Bringing Together Our Community that Helped Us Create OUR Furever Home
Burien cares is a non profit organization servicing the Burien community with animal care and control, rescuing over 800 animals annually with a return to owner ratio of 65%. We have been in operation over 10 years and are excited to have purchased our building in 2021 to create a permanent home for our furry friends. To do this, it took the whole community united together and it got done!
Where It All Started
Ten years ago, we embarked on a journey to create a lasting legacy for the Burien community. The City of Burien was looking for an alternative to Regional Animal Services of King County (RASKC) who contracts with 24 cities in the Pacific Northwest region. They were envisioning more local services for their Animal Control needs. Understanding their vision, one dedicated animal advocate put together a proposal for those services and Burien Community Animal Resource & Education Society (CARES) non-profit was founded. Our first location was a small office in a back alley building with an Executive Director and an Animal Control officer. We had a phone, a few kennels, and a lot of drive to make the vision a reality.
This is Toby, aka Primo (for #1). He is the first dog Burien CARES helped find a furever home! Unfortunately, Toby recently crossed the Rainbow Bridge, but he will always have a special place in our hearts!
It Was a Long Road,
but It Got Us to This Point
We outgrew that small office not long after adopting out Toby. There was a lot of support and some opposition to what we were trying to achieve early on, but we kept going with dedication and help from our community. People were generous donating time, filling needs for the animals and getting the word out that Burien had a local animal shelter. Finding an 8000 sq. ft. warehouse to rent was a stroke of fortune for CARES. Scary and exciting at the same time, we plunged in building kennels, cat rooms and offices from the ground up. A lot of the construction we did ourselves on a lean budget with long nights and many weekends. The City of Burien was very happy with CARES, renewing our animal control contract year after year.
The Here & Now
Today we have 16 full/part time employees, several who have been with us for almost a decade. As of December 2022, we have taken in almost 8,000 animals, adopted out over 4,000 dogs and cats to new loving homes, and returned almost 2,000 lost animals to their families. We have had countless kittens born at the shelter and puppies too. Our super community gets us. Whenever the call goes out for whatever we need, they come through. We are able to donate cat and dog food to our local food banks on a regular basis with the generosity of our supporters so that no animal goes hungry. Donation pallets come in from Amazon and Costco monthly. We have a slew of dedicated volunteers. We operate a Doggy Daycare on site to help support the medical needs of the many animals that come to us injured. We do our absolute best to give every animal every opportunity to find their forever home. Sometimes we must make hard decisions, but we never forget we are in service to the animals and are the advocates for the animals that pass through our no-kill shelter each year. We have proven that the vision of a local Animal Care and Control non-profit organization can work and prosper.
The Future is Bright
Having 10 years of service under our belt, our future involves reaching out to other nearby cities to replicate our success in Burien. Continuing the growth of the organization is all part of our legacy. Last year it became clear that we were at risk of losing our home for the shelter. That made us feel vulnerable and left us wanting more stability for what we have built over the last decade. We decided it was in the best interest of the organization to try to purchase our building. By securing our home we are able to continue our service to the animals in need. Bringing together the community helped us create our furever home and we could not be more grateful!. Thank you to all our donors and supporters for making this happen in 2021.