outdoor lights can save thousands of birds! 💚

We have reservations about humans calling themselves pet parents, because we don't for a moment want to forget that our animal companions have actual parents, many of whom may be languishing in puppy/kitten mills, tormented from a solitary life in someone's backyard, or faring poorly in some other uncaring environment.

It's imperative that we never forget where our little loved ones come from.

With that caveat, we wish all of you guardians out there an especially good day today. Learn more about the Pet Help & Rescue app at https://phar.org/

Animal Help Now's Wildlife Emergency service is being accessed more than ever, thanks in no small part to your shares, your financial gifts, and your volunteer contributions. Here are a few animals helped using our emergency service just this past week, thanks to you!

Happy International Beaver Day! Thank you to all the wildlife rehabilitators who help these amazing animals!

Nibi would like you to know that today is International Beaver Day. Celebrate a beaver near you! Or just celebrate her….her ego is insatiable…

Look for the March 28, 2024 episode of the Bird Hugger podcast for a discussion of Flaco, the Central Park owl, who died last month after colliding with a building. A necropsy revealed life-threatening levels of rat poison in his system. Host Catherine Greenleaf welcomes guests Catherine Quayle of the Wild Bird Fund, Christine Sheppard from the American Bird Conservancy and New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal.

https://app.resonaterecordings.com/hosting/birdhugger/31e0b189-a628-4608-8527-384f5ab93df2



Flaco photo by Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The busy season is upon us, and again Animal Help Now's Wildlife Emergency service is seeing heavy use, hundreds of times a day across the United States, at yet another increase over the previous year (currently at 25% over 2023). We are to have helped Charlie find the assistance he needed for this hawk just yesterday.

Please download the free Animal Help Now app today. You'll be glad you have it when you need it.

Our co-founder and executive director is currently leading these webinars. It was his experience with the Marshall Fire in Boulder County, Colorado (Dec 2021), that led to the creation of this app. Hear his story and find out about this new lifesaving tool. Register at www.PHaR.org/webinars.

Happy Save a Spider Day!

We're sad to share the news that we've lost another amazing wildlife rehabber, Mary Opall, director of Nature World Wildlife Rescue Sanctuary, Inc. in Florida. Mary spent almost 28 years serving Citrus County, Florida, and was the director of Nature World Wildlife Rescue.
"She was dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation, and release of all sick, injured, or orphaned wildlife throughout the Nature Coast," writes her daughter, Mary. "Her love met no bounds, and she strived to make everyone feel welcomed, loved, appreciated, and at the very least, seen. She made such an impact to everyone she met, animal or human."
She is pictured here with her beloved Barney, a barred owl featured in her organization's educational efforts.

Mary's family has organized a GoFundMe to help with medical and funeral expenses, with any remaining dollars going to the rehabilitation center. https://www.gofundme.com/mary-opall

Here's a reminder from our friend Sammie of KAPOW! books. https://kapowbooks.com/

Following up on our last post, Animal Help Now is hosting 30-minute webinars on our new PHaR - Pet Help and Rescue app every Thursday at noon Eastern where our co-founder explains how the app works and gives a demonstration of it. If you'd like to attend, please register at www.PHaR.org/webinars.

A note from our co-founder and executive director:

I'm a wildlife person, but I also adore and respect cats and dogs - OK - pretty much all animals. I lost my home and Animal Help Now's headquarters in the Marshall Fire of December 30, 2021. People who were home that day, as I was, were able to evacuate their animals. A lucky few others were able to reach neighbors to help get their animals to safety.

But an estimated 1,000 "pets" lost their lives in the wildfire.

I'm back home now. My two beloved kitties - Jack and Lura - were elderly in 2021, and they have since passed away. But I captured a feral off the streets in Denver last year. He's living with me now and slowly getting acclimated to his new environs.

The winds have been howling these past many days. The same wind that blew the Marshall Fire through my and other area neighborhoods, destroying everything in its path.

Most certainly, the houses being rebuilt are better equipped to withstand fires. The concern, though, remains.

On the day of the Marshall Fire, I took time to knock on a few neighbors' doors before evacuating with Jack and Lura. I helped save a German shepherd who was home alone, in a crate in the kitchen of my friend Gil. But in the one square block I drove around, a cockatiel, a turtle, a tortoise, three cats, and two dogs were all awaiting a rescue that would never come. And those are just the animals I know about.

Losing a beloved animal companion in a disaster is heartrending, to the extent that some people simply cannot bring themselves to rebuild their homes.

As a long-time animal advocate with app experience, I saw the potential to create a neighbors-based messaging app focused exclusively on rescuing our beloved pets, and with the Animal Help Now team enthusiastically signing on, we began work on PHaR - Pet Help & Rescue within a week of the Marshall disaster.

We have now launched PHaR in the App Store for iPhones and iPads, and we are in final testing on Android.

My cat, Jun (pronounced June), is safer today than he was yesterday, because now that I'm back home, and having set up my Pet Help & Rescue app, I've connected with my neighbor Mike on PHaR, and if disaster threatens or strikes, his dog Kona and my cat Jun will have a better chance than ever of surviving. I know both Mike and I will add other trusted neighbors to our networks as they return home.

To find out more about the app (including how to download it), visit www.PHaR.org and watch the 4-minute video at www.PHaR.org/intro. Please also follow PHaR on social media. We have a new tool. It's free. It works nationwide. Please help us spread the word.

Pet Help & Rescue Time and again after major disasters we hear heartrending stories of people unable to save their beloved animals. The Marshall Fire, of December 30, 2021, in Boulder County, Colorado, was no exception.

The bell curve is ringing! From now through September, we're in the busy season for wildlife emergencies. We’re wishing the best for those in as their services will be increasingly in demand. You can make their lives easier by downloading our free app. Why? Because we raise the chances that the rehabilitators you call are the ones you need for your particular emergency.

You can also find helpful information on our website: https://ahnow.org/resources.php

Happy Day!
Photo courtesy of StockerPhotos.com

Excerpt: "There's going to be a memorial to the animals who lost their lives in the Marshall Fire. There's not going to be a memorial to the laptops that were lost, or the guitars..."
-Dave Crawford, Animal Help Now, on why the organization created the PHaR - Pet Help and Rescue app.

For Animals For Earth

Pet Evacuation and Disaster Relief with Dave Crawford - For Animals For Earth Pet evacuation and disaster relief is going to change with the new Pet Help and Rescue App (PHaR). It's an answer to many of our prayers.