About Us
Tara’s House is a private, nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization. Our mission is to rescue and provide care and compassion for our pets while working to place them in permanent, loving homes. The pets we rescue arrive at Tara's House from rural, high kill shelters with little to no funding for their own adoption programs. These shelters rely on Tara's House and other rescues to save these adoptable pets from certain euthanasia. It is a sad fact - pets find their way to shelters through no fault of their own. Today, many are innocent victims of the current financial crisis; families simply cannot afford to keep them. We believe in giving these shelter pets a second chance. At Tara's House, we provide our pets with the vet care and love that they need to thrive. We then help them find "forever" homes. We receive no government funding; we operate solely on private donations and volunteer efforts. With over 11 million pets euthanized in the United States each year, our team of volunteers is dedicated to helping those pets that we can, and to making a positive impact in the life of each pet we rescue. Please - opt to adopt!
Tara's House Operations:
Tara's House is a 'virtual' animal rescue, meaning we do not have a brick and mortar shelter available for public visitation, or that houses our dogs. Instead, we are a network of volunteers who allow our rescued dogs to live with us in foster care until they are adopted. We harness the full power of the Internet to adopt dogs by using email for correspondences (we do not accept phone calls or return general inquiry phone calls), and accept only online adoption applications. We do, however, hold monthly adoption shows, the location of which is advertised in our calendar and upcoming events page. Operating as a virtual shelter allows us to run lean operations and put a higher percentage of adoption fees and received donations toward the care of the dogs we pull from high-kill shelters.
What does this mean for you? Well, it means we will primarily correspond with you via emails to answer your questions and take you through the adoption process. You will need to submit your Adoption Application online. Please do not expect or request phone calls for general inquiries or questions; we will call applications accepted by our Adoption Committee for a telephone interview, but all other communications will be email-based. We thank you for understanding our operations and helping us to run a lean organization so we can save more dogs and make them available for adoption in the Washington, DC Metro Area.
Our Adoption Area:
We adopt to the entire Metro Washington, DC/Baltimore Area including: DC, Montgomery County, Howard County, Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, Baltimore City, and the areas of and surrounding Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Reston and Woodbridge, VA. Additionally, we will adopt to those from the Harrisburg PA Metro Area.. We limit our adoption area to uphold the highest quality adoption process, and honor our lifetime commitment to our dogs. We expend many resources to rescue and adopt dogs to deserving families, therefore we like to stay in contact with adopters for the life of the pet.