A Cute Puppy
We Love helping dogs just like this one!

Your Donations Make a Difference

Wondering who your jewelry purchase (or donation) supports? Indigo Rescue is an Oregon based volunteer animal rescue organization that launches and maintains programs to assist county animal shelters. Through partnerships formed with shelters, Indigo Rescue intervenes by taking animals who have run out of time in the shelter environment, rehabilitating them in foster homes before placing them in adoptive homes. The organization continues to develop and launch convenient and practical spay/neuter programs designed to encourage people to have their pets altered.

Indigo Rescue also develops new programs to discourage surrender of companion animals to shelters, and increase likelihood of permanent placement. Efforts include offering consultation, resources and support to individuals from the community who are making the effort to help the abandoned animals find a permanent home. The organization focuses all of their placement efforts on making compatible matches to ensure a better likelihood of people keeping their commitment to their pets for their entire lives. They encourage people to make a soul connection with pets, rather than one based on appearance, and to consider whether the energy level, training needs and length of a pets life is something the feel they can commit to. Indigo Rescue likes to refer to themselves as “The match.com of people and pets.” Indigo Rescue was founded in 1998 and is a registered non-profit 501(c)3 organization.

More about Indigo Rescue, and what makes us different

There’s good news: Local shelters have very low euthanasia rates for healthy, adoptable animals.  But the real story isn’t quite that simple. If you look beneath the headline, you find that those low euthanasia rates are predicated by a couple of underlying truths:

  1. The broad working definition of “healthy” and “adoptable” leaves many very special animals out of the equation – euthanized but simply not counted in the statistics.  These animals have widely varying levels of “unhealthiness” and “un-adoptability” issues, requiring vastly different levels of intervention to make them whole.
  2. Although animals are deemed unhealthy or un-adoptable by shelter standards, they can be (and are) given a second chance if a rescue group agrees to take them.
  3. Rehabilitating these “un-adoptable” and “unhealthy” animals requires a far more intense and specialized level of intervention than the average homeless pet, but each of them has the same potential (and sometimes more) to be someone’s loved and loving companion.

 

Square Pegs Don’t Fit Into Round Holes:

The fact is that some dogs and cats just don’t have a chance at a traditional shelter because they’re set up to help the “average” animal who finds himself without a home.  And they do a pretty good job of serving the majority…the ones that conform…the ones that fit.

But what about the ones that don’t fit – those “Square Pegs” that will never fit into the round hole of services provided by those shelters?

Every day, animals at shelters are deemed un-adoptable for many reasons.  Sometimes it’s a health issue or injury that shelters see as too costly or time-consuming to address.  Other times its emotional instability– the byproduct of a lifetime of neglect or abuse.  It doesn’t matter why they don’t fit – only that the shelter isn’t set up to help them.  Without someone else stepping in, euthanasia is the inevitable outcome.

And that’s where Indigo comes in.  We believe that everyone deserves a chance.  We take those “un-adoptable” Square Pegs and we find a way to help them fit.  We provide them with the individualized care they need to succeed – to allow that non-conforming animal to develop into a one-of-a-kind pet.  Whatever it takes.  Whomever it takes to do it.

 

Foster Families:  Because Home is Where Everyone Fits

Shelters can be a terrifying place.  So, a frightened dog cowers and growls in the corner of his shelter cage.  A dog who has never known human kindness snaps in a frantic attempt to save himself from a stranger’s hand.  A dog who is used to going hungry is protective of his food.  For a shelter dog, not fitting in in these completely understandable ways can leave you “un-adoptable” and potentially facing a death sentence.

But at Indigo Rescue, we know that, in the right home, everyone fits.  In our loving foster homes, our dogs learn that people can be good.  Rather than seeing danger in a stranger’s hand, they learn to relish the warm embrace of a human that makes them feel safe. They learn that they can count on their families to provide.  They get healthy. They gain confidence.  And they learn the manners and behavior that it takes to be a good family member.

You can’t accomplish this in an institutional setting.  That’s why foster families are the backbone of our work. Indigo provides the game plan, medical care and the individualized support, but our fosters           provide the Home…that very special place where everyone can         learn to fit.