The Port Washington-based North Shore Animal League is giving people across the U.S an opportunity to save a dog or cat with a nationwide adoption event, Tour For Life.

New Yorkers will have the chance to adopt their very own puppy or kitten at the Tour For Life stop in Manhattan as North Shore goes across the country to find homes for puppies and kittens. Even though the closest tour stop to Long Island will be in Manhattan, Long Islanders can go down to Port Washington to pick up their dog or cat.

This year’s version of the Tour For Life started on March 11th when the North Shore Animal League America used one of their four mobile rescue and adoption units to travel to Atlanta, Georgia for the beginning of their Southeastern United States tour.

Operation Manager, Matt Carroll holding a puppy. LIR Photo Credit: Devin Martin.

The Port Washington based animal adoption agency is using four different mobile units to simultaneously travel across the U.S. to cover 19,000 miles and to stop in 40 different cities, including New York City, Los Angeles Chicago and a total of 25 different states for the animal life-saving nationwide adoption tour for dogs and cats.

The Tour for Life covers four different areas. Tour 1 goes to the southeast region of the country, Tour 2 goes to the central region, Tour 3 goes to the western region and Tour 4 which goes through the northeast region.

North Shore Operation Manager Matt Carroll says that in each of the 40 cities, North Shore Animal League visits there is a major big event.

“We normally have a couple shelters from the community involved,” Carroll said. “We take our mobile units and we get all the animals and we bring them all on there. We bring them to a fun location like a park or a Pets Smart and we hold activities and we get their animals adopted.”

The Tour for Life buses that transport the pets for adoption. LIR Photo Credit: Devin Martin.

There are two main goals for the Tour for Life. The first goal is to help out the smaller local shelters that are joining up with North Shore. Carroll says that there is not enough awareness of the existence of the other smaller animal shelters. “Getting the public to go to their shelters that is the issue,”he said. “Because they don’t have the resources that we do. It’s a small market , they already have the animals and now we have to raise awareness for the public to come down or to meet us at the different locations.”

The second goal is to get around 3,000 adoptions by the end of the tour.

Carroll says that each Tour Stop so far has been successful in raising awareness of the small animal shelters.

“Its amazing, the smaller shelters are very appreciative and we get calls from new shelters every day that want to be a part of the Tour because of how much it helps,” Carroll said. They’re amazing to work with, we really appreciate them.”

The North Shore Animal League hopes to  have 3,000 animals adopted by the end of the tour and they have been on target to reach that mark. According to Carroll, North Shore is “running on goal right now, we are trying to hit 3,000 adoptions this year and we have a lot of big weekend events like the one in Abilene, Texas, in the event we did there last year, we did over 300 adoptions in just one weekend so that’s coming up very soon and we are very excited about it.”

“If a person adopts from North Shore, we want to make sure we book the process of fitting the animal to the right person,” Carroll said.”We just make sure we have the right fit, that’s most important for us. If we know they are not the right fit, we will make sure that we will find something that works for them.”

A Rachel Ray sponsored tour bus. LIR Photo Credit: Devin Martin.