Freedom to Ride — How One Boy Made it His Mission to See Dogs in Homes, not Cages
In an article published on July 11, 2023, The Zebra reported an alarming statistic: On average, every year in the United States, 1.5 million shelter animals are euthanized, approximately 670,000 dogs and 860,000 cats. The primary reason? The shelters are simply too full.[1]
On March 1, 2023, Veterinarians.org released an article relating statistics from a 2021 report on animal shelters that provided shocking statistics on the nation’s animal shelters and their euthanasian rates. While Mississippi topped the list with the highest percentage of animals being euthanized, it was Texas that had the highest number for animals being euthanized, a whopping 61,245 in 2021.[2]
In 2015, a four-year-old boy in Texas learned that not all dogs leave shelters alive. This broke the heart of the little boy and his mother, who made it their mission to get as many dogs as possible adopted. He and his mom would go into their local shelter and make videos with the little boy describing the dogs and showing their potential to be great pets. Within months of their first video being published online, Roman McConn and his mission to save shelter dogs went viral.
And Project Freedom Ride (PFR) was born.
