By Noozhawk | Special to Four-Legged Friends and More | May 21, 2025 1:28 pm |
Discover how C.A.R.E.4Paws is reshaping animal care through outreach, education, and life-saving resources
Our Four-Legged Friends and More is Back — and Better Than Ever! Noozhawk is thrilled to bring back this beloved special section, dedicated to celebrating the pets — and the people who love them. Whether they bark, purr, chirp, or slither, our furry, feathered, and scaly companions deserve the very best — and we’re here to showcase exactly that.
This fun and heartwarming edition spotlights the amazing local businesses, organizations, and experts committed to pet wellness across Santa Barbara County. From grooming and veterinary care to training, boarding, and pet-friendly services, this guide is your go-to resource for all things animal care.
In this issue, Noozhawk caught up with Julia Black, Marketing and Safe Haven Manager at C.A.R.E.4Paws, to learn more about their pet wellness services — and how they’re making tails wag all year long.
C.A.R.E.4Paws Q & A
Question: What is the name of your business or practice?
Answer: C.A.R.E.4Paws
Q: What is the mission behind your business?
A: C.A.R.E.4Paws is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with the mission to reduce pet overpopulation and improve pet family welfare.
Q: What types of animals does your business cater to?
A: Dogs and cats.
Q: Can you describe the services or products your business offers?
A: Since 2009, C.A.R.E.4Paws has supported pet families in need on the Central Coast, ensuring that dogs and cats stay healthy and with the people who love them.
We know that without access to care, including affordable veterinary services and pet food, many families are forced to make the difficult decision to relinquish their pets to a shelter.
Without the availability of free spays/neuters, many family pets produce unwanted litters, adding to our pet overpopulation problem.
The outcome? Overburdened shelters, animal suffering and heartbroken families.
C.A.R.E.4Paws intervenes in this cycle by providing a range of resources.
Our Mobile Community Medicine & Spay/Neuter Outreach program, C.A.R.E.4Paws’ largest service component, provides low-cost and free spays/neuters, medical care and vaccine clinics for pets in our two mobile units.
Our team is on the road four to five times per week throughout Santa Barbara County and San Luis Obispo (SLO) County, assisting pet families directly in the communities where they live.
Our mobile clinic program ensures that financial challenges, language barriers and lack of transportation don’t prevent dogs and cats from receiving the care that they need.
C.A.R.E.4Paws’ Companion Pet Assistance (CPA) program supports families with pet food, supplies, grooming, foster care and dog training, as resources allow. Through CPA, we co-operate several Pet Resource Centers in Santa Barbara County, where families in need can go to access free pet food and supplies and inquire about wellness services for their pets.
Jointly operated with key community partners, our resources centers provide a much-needed lifeline for many pet families. For example, it’s not unlikely to see 100 pet owners waiting in line to receive pet food on Tuesdays at our center in Lompoc, which we co-operate with Santa Barbara County Animal Services and Companion Animal Placement & Assistance.
Our Safe Haven program supports pet families exposed to domestic violence by providing temporary foster care or boarding for pets. We launched Safe Haven in 2020 in partnership with Domestic Violence Solutions for Santa Barbara County as we realized that so many domestic violence survivors either stay in an abusive relationship because of a beloved family pet, or they are forced to leave their pets behind, which leads to more suffering for the animals. Our program allows survivors to seek safety from abuse without having to fear for the well-being of their four-legged family members.
We also offer innovative humane education through Paws Up For Pets, showing youth how to be great pet caretakers and promoting kindness to all living beings from an early age.
Q: How long have you been in this industry?
A: 16 years
Q: What makes your business or practice unique?
A: C.A.R.E.4Paws is the only animal organization on the Central Coast that provides resources to families in need directly in the community. For example, we know that having access to veterinary care improves the lives of pets and their people.
Yet, for so many, gaining that access is difficult unless pet wellness services are brought directly to a family’s neighborhood. This is exactly what our Mobile Community Medicine & Spay/Neuter Outreach program does in Santa Barbara and SLO counties.
Since 2019, we have increased the number of mobile pet wellness services provided annually by more than 150%. In 2024 alone, we assisted 19,200 dogs and cats with services such as vaccines, flea treatment, spays/neuters, medical exams, bloodwork, mass removals, dental care, and treatment of skin, ear and eye problems.
Overall, C.A.R.E.4Paws keeps evolving to make sure we’re meeting the community’s needs. For instance, when the pandemic started, we began distributing several tons of pet food weekly, compared to two tons distributed total in a typical pre-pandemic year. Between the start of the pandemic through the spring of 2025, we have provided more than 6 million free pet meals.
C.A.R.E.4Paws also continues to expand our support for unhoused pet families along the Central Coast. We have created several critical partnerships over the last 12 months, including with Good Samaritan Shelter, 5Cities Homeless Coalition and Community Action Partnership (CAPSLO).
These three organizations provide services in the community and also operate transitional shelters that are now pet friendly—an important shift to support the unhoused, for whom pets are often a lifeline. Together with these partners, Street Dog Coalition and other collaborators, C.A.R.E.4Paws has stepped up our efforts to help pet families affected by riverbed clearings.
The fact that C.A.R.E.4Paws collaborates with so many other nonprofits and agencies—human- or pet-family related—makes us unique. We rely heavily on partnerships to expand our reach into communities that lack access to care.
The human-animal bond is so powerful, and we want to do all that we can to help preserve that bond. Thanks to C.A.R.E.4Paws’ boots-on-the-ground approach, we have a steady presence in the community, assisting pet families right where they live.
Q: What training, education and experience do you and your staff have? Do you hold any professional certifications?
A: We have a highly trained veterinary team that runs our Mobile Community Medicine & Spay/Neuter Outreach operations.
Overall, having operated C.A.R.E.4Paws for 16 years, our team has gained tremendous experience in the animal welfare industry and when it comes to working with pet families in need.
Still, we are adamant about always evolving our practices and protocols to better serve the community, and we encourage and pay for continued education for our staff.
Q: What is your level of expertise regarding pet health and behavior?
A: Our team has worked in the community since 2009 to help thousands of animals with a variety of services, including vaccine clinics, spaying and neutering, medical care, distribution of pet food, behavioral training and general support that keeps pet families strong and together through life’s challenges.
Q: How do you manage behavioral problems?
A: As part of our Companion Pet Assistance program, we offer free or low-cost dog behavioral training for low-income pet families to make sure dogs don’t end up in a shelter due to behavioral issues that owners cannot manage on their own. We also provide dog training tools and tips during many of our pet wellness clinic events.
Q: Are you currently accepting new clients?
A: C.A.R.E.4Paws is always here for pet families in need and continuously assists community members through all of our programs. Through our Mobile Community Medicine & Spay/Neuter Outreach program, we host regular walk-in Pet Wellness Clinics that are open to anyone in need of assistance of vaccines, flea treatment and other basic pet care.
When it comes to spays/neuters and medical care (reserved for families in need and by appointment), we get dozens of calls and emails every day so our schedule fills up fast. Still, we try our best to get pets booked as quickly as possible.
Our Pet Resource Centers are always open for those needing assistance with pet food and supplies. It’s important to note that C.A.R.E.4Paws isn’t designed to be someone’s regular or permanent veterinarian or pet-care provider.
Our goal is to support pet families going through a tough time. With that said, we do know that tough times can last for years and we absolutely do not want an animal to suffer if we can help the pet family through one of our programs.
Q: Can you name a few common reasons animals end up in your shelter?
A: Many pets end up homeless due to lack of resources to provide proper pet care, because of behavioral issues that are hard to manage, or due to pet overpopulation, issues that C.A.R.E.4Paws addresses with our free and low-cost services.
Lack of pet-friendly housing is another, huge problem that contributes to animals ending up in shelters. After COVID, we’ve also seen an influx of animals from other counties, and some of these animals are being relinquished to our shelters.
Sometimes pet families need help temporarily as they are going through a transition, whether it’s hospitalization, a move or rehab, for example. C.A.R.E.4Paws tries to assist whenever possible, but we need more funding and foster families to be able to help on a greater scale.
It is too large of an issue for one organization to tackle, especially as we don’t have a space to house animals. Our community as a whole needs to work together to come up with solutions that keep more pets out of shelters and with the people who love them.
Q: How do you help make your client feel at ease leaving their pet in your care?
A: We have a very kind and compassionate staff and volunteer team, and that goes a long way when it comes to making clients feel comfortable leaving their pets with us. It’s also important to let people know what to expect through the process and from the services they receive.
Q: Are you a nonprofit? Do you accept donations?
A: C.A.R.E.4Paws is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and we do accept donations.
Q: How do you keep the public informed about your business or service(s)?
A: We have an informative website and very active Facebook and Instagram pages. We also partner with dozens of other agencies and local businesses that help spread the word to those in need. For special events, we place ads, post flyers and send press releases to the media.
Q: What is the typical cost of your service(s) or product(s)? Do you offer any payment plans or discounts?
A: Our mobile clinic services are offered at very low-cost for low-income pet families. We also provide free clinic services for those who cannot afford to pay anything. Services through our other programs are typically offered for free.
Q: What are your hours of operation?
A: Since we don’t have a brick-and-mortar facility with regular opening hours, our organization operates a bit differently.
In terms of our mobile clinic services, our mobile units are in service four to five times per week throughout Santa Barbara County and three times a month in San Luis Obispo County.
Our clinic schedule is listed here. Pet families in need of help with clinic services can contact us through our clinic services page.
Community members with inquiries about other pet-care can email info@care4paws.org or call 805-968-2273.
Q: What is one fun fact about your business?
A: Our founders are all former shelter volunteers, but C.A.R.E.4Paws is not a shelter or rescue group. We are here to prevent animals from ending up homeless by providing critical resources to pet families in need in the community. Our goal is to keep pets healthy and with the people who love them.
Q: Is there anything you would like to tell our readers that was not mentioned above?
A: We’re fundraising for a critical expansion of C.A.R.E.4Paws’ Safe Haven program, which assists pet families exposed to domestic violence. The new, innovative project, titled Creekside Pet Refuge, involves the construction of seven large dog kennels and an adjacent, 40-foot exercise yard at Creekside Pet Boarding in Arroyo Grande.
These kennels will house dogs of domestic violence survivors sheltered at our main Safe Haven partner, Domestic Violence Solutions for Santa Barbara County (DVS). We also hope to expand Safe Haven to help DV survivors in San Luis Obispo County.
This safety-net is significant and necessary. Reports show that 70% of women exiting abusive relationships have pets, and that as many as 48% of women stay in the violent relationship because of fear for their pet’s safety. On average, survivors stay two years longer when a family pet is involved. Having access to immediate boarding is critical when it comes to helping Safe Haven clients.
Also, as both regular and emergency vet care gets more and more expensive, C.A.R.E.4Paws is receiving more requests than ever from people who cannot afford the critical or lifesaving care their pets need.
We know that many pets will not be seen at a vet clinic unless their families receive financial assistance and so for the cats and dogs that cannot be accommodated in our mobile clinics due to the scope of care needed, we have created the Albus Fund alongside two generous animal lovers in Santa Barbara. Thanks to the Albus Fund, we can send clients in need of urgent care to one of our 25-plus vet clinic partners on the Central Coast.
In 2024 alone, the Albus Fund spent more than $100,000 to assist clients at our clinic partners. We encourage the community to help support our Albus Fund so that we can continue to prevent suffering and save lives.
Additionally, C.A.R.E.4Paws has entered our second year of a grant partnership with PetSmart Charities to improve access to veterinary care in Oceano. The grant allows us to provide free services to the pets of Oceano residents, who have chronically been without access to veterinary care of any kind.
This long-term commitment also allows us to provide free pet food through our partnership with SLO Food Bank and 5Cities Homeless Coalition and to begin to examine ways to offer deeply discounted prices to low-income community members in neighboring towns.