Little Olivia was found in a warehouse district and brought to PETA by a distraught worker. She needed round-the-clock veterinary care to treat an infection that almost left her blind, anemia so severe that she was a candidate for a blood transfusion, and advanced malnutrition. Soon, Olivia slowly started to regain her strength. She had clearly been someone's companion since she was spayed and declawed, but she wound up wandering about by herself and no one knew why. PETA ran ads, but no one responded to them or to the "found animal" reports that we filed or to our fliers. Her background remains a mystery. 

Despite everything that she had endured, Olivia still loved humans, especially the devoted PETA fieldworker who spent the night on the floor with her the first few nights of her sojourn with us. We wanted to make sure that her gentle spirit and seemingly endless desire for affection would never be taken for granted again. Even though we placed Olivia's picture and an appeal to adopt her on the front page of PETA's website, alerted our members and supporters through Facebook, and put fliers around town, we didn't find a suitable adopter. Luckily, a PETA staffer who had taken her in to foster decided that the precious cat should stay. She loves her feline brother, Clyde, who is also a PETA rescue. 

Although some people can pay top dollar for a Yorkshire terrier, that doesn't always mean that the little dog will have a great home. And poor Benny certainly didn't. PETA found him dodging traffic on a dangerous street and took him to our headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia. He had a collar but no tags or microchip, and again, although we filed reports and posted fliers and ads, no one bothered to claim him.

Even though Yorkies are popular, Benny had been through enough, and not just anyone who wanted a cute tiny dog would make a suitable adopter. It took a lot of looking for a home, but thanks to a local vet clinic, PETA found a retired couple who had just had to euthanize one of their two Yorkies because of old age and failing health. When we visited with the family at their home, they fit Benny to a T, and Benny is now helping the other dog stop grieving.

It isn't easy to find decent, lasting homes for animals—not just homes where they will be sheltered, fed, walked, and sometimes petted but homes where animals are respected members of the family. Every animal deserves companionship, excellent vet care, playtime, fun outings to the park or beach (for dogs), and a peaceful, painless release when their lives have come to an end. PETA won't compromise our standards and send an animal into a substandard home just to make our adoption rates look good.

So, can you help? We are now searching for the perfect home for Bea. She was found wandering the streets, and although she is in good health and thus likely hasn't been on her own for long, no one seems to want to claim her. 

Bea is a calm, sweet beagle-Chihuahua mix who weighs about 25 pounds. She is young and housetrained. She gets along well with children and other dogs and would be happiest with someone who is often home. She is irresistible. 

If you think that your family is the perfect adoptive family for Bea and you would like to help with our next success story, please e-mail us at Adopt@peta.org.

Back in February, PETA sent out a news release about the number of sick, injured, elderly, and otherwise unadoptable animals we had to euthanize during the previous year. PETA openly publishes these figures every single year and simultaneously calls on the government and citizens to help promote anti-chaining ordinances (many of the dogs our caseworkers encounter are aggressive or horrifically neglected after having been chained outside for their entire lives), to help reduce the cost of euthanasia of old and ill animals who belong to people with a low income (these account for many of the animals PETA helps), and to implement sterilization programs and laws to reduce the homeless-animal crisis.

In other words, old news is now being regurgitated with a vindictive spin by—among others—a front group for Philip Morris, Outback Steakhouse, KFC, cattle ranchers, and other animal exploiters that kill millions of animals every year—and which do so not out of compassion but out of greed. Before falling prey to the hysteria, please have a look at BermanExposed.org and ConsumerDeception.com.

PETA's statistics are also often used, as they are being used now, in a truly perverted way by some "no-kill" evangelists to try to turn people away from the "evil" of what is actually a dignified, merciful release from suffering. They never give a complete picture, and they always use inflammatory language and labels like "puppies" and "kittens," even if the animal was a 17-year-old dog who was unable to breathe properly because of a heart condition. Such people are sure that if you shuffle enough animals around from shelters to hoarders' basements or just throw stones at shelter workers and call them "psycho" and so on, people will join their number. But they offer no realistic solution to the multiple tragic problems associated with easily acquired and easily discarded "pets."

Anyone who reads our website or receives our newsletters, in which we discuss this issue regularly, knows that PETA has a division that does hands-on work with animals. We run a shelter but in the most merciful way. We help—because no one else will—the animals who are society's rejects in the area near our Virginia headquarters. These animals are aggressive, feral, on death's door (often with large tumors hanging from their bodies), or otherwise unadoptable. We have published many blog posts about our caseworkers' heartbreaking work over the years, and more information can be found at PETASaves.com. 

It's important to note that the figures used by anti-PETA campaigners are deliberately chosen because they are just the euthanasia figures. They do not include perspective—i.e., the more than 10,000 dogs and cats PETA provided with no-cost to low-cost spay and neuter surgeries and other veterinary services in the last 12 months alone, the hundreds of animals delivered to large high-traffic shelter facilities for adoption, the counseling and aid services that PETA provides in order to enable people to keep and properly care for their animals, and the animals we have put up for adoption, like the cat currently featured on our website, whom we nursed back to (almost) good health and who is still seeking a permanent home.

The "no-kill" shelters in the area surrounding PETA's headquarters, like many such places that sing the "no-kill" refrain for fundraising purposes, actually not only refuse admission to animals (because they are constantly "too full") and reject dogs and cats who are injured, sick, or dying but also refer these "undesirable" animals to PETA, which bears the veterinary or euthanasia costs. For more information on this topic, visit PETASaves.com.

People who are shocked to learn how many healthy or adoptable animals have to be euthanized annually or are questioning PETA's euthanasia record should ask themselves if they are spaying and neutering their own animal companions, helping people with a low income "fix" theirs, adopting from shelters instead of buying from breeders and pet stores, funding education campaigns about proper animal care and adoption (among other things), and demanding higher animal-protection standards in their own communities. They should also look carefully at the photographs of the animals who come out of the impoverished areas that PETA serves. Of course, they should definitely not be eating or wearing animals or their skins, using products tested on animals (who are usually killed at the end of the tests), or engaging in any activity that results in killing animals not out of mercy but for selfish reasons.

PETA is proud to continue to stand tall and roll up its sleeves to help animals. 

When people talk about PETA's euthanasia statistics, those aren't just abstract figures to me—my dog was one of those animals. Kodah, aka "Bug," was technically "taken into custody and euthanized within 24 hours." It was more like euthanized in minutes. That's because she was dying.

Kodah-Bug was diagnosed with cancer on a Friday and went downhill quickly. By 1 a.m. the next night, she was suffering, struggling to breathe. I called PETA, and without a moment's hesitation, someone met me at the building in the wee hours of the morning. The PETA staffers who are certified to perform euthanasia are the most caring, compassionate, gentle people I know. My sweet girl deserved the most peaceful and painless end possible. She found it at PETA.

Almost a year after Kodah's passing, a PETA worker found a dog running loose on the streets. She was a starving, terrified stray who had to be lured with food morsels over the course of several hours. I fostered Emma for several months, getting the word out by putting up fliers, posting her picture on social media, and blogging about her and her need for a good home. No takers. Luckily for her (and me), I was in a position to adopt her. What would have happened to Emma had PETA not rescued her?

PETA's euthanasia numbers are decried by "no-kill" fanatics and others in order to upset people. But behind those numbers, there are animals who need help, and they wouldn't get it elsewhere. No one seems to talk about the much higher numbers of animals helped by PETA's spay-and-neuter program—PETA has sterilized more than 90,000 animals for free or at a fraction of a standard vet's office fee since 2001, preventing millions of animals from being born into a world already overflowing with homeless ones. But those numbers aren't as "sexy." "PETA Saves Countless Dogs and Cats From Abandonment, Abuse, and Neglect" just doesn't have quite the same shock value.

Unfortunately, PETA's mobile spay-and-neuter clinics can't get to all the animals in need, and there just aren't enough good homes out there for the millions of animals who need them. The shelters are full, and people keep buying from breeders or giving up their animals when their lives change.

If you're angry about euthanasia, volunteer at an animal shelter or donate to PETA's spay-and-neuter efforts—go out and do something. No one should point fingers and complain because everyone is needed to do something good, to take action and make a difference.

Written by Kristen Stine

When it comes to helping animals, patience and persistence are often key, as was the case with these emaciated horses in Wisconsin. PETA learned about the animals' plight from a concerned person who had already convinced the sheriff's department to monitor their condition, even though the officers said that they could not seize the horses.

PETA's Cruelty Investigations Department exhorted law enforcement to try to reason with the owners—and it worked. The owners agreed to surrender custody of the horses, admitting that they didn't have enough money to care for them. The recovering equines now have plenty to eat and are safe on a wonderful farm.

So please never give up on assisting animals in jeopardy, even if you're told that no laws are being broken. Maybe you just have to connect with the one officer who is willing to go above and beyond the call of duty—but what matters is that help arrives in time.

Although March was notable for its extreme weather and bracket-busting basketball, PETA's Mobile Clinics Division spent the month setting a much more important record—performing the most spay/neuter surgeries in any single month since the program began.

We sterilized a record-breaking 582 females and 477 males in March, for a grand total of 1,059 animals! Here are some of our "March Gladness" clients:

1. 

Coco is one of five female dogs living at a low-income trailer park who were spayed during March. The dogs' guardians were extremely grateful for the service and offered to donate something toward the cost, although as one said, "We are all poor people here."

2. 

Alazae developed a physical condition that required surgery, so her guardian opted to spay her instead of breeding her as he had planned to do.

3. 

Sprucie's guardians don't have much money, but they want what's best for her!

4. 

Zola had already had several litters, but she won't be giving birth to any more puppies who then take homes away from dogs in animal shelters.

By preventing tens of thousands—or even hundreds of thousands—of births in just a few years, our mobile clinics' achievement will continue to offer cause for celebration long after Dunk City alums are teaching their grandkids how to alley-oop.

To help PETA continue to break records and save animals' lives, become a member today! 

Poor little Olivia was a 5-pound skeleton with fur when a man found her wandering outside the warehouse where he works, just a few miles from PETA's headquarters at the Sam Simon Center in Norfolk, Virginia. She was suffering from an apparent sinus infection, which had caused her cheeks to balloon to the point that her eyes were just slits and she could barely see. On top of that, she was so weakened and anemic from prolonged, severe malnutrition that she was only a day or two away from needing a blood transfusion.

PETA rushed her to a veterinarian, and with round-the-clock care, she beat the odds and pulled through. She's now recuperating at PETA's Sam Simon Center, where she is already feeling well enough to display a natural aptitude for the Cat Charmer.

If you are interested in opening your home to a feline companion, Olivia comes highly recommended: PETA staffers bill her as a 3- to 4-year-old sweetie pie who gets along well with other friendly cats. No one claimed Olivia through the lost-and-found report that we filed, even though she obviously once had a home (she has been spayed and declawed), and she will be vaccinated and microchipped before she is adopted out.

Does Olivia sound like she could be your new best friend? Send an e-mail to Adopt@peta.org to find out more or to fill out an adoption application.

We can now add Suffolk, Virginia, to the growing list of cities that recognize that dogs deserve better than life on a chain—something that PETA has been advocating for a long time.

In January, when Suffolk Council Member Mike Duman initially proposed a tethering ban, he met with resistance. But two short months later, the council voted to ban chaining completely. How did this reversal occur?

PETA wrote to council members and got our friend the comedian Wanda Sykes, who is from Virginia, to do the same. Daphna Nachminovitch, our vice president of cruelty investigations, raised awareness about the issue by writing a blog for a local website.

And we asked Alice Conner to share with the council the story of her 2-year-old cousin who was killed by dogs in Suffolk who became aggressive after being chained for years.

Local PETA members and residents also weighed in. And our message got through loud and clear.

PETA's Community Animal Project staff members receive more calls about abused and neglected chained dogs in Suffolk than in any other area surrounding the Sam Simon Center, our Virginia headquarters. As of September 1, 2013, Suffolk residents who do this to their dogs will face fines!

We thank Mike Duman, Alice Conner, Wanda Sykes, and all the other compassionate people who helped make the Suffolk tethering ban a reality. Now, with the help of Sykes and actor Patton Oswalt, we are working with Newport News, one of the two remaining cities in the region that still don't restrict or ban chaining, to improve living conditions for its dog population.

If you would like to help get a chaining ban passed in your hometown, we offer a wealth of resources. 

If you've ever wondered why we have a dog and cat overpopulation crisis, which is so bad that 6 to 8 million "pets" enter animal shelters every year—and that's not even counting the millions of strays who never make it to shelters—look no further than Halley. This mother dog was left to survive as best she could after her owners moved away and left her behind like an unwanted sofa on the curb.

Halley miraculously managed to survive by herself for several months until a passerby called PETA to report having seen her roaming the streets. She appeared to be nursing puppies, but neighbors who had heard the puppies crying weeks earlier hadn't heard a peep out of them in nearly a month. We feared the worst.

Our cruelty caseworker advised the passerby to set up a feeding station for Halley at a vacant home in order to discourage her from straying further away, and we got in touch with local members of Unchain Oklahoma, who set about trying to trap the skittish dog. When they arrived at the property to set up a humane box trap, they found the puppies hiding under the house.

The little ones were whisked off to a veterinarian. After several days, the volunteers managed to trap Halley, and she was spayed and reunited with her pups. The family—minus two puppies who have already been adopted—is being boarded while permanent homes can be found. (You can see more photos of them on Unchain Oklahoma's Facebook page.)

If you suspect that an animal has been abandoned or is being neglected or abused, please err on the side of compassion. Always call authorities. If you're mistaken, the worst that can happen is that you'll put a few more miles on an officer's odometer. And if the authorities don't respond, contact PETA.

Pelusa's guardian was frantic. The little cat had darted up a tree in Patillas, Puerto Rico, after being frightened by dogs and had been trapped there for nearly a week. Because the young cat was so high up—about 35 feet—her guardian couldn't get her down on her own. The cat was clearly too scared to come down herself, so her guardian appealed to the local fire-and-rescue department for help—but nothing was happening.

Glen Venezio with Animal Concerns Puerto Rico put pressure on fire-and-rescue officials and persuaded them to act. But by the time that they finally arrived on the scene, a local 17-year-old boy who is an expert climber had scaled the tree and managed to carry Pelusa down by himself after carefully placing her in a sack.

A PETA cruelty caseworker then coordinated with another local activist to arrange for Pelusa to be taken to a veterinarian to get a checkup and, after recovering her strength, an all-important spay surgery. She's now "fixed" and back at home with her grateful guardian.

Pelusa's close call serves as a reminder of why cats are always safest indoors—and why you should never give up when an animal is in peril. You might have to make several calls before you obtain results, but don't give up!

The little dachshund was allowed to roam, and that's what he was doing when he probably got attacked by another dog, sustaining an eye injury that became painfully abscessed and swollen. Untreated, Slim's infected eye bulged grotesquely out of its socket.

When PETA learned about Slim, we pressured local animal control officials to compel the owner to get veterinary care for the suffering dog. The owner made a vet appointment, but the cost of the recommended surgery was beyond his means. When animal control told the owner that his only two options were to get Slim the surgery that he desperately needed or to surrender him to people who would, the owner relinquished him.

Within 72 hours, Slim had the surgery. Now, he is on the mend in a foster home, and as he awaits adoption, he is finally receiving the loving care and attention that every dog deserves.