Celebrate the Grand Opening of Pup Culture’s New Space This Weekend

Good news: The sun is shining, we’ve reached the weekend, and you’re invited to a party. Not any party, either — a party with free food from Raising Cane’s, a saxophone jam, a Katie Kimmel booth, kombucha, raffles, and a bunch of adorable dogs waiting for adoption.

This Saturday, June 1, Pup Culture Rescue is hosting a grand opening celebration for their new space in Pasadena, California. The celebration is from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. at 404 N Lake Ave. in Pasadena, California.

All about Pup Culture

Since 2021, Pup Culture Rescue, founded by author Victoria Lily Shaffer and vet tech Riley O’Day, has been helping dogs in the Los Angeles area find forever homes. The organization has hosted creative awareness-raising events like pet portrait tattoo days, fundraising sing-alongs, and pop-up meet-and-greets — and helped get countless pups adopted.

But until now, the entirely foster-based organization was without a brick-and-mortar location — which meant a foster was immediately needed for every available pup, or Shaffer would have to make space at her own house.

“There are so many surprises and uncertainties when it comes to rescue that a lot of dogs were ending up at my home, and it was just not sustainable,” Schaffer tells us. “Plus, we had grown so big. We are truly shocked and flattered that we have grown this quickly in the last two and a half years.” 

So, Shaffer and O’Day decided to find a permanent space for Pup Culture Rescue’s operations. The new spot will serve as a place for dogs to live in between fosters — and it’ll also allow Pup Culture Rescue to expand their community reach in major ways.

“We want to host lectures from experts in the dog world and offer dog training, and we also have big plans to open a vet clinic so we can do spay/neuter surgery and vaccines. It’ll be starting with our dogs, but then we hope to open it to the community eventually,” O’Day says. “The issue of dog homelessness in Los Angeles is at the point where it’s a crisis, so making spay and neuter within reach for everyone is something that we want to accomplish.”

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How to get involved with Pup Culture

For a month, the two have been operating in their new space — a former dog daycare that has been vacant for two years — working to get it into shape and style it into a welcoming, colorful, fun community spot. “We’re putting on this celebration on Saturday to show off what we’ve done, welcome people inside, and get the word out,” Shaffer says. 

They’re also hoping the event will recruit more volunteers, adopters, and fosters. “We still want to be a primarily foster based rescue. We feel that it’s very important for the dogs to get experience in a home,” Shaffer says.

But for people who can’t foster at the moment, there are always plenty of volunteer opportunities at Pup Culture, whether people want to clean, photograph adoptable dogs, or help socialize dogs by taking them on walks.