Petco Love changes lives with investment in South Carolina Search & Rescue Dog Association

December 13, 2021

Andre Linder, Assistant Manager of Spartanburg Petco store, presents Petco grant to SCSARDA team officer Marion Tisdale, with area search K9 Maya

South Carolina Search & Rescue Dog Association (SCSARDA) announced a $2,000 grant investment from Petco Love to support their life-changing work with K9 search and rescue animals in South Carolina.

The Petco Love investment will change lives by helping SCSARDA continue to serve as a specialized resource for emergency services agencies — police, sheriff, fire, and other emergency agencies — searching for those who are lost, from children to hikers to drowning victims to those with Alzheimer’s.

“Our team is very excited to receive this grant from Petco Love to support our work in K9 search and rescue,” said Mitch Henderson, President of SCSARDA. “We assess each dog thoroughly before they join our team for further training, and as long as they meet certain criteria for our work, we welcome them and their handlers to offer this lifesaving work for families of missing people and in support of our conscientious hard-working law enforcement, fire, and emergency services agencies.”

Since 2012, Petco Love has invested more than $16 million to support the life-changing work of Helping Heroes – animals that are trained to become heroes who help us – with a special focus on supporting those organizations who train shelter pets to become service, therapy and working animals. This could be service dogs that support our nation’s veterans, search and rescue dogs who help disaster relief efforts, or therapy animals that provide comfort at hospitals or senior living centers.

“Petco Love is proud to support SCSARDA as one of nearly 100 organizations receiving a Helping Heroes grant this year,” said Petco Love President, Susanne Kogut. “Petco Love focuses on supporting organizations that find pets in animal shelters and transform them to become pet heroes who improve the lives of others, highlighting the true potential of shelter pets and the impact they bring to their communities.”

SCSARDA is a non-profit, all-volunteer professional search and rescue team; all its resources and volunteers are provided entirely free of charge. Since its inception in 2002, SCSARDA has responded to more than 200 call out requests for the missing, covering all of South Carolina, Western North Carolina, and parts of Georgia and elsewhere as backup to other K9 search and rescue teams. The team’s primary resources during searches are its dogs, each one trained in a search specialty: area search, for searching wilderness areas in systematic sweeps, trailing, for finding direction of travel and hasty searches of trails and paths, and human remains detection on land or water.

For more information about SCSARDA visit http://www.scsarda.org. For more on Petco Love, visit petcolove.org.

 

About SCSARDA

The South Carolina Search and Rescue Dog Association (SCSARDA) is an all-volunteer professional search and rescue team with highly trained search dogs dedicated to helping find those who are lost, from children to hikers to drowning victims to those with Alzheimer’s. Founded in 2002, SCSARDA is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization which serves as a specialized resource for emergency services agencies. We respond to requests from emergency services agencies on a 24/7 basis and our services are provided entirely free of charge. For more information on SCSARDA visit http://www.scsarda.org or like https://www.facebook.com/SCSARDAK9.

About Petco Love

Petco Love is a nonprofit changing lives by making communities and pet families closer, stronger, and healthier. Since our founding in 1999 as the Petco Foundation, we’ve empowered animal welfare organizations by investing $300 million in adoption and other lifesaving efforts. We’ve helped find loving homes for more than 6.5 million pets in partnership with Petco and organizations nationwide. Today, our love for pets drives us to lead with innovation, creating tools animal lovers need to reunite lost pets, and lead with passion, inspiring and mobilizing communities and our more than 4,000 animal welfare partners to drive lifesaving change alongside us. Is love calling you? Visit petcolove.org or follow at Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn to be part of the lifesaving work we’re leading every day.