Pink Heart Rescue Facility Fundraiser

Here at Pink Heart Rescue, our mission is to educate owners, breeders and other rescues on the merle gene and how it affects the dog we love. Double Merle is the common term for homozygous merles or dogs with two copies of the merle gene. This gene causes the dog who is affected to have more white fur than the breed would generally have. These dogs are also often vision and/or hearing-impaired and can be as severe as entirely blind and deaf. Although these dogs have special needs, they can usually lead fairly normal, healthy lives.

Here at Pink Heart Rescue, we strive not only to educate about Double Merle dogs but to assist Double Merle owners who need help with training or caring for their dog, help breeders and owners who may not have been prepared to take on the responsibility of a Double Merle dog and help place Double Merle dogs in fitting homes that are prepared to work with a special needs dog and will be a forever home.

Unfortunately, there are more blind and deaf dogs in need than we can properly house and care for. Because of this need, we have decided that building a facility is the right path forward for us to expand. With this expansion, our goal is to be able to house ten dogs at a time, along with the other dogs we have in foster homes.

This facility would give us additional capacity to pull dogs who are on euthanasia lists at shelters, dogs that are in dangerous living situations, or dogs that have been dumped and have nowhere else to go. This will also allow us to better quarantine dogs until they have been fully vetted to help prevent outbreaks of diseases like Parvovirus.

At this time, we're entertaining two different concepts for the facility - one built using a traditional framing method, and one built using shipping containers. Both design concepts have merits and drawbacks, but without speaking to an engineer or consulting municipal building codes, we haven't yet decided on a final design.

We're estimating the costs to be roughly $25,000 - but that number could change after we meet with a builder, figure out utilities, etc.

The proceeds of this campaign will go exclusively toward the construction of the facility. If we end up requiring less money than is fundraised, we will use the remaining contributions to care for dogs - but only after the construction is complete.

The pictures below are some rough concepts we've been tossing around.

Two forty foot containers, long hallway:

Two twenty foot containers, long hallway:

Two twenty-foot containers, courtyard hallway:

Four twenty-foot containers, long hallway with storage:

Traditional Frame concepts:

With your help, we hope to be able to build this facility and help even more double merle and blind/deaf dogs.

Thank you so much for considering donating to Pink Heart Rescue!