We're excited to team up with Pizza Hut in Washington for a great fundraiser for our furry friends. On Tuesday, May 7 Pizza Hut will donate 20% of their sales to us for all dine-in, carry-out, and delivery orders! We're grateful for their support and hope our community turns out to support our shelter on May 7.

Join us on May 11th from 2-4 pm at the Washington County Fairgrounds in the Multi Species Livestock Barn for our first ever Dog Vaccine and Microchip Clinic! Vaccines and microchips will be offered for a Free Will Donation and are intended for residents with financial barriers to services Clinic will be open to Washington County residents only and while supplies last (100 vaccines and microchips available) Rabies vaccine required, unless proof of current vaccination is provided Elective Distemper/Parvo vaccination and microchips available Free nail trim coupon from LaundroMutt PLEASE NOTE: Friendly dogs only. If you need assistance with a dog that can not attend this event, call us at 319-653-6713 to make special arrangements.

Join us for an awesome week of drop-in events at the shelter! Come solo or with your work group or family. We look forward to enjoying snacks and building community to benefit our animals!

Cats and dogs in holiday finery will be ready to welcome you once again to our holiday party at PAWS! Our shelter will be decorated and refreshments will be there for your enjoyment! Our animals will have their stockings hung, hoping to have them filled with toys and treats! Canned dog and cat food donations are gratefully accepted. Come down and join us for this fun annual event.

Once again, we will have dozens of items available to the highest bidder! From hotel stays to movie night baskets, and so many items in between, we hope that everyone will find items to enjoy. Keep an eye out on our facebook page to bid!

It’s not completely unusual for someone to walk up to our welcome desk in tears. We never get used to it. On May 8, 2023, a young woman walked through our doors and, through her tears, pointed to her car and said, “I had to get her. I couldn’t just drive by.” As we hurried outside, she said through tears, “She’s just skin and bones.” We walked out to the car and saw the saddest sight: Two big dark eyes on a black dog that was the thinnest we had ever seen alive. We all gasped. You could see, not only every bone in her body, and every vertebrae, but the outline of her skull as well. But she was still standing. One of us said, “Thank you for bringing her here” and another said, “Hello, beautiful girl. Let’s get you inside.” We picked her up and she weighed so little. We put her down gently, scanned her for a microchip, and gave her a bowl of water that she gratefully lapped out of. She wouldn’t have survived much longer. Alivia means peace so we named her Alivia. We knew we would help her find peace, we just didn’t know what form it would take. We loved her instantly, even though we didn’t know what the future would hold for her. As we got to work on a medical plan for Alivia, It was obvious that she had been caged because of the unmistakable and very strong smell of urine on her tiny body. You could actually smell it a few kennels away. She tried to scratch at her skin because it burned from the urine, but she wasn’t strong enough to stand on three legs and fell over. We decided to give her some relief with a gentle bath, to relieve some of her suffering. Then we wrapped her in towels and snuggled her in front of our special warm dryer. You should have heard the grateful little noises she made. She burrowed into the towels in her new friend’s lap and went to sleep. She was so weak and tired. An hour after getting settled into the coziest dog bed we have, Alivia had a seizure. Our Beth rushed her to the vet and while they were stabilizing her, she had another seizure. Everyone decided that taking her to the emergency vet would give her the best chance of survival. We had only known her for a few hours, but we knew that we were going to fight for her, if her little body still could. Our online community of supporters immediately partnered with us to raise the funds for Alivia’s emergency care! We were so grateful. And in the morning we received wonderful news: Alivia had made it through the night. When she was discharged from Blue Pearl, Alivia spent the night with our team member Emma. Alivia had received a very special offer to foster her. It was from Mindi Callison, founder of the national organization, Bailing Out Benji. Mindi and her husband have lots of experience helping sick, elderly, and neglected animals. We knew this was the perfect temporary home for Alivia. The next day, two of us drove with Alivia to Ames, and introduced her to her foster mom, Mindi. It was such a sweet meeting. We made our way back from Ames and over the next few days, Alivia settled into the very spoiled life as one of Mindi’s dogs. She continued her treatment and gained a few pounds in her first week there. We coordinated her treatment with her vet in Ames. Mindi’s friends sent love and sweaters. Alivia went to work with Mindi and Mindi’s wonderful former puppy mill survivor, Eleanor, her golden retriever. Eleanor has her own Instagram social media following (@eleanorthesurvivor) Over the weeks, Alivia received excellent care at the vet and in her foster home. And she gained weight every week and did not have any more seizures! When Mindi told us that she wanted to adopt Alivia, we were thrilled and not at all surprised. We could see their bond growing as Alivia got stronger. It looked like she was home. And she was. Mila is her name and she has more than doubled the weight she was when she came to us. She will always be very loved and well cared for in her adoptive home. She will have the best, which we think you’ll agree, she deserves. Even more heartwarming is the fact that when Heartland Humane Society saw our story about Mila, they contacted us to see if we could take another very thin female dog, one that had been neglected and starved, then abandoned by her owner. Because we had paid Alivia’s bill with all of the generous donations towards her care, we were able to say yes to Cita! Cita went right into a foster home to begin to get healthy.

May 18, 2023 - At the Spring 2023 Grant Event, WCRF announced that PAWS & More received a $30,000 grant! We will use this grant to help with architectural and engineering fees associated with the design of our new facility. We are grateful to the Foundation for supporting our work and our future! It was a wonderful feeling to watch our fellow Washington County organizations receive the grant funding that will allow them to complete the projects that better our local communities and we are honored to be among them. The Washington County Riverboat Foundation is the nonprofit license holder for the Riverside Casino & Golf Resort, which provides the entirety of its funding. For the Spring 2023 grant cycle, WCRF awarded 25 grants totaling $1,630,255.

Please Join us at PAWS & More April 29th from 12-4 pm Reduced adoption fees for kittens under one year & fee-waived adoptions for all adult cats over one!

Honey. The name of the dog we could not save. She slowly died of dehydration and starvation last month, before we knew of her, tied up in a house, with no access to food or water. What do you do when a dog in your community, so close to your own shelter, dies in such a heartbreaking way? What are the options? We will reach the children. The little minds and hearts who will grow up to be pet owners. And who are little pet owners right now. That’s what we’re going to do. We want to bring Kind News to classrooms in our community. We want to do our very best to prevent anyone from growing up to believe that the animals around us deserve cruelty, neglect, abuse, or abandonment. What is Kind News? It’s a fun magazine, a cross-curricular teaching tool that encourages kids to read and write and covers many of the major subject areas. Teachers can readily incorporate it into subjects like math, science, reading, and language arts or simply hand out copies to students to enjoy during free time or at home. Kind News is published monthly throughout the school year and is delivered to classrooms in bundles of 28 copies with an accompanying teacher’s guide. It comes in three editions to accommodate a range of reading levels: Primary edition, Jr. edition, and Sr. edition. $30 covers a subscription to Kind News for one teacher and their students. Will you help us reach our goal of getting this fun programming into as many local classrooms as we can? Subscriptions will be awarded to teachers who want this for their classrooms. We can’t bring Honey back. We never got to meet her. At first it was even hard for us to say her name. But if we don’t, then she will be forgotten. And if we do, then maybe we can create a wave of kind treatment towards our local pets that will reverberate and prevent another dog from suffering as she did. Let’s work together and get Kind News into our community Rest In Peace, Honey.

Motorcyclists from all over Iowa and beyond will come together to support the animals! Purchase a hand, and grab a card at each of four stops. The Poker Run ends at the fifth stop, the Washington County Fairgrounds where hot dogs and other food and drinks will be available for purchase. Musical entertainment and prizes will help the fun continue, all to support our shelter.

Join us from 6-9 pm on Saturday, May 13th, 2023 PAWS & More has partnered with Kalona Brewing Company to create a signature brew that celebrates Iowans’ love for their pets, our shelter pets, and great beer! Mark your calendars and make plans to join us from 6-9 pm on Saturday, May 13th for the celebratory launch of our tail-chasing delicious great brew. Enjoy live music, excellent food, and a first taste of our special Dog Daze Hazy Pale Ale.