I'm Kleighrayne, and my husband Christopher and I have been married for 12 years. We have been fostering consistently the entire time we have been married for our local animal shelter, local rescues, and local sanctuaries.

We both work very demanding full-time jobs that often require mandatory overtime hours away from home, but we always find time and space to foster homeless pets in need.

I work at Pima Animal Care Center here in Tucson, AZ. I've been an employee since 2017, though I started volunteering and fostering at the shelter in 2014. We have a single acre of land where we typically house 60-70 animals at a time. Most are foster animals through Ironwood Pig Sanctuary and Pima Animal Care Center.

Christopher and I have been in the business of fostering for a dozen years, and we have never seen adoptions so slow, and we have never seen such high numbers in homeless pets entering shelters and rescues. It's been rough these last few years. With the scale tipping dangerously, we have become a semi-permanent placement for many of our foster animals that we had intended to be a very temporary placement for. We like to think of ourselves as a stepping stone to their forever homes, a place to heal until they go where they live their happily ever after. But many of our animals have been with us for several years. We are turning more into a sanctuary, and that is just fine, but we need to make some changes that will help us and will give the animals more quality with space, enrichment, exercise, and socialization. Moving to larger land is not an option at the moment, so we need to make do with what we have.

Creating a large community yard will not only give these animals more room, space, and opportunity to be themselves, it will also significantly help Christopher and me maintain them more easily.

We hope the new design and the new materials will help us create a more sustainable environment for long-term placement for our much-deserved rescue animals. The majority of our pigs came from severe neglect cases, hoarding that turned into starvation and forced cannibalism. Our goats came from the same conditions with added diseases. Our several species of birds also came from similar scenarios. Most of our cats were strays that landed in the shelter after being ill and needing extra help. The dogs typically come from the shelter most often with Valley Fever or active Distemper Virus, although I do love to bring home under-socialized dogs that don't do well in the shelter. We always have a couple of hospice animals that just need a retirement home until they are ready to be released from this life, a place to stay comfortable until they are ready to move on.

With the money we are raising, we would like to:

- Reinforce our perimeter fencing

- Build a new dog/goat-proof fence

- Add a few new gates for easy access to all spaces

- Build multiple industrial sail shades that can withstand our extreme sun and high winds

- Add a few small structures for the animals to sleep in

- Add a solid cover-type carport

- Playground for the goats

- Get a feed barn to protect feed from weather and critters

- Enclose our porch to make a catio

- Build a small aviary

- Add footage to the duck coop

The animals we bring home deserve so much more. We do the very best we can with what we have, of course, but I'm always going to want them to have so much more. More space, more socializing, more attention, more freedom, higher quality food, more weather protection, more adoption opportunities. In the same breath, I want to help more, do more, and be more for all these guys. We are hoping the funds we pull together can give the animals a greater quality of life and also help us with the overall workload. Thank you for taking the time to read this. - Kleighrayne