Atlanta Rescue Dog Café has an interesting story and an inspiring mission. Don’t be fooled by its name because this café offers something more impactful than just a cup of freshly brewed coffee. It isn’t a typical rescue organization, either.
According to Aaron Fisher, its founder, the Atlanta Rescue Dog Café is passionate about helping kids and animal rescue.
“What we are and what we do that makes us different from every rescue shelter out there is that we don’t take in. We don’t adopt our animals.”
What do they do exactly? They help prevent animal cruelty and reduce the overall flow of animals entering shelters by offering innovative pet therapy, humane education programs, and community building!
What Is The Atlanta Rescue Dog Café?
Atlanta Rescue Dog Café is a humane and educational non-profit organization that aspires to help educate the next generation into becoming a kinder and more compassionate community for animals.
The organization teaches people, both kids and adults, about various humane pet care practices and ways of responsibly caring for animals in a manner that can help keep them inside homes, out of rescues, and off the streets.
Among their primary objective as an organization is to relieve the strain placed on local animal shelters due to the constantly growing number of animals becoming rescues. The dog rescue café does rescue prevention through the use of educational programs.
As a former elementary teacher, Aaron taught many kinds of students — among those are kids that are deadly afraid of dogs due to misconception and those who don’t know how to safely interact with animals without the risk of getting bitten.
Aaron reached out to local shelters to see if they have age-appropriate educational programs to help enhance his students learning in this certain area. He was disappointed to learn that not a single shelter had one.
“We were missing an opportunity to develop that next generation of kind and caring animal welfare advocates and responsible pet owners.”
Aaron then started volunteering and eventually worked in the animal welfare scene. He realized early on that communities opt to treat the symptom than the root cause of why pets are becoming rescues in the first place. That gave him the motivation to start the dog rescue café.
Prevent Animals From Becoming Shelter Pets Through Pet Therapy and More!
“The heart of what we do is promote empathy and responsible pet care to promoting positive human-pet interactions.”
Currently, the Atlanta Rescue Dog Café offers a wide array of age-appropriate educational programs. They also provide engaging and fun pet therapy and community building that fits all age groups!
They launched officially last November 2017. Plus, they have since catered and worked with over 30,000 participants. With a good chunk coming from students from underserved communities!
By 2020, they started offering their services virtually in response to the global virus outbreak, which pushed their organization further into the limelight. Now, they offer services in 35 states, have reached more than 30 countries, and have participants from 6 continents!
Aaron shared that rather than chasing the shiny spotlight to get bigger, they will focus more on the root problem. They want to leave a huge impact locally before they consider expanding outward.
Atlanta Rescue Dog Café is doing great being scrappy, small, and hungry. These traits helped them have an outsize impact relative to their size.
People can find them on their official website. Those interested in volunteering, donating, and getting involved with them can reach out!
