Strong Hearts Dog Rescue

Strong Hearts Sanctuary is a registered DGR charity based in Victoria, Australia. Founded over ten years ago exclusively rescuing farmed animals, in recent years we have expanded into rescuing companion animals such as cats, dogs, rabbits and birds. Strong Hearts Dog Rescue is an offshoot of Strong Hearts Farm Sanctuary. OUR MISSION: We believe that all animals deserve loving and caring homes and any medical care necessary to ensure the best possible quality of life, regardless of their age or condition. It is our mission to save as many kill-listed animals as possible, get them desexed, microchipped and vaccinated and place them in loving forever homes. Through our work, we seek to educate the community on: • responsible animal guardianship, • holistic animal health care management, • the dire situation of thousands of healthy animals being euthanised everyday in Australia, • and most importantly what can be done to prevent this from happening. WHERE DO OUR RESCUE ANIMALS COME FROM? Strong Hearts Sanctuary exclusively rescue animals off metro, regional and rural pound and shelter euthanasia lists. That is, we only rescue animals that have been sadly sentenced to death. Every single day, we receive alerts from pounds and shelters that they are over capacity and subsequently need to start euthanising animals as they simply can't continue to care for all the animals they have in care. There is no discrimination in which animals they euthanise. It could be the old, the new born, the pregnant, the scared. Once over capacity, sadly none of these things matter. Cats are overwhelmingly our largest breed of animal in care. In 2022, we rescued over 1,000 cats and kittens, and our aim is to rescue 2,000 in 2023. ABOUT OUR RESCUE SANCTUARY: We are an entirely volunteer and foster-based charity. We don't have paid employees, we run solely on the spare time and goodwill of amazing animal loving volunteers and donations from the community. We don't have a shelter facility where all of our animals are kept. Instead, we have a network of incredible foster carers across Victoria who take in our animals, nurse them to health, give them love and socialise them until they are ready for adoption. WHAT HAPPENS AFTER WE RESCUE AN ANIMAL: We often don't know the circumstances or condition the animals we rescue from euthanasia lists will come in when we promise to save them. In the case of companion animals such as dogs and cats, it is fairly common for them to come to us emaciated, very unwell with diseases, parasites and illnesses such as giardia, flu, ringworm and parvovirus. We don't "pick and choose" which animals "deserve" saving based on their looks and their likely future adoptability. If we have room and a place for them to be loved, kept safe, cared for and fed - we take them, whatever the condition they are in. Once the animal has been returned to health, we desex, microchip and vaccinate them before starting the search for a loving forever home.

Adoption Policy: Strict

Our adoption process is an initial application followed by a phone or message conversation and finally a meet to ensure the dog & adopter are the right.