Coats For Canines was co-founded by Brenda Collier and Bonnie
Tamres-Moore in the winter of 2018. As it became cold and rainy
in Austin, Texas, we saw so many homeless people with their
dogs at street corners, and in homeless camps in Austin. The
dogs had no protection from the cold and rain. As dog owners and
animal lovers ourselves, we couldn’t look away. We decided to
act.
With only a few volunteers, we started gathering and handing out
coats and food to furry companions of the homeless on the street
corners, homeless camps, and at churches that feed the
homeless population in Austin.
In only a couple of months we had already handed out more than
500 coats and hundreds of pounds of dog and cat food.
Through that experience we learned that the need to help the
companions to the homeless was deep, wide, and completely
unserved in Austin. So, we formalized Coats For Canines, and in
early 2019 we became a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
We are now partnering with Sunrise Church, a faith organization
that provides services to Austin’s homeless and Mobile Loaves
and Fishes, Austin’s largest provider of food to Austin’s homeless
population.