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Manny Law Adoption Center

The Homeward Trails Adoption Center opened in November 2013 allowing us to greatly increase the number of dogs we could rescue. Since we opened our doors more than 8,000 dogs have passed through the Adoption Center.

adoption-center

The Adoption Center, located at 11118 Fairfax Station Road, Fairfax Station, VA offers dogs needing extra socialization, additional confidence and extra time to get ready for adoption a safe and structured place. The dogs receive one-on-one and group training, playdates, and quiet time with our staff and volunteers.

We offer fun programs like Tails Out, which allows volunteers to take dogs for daytime or overnight field trips. We offer Peace Out Time in our Peace Out Rooms, special rooms in the Center Community Building complete with futons, chairs, televisions, desks, rugs, soft lighting and anything a human and dog need to “chill”. Volunteers can sign up to bring a book, study, meditate, watch television or just hang out with a dog who needs some time and space to decompress.

The facility is overseen by a full-time manager, behavioral and support staff who care for more than 50 dogs at any given time. The Adoption Center is open to the public on Saturday and Sunday from 10 AM – 4 PM and weekdays by appointment.

About the naming of the Homeward Trails Manny Law Adoption Center

In 2022 the Adoption Center was renamed the Homeward Trails Manny Law Adoption Center. Manny Law was a skateboarder from Falls Church, Virginia who unexpectedly passed away from congenital heart failure in 2015 at the age of 24.

At the time of his passing, Manny was a student at Northern Virginia Community College where he was completing a degree in architectural landscaping. As an avid environmentalist, Manny had planned to apply his knowledge to the protection of the environment and the maintenance of habitats for wildlife. Manny’s passion for skateboarding, coupled with his personal warmth, his genuine care and concern for others, and his natural charm and charisma, allowed him to build strong and lasting friendships throughout the DC metro area and beyond. Manny was survived by many of his family, friends, and two dogs, Gremlin and Yesca.

The re-naming of the adoption center was commissioned by Fido Group, a skateboarder-owned dog walking company in Upper NW DC whose owner, Chris Bota, was friends with Manny. Aside from providing in-home pet care services to 120 Upper NW DC families and their dogs, Fido Group holds valuable corporate partnerships with animal welfare organizations like Homeward Trails to directly impact the state of animal welfare at the ground level and pay it forward to the rescued cats and dogs Fido Group serves. With the re-naming of the facility, Chris has become more active in the organization and has been tasked with the role of Director of Business Development at the Manny Law Adoption Center.

Chris leveraged his business to generate resources and awareness about the new Manny Law Adoption Center through something Manny loved: a skateboard.

Fido Group produced a limited supply of Manny Law Adoption Center skateboards and partnered with Crushed Skate Shop in Washington DC to make the boards available for purchase both domestically and internationally.

One hundred percent of the net proceeds from each Manny Law Adoption Center skateboard sale directly benefit homeless cats and dogs at Homeward Trails in Manny’s honor.

Adoption Center sponsors

We Could Not Do It Without Them

The Adoption Center is proudly supported by the Petco Love

Adoption Center

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More News from the Trail!

  • Saving 200 Lives – Our Biggest Event Ever!

    We are SAVING 200 LIVES THIS WEEK!!  Our biggest event ever! This time next week we have TWO Trails UP teams hitting the roads to save lives in this unprecedented effort! And we need your support to make it happen. We are sooo excited!! And to make it more fun for everyone, this effort is part of our Quarterly Raffle. For each $100 donor, we pick one winner at random to win a $350 Amazon gift card, a custom dog or cat goody basket and 2 free tickets to our Chili Bingo event in the fall – winner to be chosen as soon as we meet our $ goal. 120 DOGS WILL BE STERILIZED….. “I love this dog that wandered up to my house. But I’ve got a female dog inside and this dog is not neutered. The cost of getting him neutered is more than I can afford. But I hate to take him to the shelter. So for now I have to keep him chained up. If I can get him neutered and vaccinated then he can live indoors with us. I would love for him to be a real part of our family.” – Mr. Jenkell For the first time ever, Homeward Trails has organized a 120-dog spay/neuter event in Galax, VA, one of our most favorite Trails UP communities. We will be traveling to Galax where we have been working for months to secure 120 dogs who desperately need neutered, vaccinated and microchipped. These animals are loved but have owners who simply cannot afford their surgery. Without this event many would face becoming pregnant and ending up in the local shelter with puppies. Or possibly facing a life on a chain. This is no way for a family to live.  As much of our Trails UP spay/neuter efforts have focused on cats due transport options and surgical availability, our hearts have been hurting as we see the shelters filling up with dogs & puppies and so many people desperately wanting to get their dogs neutered. And so we have been working overtime to put together this major event. We will be partnering with several groups to bring a mobile unit to Galax and bring these lifesaving and lifechanging services to these dogs. We cannot WAIT. Every dog will be neutered, vaccinated and microchipped. And we hope to send all home with dog food, flea/tick meds and for those who need it – a dog house! The cost to us for this event comes to $120/dog  – as we are providing these services totally free to the community. PLEASE consider sponsoring a dog for this event and allowing us to truly change the life of a dog and the people who love him/her. A donation of any amount will truly make a difference! 80 CATS WILL BE STERILIZED The second half of our Trails UP team will be heading to Buchanan County to do free spay/neuter and Trap-Neuter-Return for 80 cats. The number of cat lives that will be saved from preventing unwanted kittens is often totally hard to digest. It’s HUGE. Just last month, we spayed almost 25 early pregnant cats – you can see how many lives that saved through prevention. It also means the world to the human caretakers of these kitties who so often struggle to feed their own families let alone the dozens of cats they care for. We will spend 5 days in the field working with community members in this very under-resourced communities. We will set traps in trailer parks, in yards and barns, on decks and in gardens – wherever we can – to get 80 cats sterilized, vaccinated and microchipped.    This will require not only 36 hours of trapping but more than 10 additional hours of driving to and from our surgical clinic. Our van will be loaded up with 80 cats (the very most we can fit) to make the 3.5 hour one-way trip to the surgical center. This is a huge undertaking each time we do it. But with no affordable large-scale spay/neuter clinics close by, we take what we can get. Our team is so dedicated! And so over a short period of just 5 days, we will sterilize, vaccinate and microchip 200 animals in two separate but equally under-resourced communities. And we are SO EXCITED. Please sponsor a dog or cat at just $100 and you can be a winner of a $350 Amazon gift card, a custom dog or cat goody basket and 2 free tickets to our Chili Bingo event in the fall – winner to be chosen as soon as we meet our $ goal.