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The Community Foundation of Sarasota County awards grant to support medical assistance in Emergency, Trauma & Surgical Cases
Lost Pet Services, Inc. has been honored with a $20,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Sarasota County through their Animal Welfare Grant Program thanks to the
Martha Leiter and Nancy Streetman Fund I and Robert Parker Fund.
“This grant will be used by Lost Pet Services Medical Program to provide finances for local found strays and owned pets in need of medical assistance for emergency, trauma and surgical cases. Many times when pets are lost, they are found with serious, life-threatening injuries. Owners sometimes are faced with the heart-breaking decision of surrendering their pet to a local county shelter to get care for it because they cannot afford the vet care. That is where we step in.” says Patty Giarrusso, President & Founder of Lost Pet Services, Inc.
When Lumi was found, she was in urgent need of vet care and a Lost Pet Services’ volunteer took her immediately to a local animal ER. She needed two major surgeries which Lost Pet Services was able to fund. Lumi has since been adopted into her forever home after no owner came forward to claim her.
Since 2018, Lost Pet Services (LPS) has funded over $115,000 in pet medical care for local pets in the Sarasota and Manatee County area. “Since the pandemic began, we have seen a large increase in the number of families needing assistance. Our goal is to keep families and their pets together. We are extremely grateful to the Community Foundation of Sarasota County for awarding us this grant which will allow us to save more pets,” says Patty Giarrusso. “We are grateful to be able to continue helping pets that are injured. There is a big need to help families with badly injured pets.” says Terry Creamer, VP of Lost Pet Services.
All services provided by Lost Pet Services (LPS) are free of charge to the local community. Besides providing medical assistance, LPS provides free microchips, free ID tags, financial support to those struggling with shelter fees and donates microchip scanners to our local police, fire stations and others who volunteer in our community. By providing medical funding for injured stray pets and owned loved pets injured when they are lost, LPS can keep more family pets out of the overcrowded local shelters and home safe with their families. Lost Pet Services local Facebook group, Lost and Found Pets 941 (Lost Pet Services) has over 40,000 members and grows by hundreds each month.
(Scanner donation to Parrish Fire Department)
LPS works in conjunction with local animal shelters, police departments, veterinarian offices, rescue, and animal welfare groups to promote responsible pet ownership to help reunite lost pets and get them home safe with the main objective of keeping loved family pets out of our over-crowded shelters.
About the Community Foundation of Sarasota County: The Community Foundation of Sarasota County is a public charity founded in 1979 by the Southwest Florida Estate Planning Council as a resource for caring individuals and the causes they support, enabling them to make a charitable impact on the community. With assets of $520 million in more than 1,570 charitable funds, the Community Foundation awarded grants and scholarships totaling $27.5 million dollars last year in the areas of education, the arts, health and human services, civic engagement, animal welfare and the environment. Since its founding, the Community Foundation has been able to grant more than $350 million to area nonprofit organizations to our community thanks to the generosity of charitable individuals, families, and businesses. For more information, visit www.CFSarasota.org or call (941) 955-3000.
For more information about Lost Pet Services, Inc., visit www.LostFoundPets941.com or call 941-900-8303.