In an animal rescue system, the special needs population is the proverbial bottleneck.  They require more time, care, and resources than the average underdog, and often need specialized services before and sometimes after adoption.

Ani’s Orphans exists for and caters to the medical behavioral bottleneck population of rescue dogs and supports their immediate and long term needs. Inspired by the lives of a few EXTRA SPECIAL dogs and founded on a commitment to supporting “the weird cases” with love, acceptance, and educated creativity, it is our mission ensure every dog prospers regardless of their challenges. We embrace the atypical ailment as well as the accompanying hard work – from neonates who lost their mom, to congenital deformities, injuries, disabilities, and all the idiosyncrasies and “behaviors” in between.

The orphanage care model was designed to add value to a dog’s existence as a whole, and uses Lean principles to ensure its work is carried out efficiently and effectively from the perspective of our customers: our dogs and our humans.  It values education, continuous improvement, seeks to promote the many skills and talents of our community members, and eliminates downstream waste by bringing resources to our dogs when and where they need them: “Today’s work today.”

But it isn’t just the dog who has needs in the relationship, and thanks to a value stream analysis and a deep dive needs assessments, our approach incorporates and respects the human end of the leash, too!   We know that transparency and setting realistic expectations for families UP FRONT is as valuable as the work we do with our dogs directly, and it is only by interacting with the dogs that we find out who they are.   Our system accounts for and is designed to meet needs and prevent the most common reasons for failure. We do this by providing our dogs with adequate decompression time, a core education, behavior assessments, temperament testing and curated learning environments in value-added foster care. We then use that information to write their bios and determine compatibility during matchmaking. Adopters benefit from full-disclosure, substantive meet & greets in low stress environments, coached in-home auditions, dog:dog introductions, and growing follow up and support programs.

The orphanage is a physical location as well as a standardized approach to individualized care for the most vulnerable homeless dogs.