THROUGH THE EYES OF A PUG…
PAWS-Bhm was formed when a 2 year old pug named Berkley found her forever home and BFF named Brandon.
Together, they love making a PAWSITIVE difference in the world and helping shelter pets in the Birmingham-metro area of Alabama!
That’s the story in a nutshell! But for those who want to know a few more details, please keep reading below for a message from Berkley’s Human, Brandon!
Hi, Everyone!
I’m Brandon, and I’m so glad you’ve found our site! I would love for you to join me and Miss Berkley in our PAWS mission of PROMOTING ANIMAL WELLNESS in SHELTERS within the Greater Birmingham area of Alabama!
As you can see, Miss Berkley is our mascot and loves supporting this cause – she has posed for a LOT of PAWS pictures since joining our family in 2019!
But my love for shelter pets actually dates back to my earliest memories of my best friends, Jimmie Dean and Trudie, who my parents adopted from a local shelter before I was born.
My very first fundraiser for a local shelter was serving alongside neighborhood friends in kindergarten when my classmate hosted a donation drive – that’s Jimmie Dean and Trudie joining the fun with us, front and center!
Sadly, both Jimmie Dean and Trudie crossed the Rainbow Bridge while I was in elementary school – first Jimmie Dean due to canine diabetes, then eventually Trudie due to canine cancer.
Losing my best friends is part of what lead me to volunteer to help local animal shelters since I wanted to find a way to honor them. I began volunteering in 2019 when I was in 5th grade, and have served in a variety of ways at two of Birmingham’s largest shelters over the years – working as Paper Pal on-site, hosting donation drives, spending time with animals, working as a Critter Camp counselor, etc.
As the years have passed, I’ve come to see how many people want to help our local shelters, and I’m so thankful to be a part of our shared mission. For me personally, this website – and the PAWS-BHM mission – is all about helping people see how easy it is to support our local shelters. I want people to see that some of our shelter’s most urgent needs are very easy to provide – it can be as simple as saving your free community newspaper, or setting aside old towels that you’ve recently replaced. It can even be as simple as saving the cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels, which can be used by the shelter to make enrichment toys! Or donating a ripped, stained t-shirt that’s no longer useful as a shirt, but can be upcycled through our “Crafting for Critters” program into a braided rope toy to enrich the lives of shelter animals during playtime!
I hope you’ll join me in this endeavor and follow along as Berkley and I continue to spread the word! Most of all, we’re hopeful that as more and more people see how easy it is to support our local shelters, perhaps something as simple as the gift of a few old towels will eventually lead to a new bond…
Perhaps someone who never really understood the shelter’s mission will begin to feel invested as a new partner with our local shelters…
And perhaps beyond that, when the time is right, when someone is ready to add to their family, they’ll know exactly where to go!
Because they’ve already been building a bond, an investment, in small ways…
And who knows? It might have all started with a stack of old towels…
PAWS - BHM 