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Planned PEThood: Saving One Pet at a Time

As the only nonprofit organization in Gwinnett County to offer such a range of spay/neuter clinic and services, Planned PEThood is leading the pack among pet care providers. Or to be more precise, saving more pet lives than any other organization in the community, one at a time.

Committed to Saving Lives

Since 2010, the Planned PEThood mission statement is “Helping pets and the people who care for them by providing innovative programs and affordable services that SAVE LIVES.” So, how do they accomplish such an ambitious goal? By focusing on four unique areas of life-saving pet services. The first one being the one for which they are known best.

Starting with their original primary focus, Planned PEThood provides high-quality, low-cost spay/neuter services. And to date, that number has reached over 41,000 spay/neuter surgeries performed since the clinic opened its doors.
Not to be outshined by their initial objective, Planned PEThood also offers health/wellness services, too. Currently, they hold regular vaccine clinics on Saturdays and will soon expand to weekday care by appointment. They also offer rescue/adoption pet services in which they find homes for approximately 850 cats and dogs each year. And lastly, is their trap/neuter/return program. It works like this: they loan humane traps at no cost and charge a reduced fee to sterilize community cats. So far, Planned PEThood volunteers have trapped large colonies in neighborhoods, apartment complexes, schools, churches, strip malls, and many other areas.

Planned PEThood also has a barn cat program that provides live outcomes for unsocialized cats in shelters by placing them into outdoor homes as working cats. This environmentally safe solution to the unwanted pet population helps to keep the feral cats safe and housed. It also gives them a chance at life. Eager adopters with a barn or other type of animal shelter are also encouraged to adopt barn cats as well.

A Force in the Community

Locally recognized for providing high-quality, low-cost services to help people sterilize and vaccinate their pets, Planned PEThood works closely with the Gwinnett County Animal Shelter to care for homeless cats and dogs. And as of February 2018, the nonprofit organization received a contract with Gwinnett County to provide veterinary services to Gwinnett County Animal Welfare & Enforcement on a yearly basis. Now that’s quite an endorsement!

How You Can Help

As you can imagine, an organization like Planned PEThood thrives off of its volunteers and the help of the community. So, how can you help? By donating funds and supplies, volunteering your time, fostering a pet, or even giving them an unwanted vehicle. Planned PEThood also accepts donations on their website (www.pethoodga.org) and via PayPal (info@pethoodga.org).

And for those who are looking to mingle with and get to know the excellent team at Planned PEThood, they have a yearly donation drive on November 28th, also known as Giving Tuesday. The funds raised will go toward helping with medical expenses for rescue pets who need special attention as well as continue to spay/neuter pets whose owners can’t afford it.

As the Executive Director Elizabeth Burgner rather nicely sums it up, “We have saved thousands of lives and improved thousands more thanks to the support of donors and volunteers in the community.” Planned PEThood has indeed accomplished a lot with the help of others, but their team deserves a great deal of credit, too!