Fences, Families, & Second Chances: A Q&A With Pawsitive Pathways
- Anne Boswell Taylor
- Oct 3
- 5 min read
~Anne Boswell
Your scrolling fingers don't have to scroll long on social media before seeing posts of loose dogs, dogs lost, or unwanted dogs that someone is trying to re-home. With shelters bursting at the seams for space one Southeast Colorado non-profit is going a little further with their mission to make sure that dogs who do secure a forever home, stay there.
Brandie Jackson is founder and director of Pawsitive Pathways, a non-profit canine rehabilitation shelter dog program. Their mission?
To save dogs from rural, underfunded, and overcrowded Colorado shelters; places where adoption is unlikely and the risk of euthanasia is high due to limited space, scarce resources, or restrictive municipal codes. By focusing on rehabilitation, education, and advocacy, we aim to create lasting change for all rural Colorado dogs and the communities that care for them.
Recently, while scrolling as mentioned before, we noticed a community plea to help repair a broken fence to allow a family to keep their dog from escaping. We felt the above and beyond effort aligned with their mission was worth a call to Jackson for more. Here are my questions and her responses.
Anne:
I noticed lately there was a call to help a gentleman repair his fence. You’ve been doing things like this. Why are you doing it?
Brandie:
We started Pawsitive Pathways about 3 and a half years ago with the intention of helping unwanted dogs find forever homes. We quickly realized we needed to focus the program not only on helping dogs, but also helping humans. In order to ensure dogs are safe and well taken care of we have to make sure the humans are as well. We are dedicated to rural Colorado, not only because this is where we reside, but we realize that rural communities are often overlooked. We started doing more outreach these last two years by helping individual dog owners with building fences or getting extra dog food when they need it and even helping transport their pets to veterinarian appointments and helping pay for some of those appointments to help ease the burden on the families. We’ve hosted low-cost spay and neuter clinics at our training center in Swink and even teach classes at some of the local schools to school-age children about how to speak dog a little bit better and how to interact with dogs in a safe way. Our outreach for the community stretches from Fowler all the way to Lamar and then all the way over to Trinidad and even sometimes in Pueblo.
Anne:
You were able to rescue a lot of dogs and make them great dogs for great people. How is the program going?
Brandie:
it’s been incredible! As of today we have successfully rehabilitated and adopted out 117 dogs that were in shelters around rural Colorado and facing risk of euthanasia. A lot of the dogs that we take in are not the “easy” dogs. These are the dogs that had we not taken them out of the shelter would’ve most likely been euthanized. I think what makes our program unique and special is that we take our time with each dog so we know exactly what that Dog needs in a family. We know the good and the bad. We hand-deliver all of our dogs to their new homes and stay with the family while we do meet and greets with the family and any of their other pets. we sit with each family and discuss all of the training that’s already been done and what the family can do to make the transition for their new pet for the easier one. After the dog is adopted, we stay in touch with that adopter for the life of the dog. Anytime they have training or behavioral questions were there to help them. I often get updates and pictures which really warms my heart and re-energize our whole team. Out of 117 dogs adopted we’ve only ever had one dog returned and that was because he liked chasing the neighbors cats. The furthest we’ve ever driven is Mississippi! We had a very special dog who needed a special adopter and when we found that person in Mississippi, we knew it was the right thing to do.
Anne:
And what’s the most rewarding thing about helping someone keep a dog and in their family and happy?
Brandie:
anyone who’s ever owned a dog knows how therapeutic it can be. Sure there can be stressful moments and issues when we have behavioral issues but there’s nothing better than having a best friend that follows you all around the house hanging on your every word and being the most excited of the whole family to see you walk in the door after getting home from work. We believe that everyone should be able to experience this. Losing a dog is extremely hard on the entire family, but even more so on the dog. If we have a good family that loves their dog but his fallen on hard times and needs a little extra help we want to be there to do what we can. Whether that’s getting donations of picket fencing to fix a hole in a fence where a dog has escaped or buying an extra bag of dog food to help somebody who ran out with their pay period still two weeks away or helping with a dog that needs to see the Vet. Rural Colorado needs help. We need to step up for our neighbors - four legged and two legged.
Anne:
It sounds like if somebody wants to help there’s a way to do it. How did they get in touch with you?
Brandie:
we are a small but mighty team so we do have some limitations in how much and how many people we can help. We do ask the people contact us through our website at pawsitivepathwaysco.com
We always have new situations coming up so we ask for help from our community occasionally in the way of building supplies, monetary donations, and even just sharing our social media page and posts to help get the word out to more people. People can donate through our website as well if they’d like to help. There’s so many different ways you can help through our program. Monetarily is always appreciated. However, we do have an Amazon and a chewy Wish list if people would like to help purchase something specifically for the dogs in our program. We also have a merchandise store with some really cool dog themed items. Purchases in that merch store go directly back to the Dogs in our program. When someone is looking for a dog please send them our way!
(photos of the before and after of a fence that was repaired for a family so that they could keep their dog from escaping)
Brandie Jackson and her team can be reached here:
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