During the pandemic, several SPVAR volunteers partnered up with the Community Cat Coalition, Loudoun County, and Dakota's Dream volunteers to rescue a small community of cats and kittens behind a nearby hotel and holiday's drainage ditch. Momma cat was caught first, and taken through Community Cats to be fixed and re-homed. Over several days they sat and baited humane traps, placed food, played mother cat sounds and called kittens, hoping they would come up and out of the gully and get some food. After a two day stakeout, 6 kittens were caught!  Peaches, Tux, Shadow, Hobbs, Stud and Willow!

They went from very scared feral hissy babies to loving sweet kittens within a few weeks of being in foster care. Shadow ended up being adopted by one of the vet techs that helped him when they first came in and she realized the huge improvement he made within a few weeks.

Lil Boy - now Uno- is an Argentine Tegu bought by a young teenager from a person that didn’t take very good care of him. He had terrible stuck shed but within a few weeks he started realizing baths weren’t so bad and he actually enjoyed them. When his prior owner had to move, he couldn’t take with him because they require a very large enclosure so they surrendered him to us. He was placed in a foster-to-adopt home where he’s got other animal friends which he likes and has a large area to himself.

Annabelle is our very FIRST RUSSIAN PUPPY ! It is so exciting to have finally partnered up with some amazing individuals who rescue animals from Russia and then transport them to the United States. Annabelle is a GSD/Mix puppy who was born in a vehicle ! It is common to find dogs wondering around the streets of Russia. There was a very pregnant mother dog found as a stray, when the founder put her in the car to take her to the vet.. POP ! out came puppies ! And Annabelle was one of them. That family immediately became their temporary foster family. They helped cover their vetting and all the medical care mother and pups needed. Momma got spayed as well after the puppies were weaned and everyone was vaccinated. Approximately, 6 months later..Annabelle is the first from her litter to arrive to the United States. Here she found her furever home with a family that has other dogs for her to play with. The volunteers are working hard to find the rest of the family a home in Russia, while also trying to find a person who can volunteer to fly with the dogs over to VA for us to help. We look forward to working with our Russian team for many more rescues, and to help find homes for this family (: