Here we are, old year gone but not forgotten and the New Year ahead, full of joys and challenges to come.

With your help, Palmetto Animal League is setting out to save more lives than ever before. Being a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, we rely on the community’s support as we also support the community with life-saving programs like the PAL Community Clinic.

Each year we rescue hundreds of cats and dogs, many with costly needs. Helping them requires love, determination and the support of caring people like you.

We saw dozens of pets with urgent medical needs in 2017, requiring around-the-clock care. The treatments were long, mostly successful, and expensive.

Certain ailments, like ringworm and mange, take months of medicated baths, skin scrapes, and hair tests – time well spent to save lives!

Then there were the broken legs, deformities, eye conditions, reconstructive surgeries and long-term medical treatments for diabetes, kidney disease and heart problems. These require extensive tests, X-rays and often calling in a specialist.

Our devoted staff willingly takes on these proactive, life-saving services for each animal’s sake. We refuse to end a pet’s life due to cost of treatment. None of this comes cheap (and we have more heart than cash) but it never stops us from doing everything in our power to save an animal’s life.

There have been thousands of lives saved in our nearly seven years of serving the community, and we renew our promise to save thousands more. As our life-saving programs expand, the need for them also grows, and we need your help now more than ever.

PAL holds a few special fundraising events every year, but it’s the day-to-day, month-to-month recurring contributions from individuals like you that allows us the vital resources we need to save an animal’s life at a moment’s notice.

Our website, PalmettoAnimalLeague.org, explains many ways you can donate, making it easy for anyone to join the No Kill Movement.

If you’re not able to donate monetarily, or you just want to do more, you can also help homeless pets through your gifts of time and love. Spending time petting cats and playing with dogs at our Adoption Center is an invaluable donation the animals can use every day.

At PAL, we are ready to embrace the New Year and the miracles it will bring. We look forward to welcoming back old friends and making new ones as, together, we set out to save more lives than ever in 2018.

J.A. Weiss is a volunteer foster for Palmetto Animal League.