ASAP
The Animal Sheltering & Assistance Program Inc.

Save a life and enhance your own -- adopt a pet

Our Pet List

For more pictures, information and video of our dogs, please visit ConnecticutShelters.org

Adopting a Friend

We're an all-volunteer group, and we try to respond to your inquiries in our free time. To expedite communication, if you're contacting us about adopting a pet, please give us a telephone number you can be reached at, as well as good times to call over the next week. We do try to return calls and respond to emails as quickly as possible, but life sometimes gets in the way! We do require that adopters be local or at least regional; dog adopters MUST be willing to travel to work with us both before and after adoption, preferably weekly for a period of at least 6 weeks. Cat adopters must be able to visit our foster homes in person to make sure personalities are a good match.

Please note that ASAP does not have a shelter of its own. To meet an animal in our care, after an initial discussion, you will be put in touch with its foster family or invited to one of our obedience classes to meet the pet(s). We then take an application, which will be reviewed by one of our adoption counselors. After the application is approved, we ask that you wait at least 24 hours from the time that you met the pet to commit to it -- time to talk it over with the family, consider the impact and decide if it really is the right time for you to adopt.

Obedience classes are our first choice for initial meetings with our dogs. Classes are held at a volunteer's home every Thursday night, from 7 to 8:30 pm. You may contact us by email or telephone for directions.

Since our foster homes and adoption counselors are all volunteer, and have jobs and families of their own, we encourage you to see if you can make Thursday nights work: it's a time our volunteers have already set aside specifically to work with adopters. If this is absolutely impossible, please give us a call at (203) 371-8289 we'll see if something else can be arranged.

We do not charge a set fee for adoptions... perhaps a bit quirky, but consistent with our philosophy. Instead, we suggest that you make a contribution you're comfortable with at the time of adoption. To help people get a grasp of the kinds of costs associated with our rescuing and preparing an animal for adoption, you can check out the two articles below:
The Price of a Pup
The Cost of a Cat

Help with Canine Education!

The Animal Sheltering & Assistance Program is seeking volunteers to handle adoptable dogs for a weekly obedience class. Conducted by a professional trainer, this Thursday night (7-8pm) regular event is an opportunity for homeless dogs to learn basic and advanced obedience skills and manners. Working with our trainer and volunteers and using a common sense, practical approach, you will help give these animals the structure, mental stimulation and socialization they need to become fantastic family pets! We've found these classes to be a wonderful way to rehabilitate abandoned dogs, facilitate successful adoptions and have fun helping dogs to learn.

Skills Required: Volunteers do not need to have prior training or handling experience, but must be comfortable around dogs of various breeds and sizes. For insurance reasons, volunteers must be 18 or older. Training involves a great deal of moving around, so participants must be physically able to participate in an hour-long class with potentially untrained, unmannerly mid- to large-sized dogs.

For more information, or to volunteer, call the Animal Sheltering & Assistance Program at (203) 371-8289 or email petshelter@hotmail.com.

Who We Are

The Animal Sheltering & Assistance Program (ASAP) was founded in 1999 to aid animal shelters and animal control centers in caring for and adopting out stray, homeless and abandoned companion animals. As of 2003, we have helped to place over 5,000 animals, re-united hundreds of pets with their owners, and provided counseling and support to adopters and pet owners throughout Connecticut.

Today, we work closely with homeless and abandoned cats and dogs, fostering them in our homes, training them, cleaning them up, loving them and preparing them for their new lives as beloved family companions. We are a small group, concerned with quality rather than quantity of adoptions. We draw on our background and resources to give these animals a terrific start on their second chance.

We are a 501(c)3 tax-exempt nonprofit organization, and all donations are tax deductible charitable contributions. All donations go directly to benefit homeless animals – we are entirely volunteer-run and funded solely by private donations.

We are available to counsel pet owners and adopters, and to provide support to families looking for solutions to common problems in pet ownership. We welcome volunteers interested in helping in any capacity. We also offer training and support to existing animal groups looking to help animals in shelters.

Our mission is to reduce or eliminate the abuse, neglect and abandonment of companion animals in local communities by countering the sources of these problems. Through education, support and the supply of necessary provisions, we work to ensure that both pet owners and animal shelters have the resources necessary to protect, preserve and appreciate companion animals. We work to place pets with appropriate adopters, assist dogs and cats by providing training and medical attention as needed, and work within communities to help pet caretakers, owners and adopters to successfully integrate companion animals into their lives.

Volunteering and Donations

The Animal Sheltering & Assistance Program is entirely volunteer-run. All our successes and improvements are the dedicated work of people on their own time, lending a hand where they see the need. While it is hard work, it is also incredibly rewarding: just look at the smile on the face of an adoption counselor who just placed a dog, a dog walker who showed a rambunctious young canine how to walk politely on a leash, or a proud foster parent with a litter of kittens successfully reared.

Each and every 'happily ever after', from the owner re-united with their pet, to the abused animal that learns to trust again, to the thousands of families matched with a new best friend, is the result of a labor of love on the part of our volunteers.

Interested in helping out? Take a look at the different job descriptions listed on our website at www.connecticutshelters.org, and see how you'd like to make a difference. Whatever job you choose, we recommend a minimum participation of four to five hours a month.

The Animal Sheltering & Assistance Program is entirely volunteer-run and supported solely by private donations. We are a federally recognized nonprofit organization, and all contributions are tax-deductible for the donor under IRS section 501(c)3. We have no paid employees. All donations go directly to support the animals we work with. Without the generous contributions of caring individuals, we would not exist. If you like what we are doing and would like to help out, we gratefully accept donations in many forms. For more information, you may visit the donations section of our website here.

Animal Sheltering & Assistance Program Inc.

P. O. Box 55476
Bridgeport CT 06610
Phone: (203)371-8289
Email: petshelter@hotmail.com
Our Pet List