Back to Stories & News

November 2, 2020 – Snuggles, sloppy kisses, nudges, purrs and that “let’s play” look of enthusiasm.

At Morris Animal Foundation, we’re making sure you get an abundance of these precious moments by funding animal health studies to keep your pets and wildlife around the world happy and healthy.

And, thanks to our Board of Trustees (who are donors and animal lovers like you!), from now through the end of the year, all charitable gifts to the Foundation will be matched dollar for dollar, up to $200,000. Your gift will help support even more health research, so we can help give you more years and snuggles with your best friends.

Here are just a few of the projects our funded researchers are working on to make that happen:

PERSONALIZED HEALTH

Personalized chemotherapy treatments with the hope of improving survival and quality of life for dogs diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma and other cancers.

LIFE-SAVING VACCINES

An oral vaccine against feline enteric coronavirus to prevent its deadly mutated form, feline infectious peritonitis. FIP is uniformly fatal in kittens and young cats and more common in multi-cat environments, including shelters.

VISION PROTECTION

Risk factors for equine recurrent uveitis, a common eye condition and leading cause of blindness in horses. This is the first step toward creating screening tests for earlier diagnosis and intervention to decrease ERU-associated blindness in high-risk breeds.

HEART HEALTH

Improved management and prevention of mitral valve disease by identifying genetic mutations associated with this common heart condition in small-breed dogs. MVD is believed to comprise about 75% of the cardiac cases seen by veterinarians.

BETTER IMAGING

An economical, rapid-imaging method to see if cancer cells are left behind following surgical removal of sarcomas in cats and dogs. Clean surgical margins are associated with decreased tumor recurrence rates and increased survival.

PAIN-FREE JOINTS

Novel gene therapy (reprogramming of cells already present in the body through the transfer of genes) to treat osteoarthritis, a chronic, progressive and painful joint disease in pets.

VIRAL DISCOVERY

Blood tests to diagnose a recently discovered hepadnavirus, a pathogen suspected to cause liver disease in cats, including liver cancer and chronic hepatitis.

HOW YOU CAN HELP THIS GIVING SEASON

Thanks to your generosity, we are actively supporting more than 150 animal health studies totaling $14+ million in funding. But with so many different health problems and species to help, there’s still so much more we need do.

This holiday season, while our animals share their gifts of kisses, snuggles and love, let’s not forget to return the favor and give them the best gift ever – the gift of health. Help us fund even more health studies with our holiday match and keep the wagging, rolling and frolicking coming for years to come.