DECADES OF COMBINED RESCUE EXPERIENCE 100% VOLUNTEER-RUN FOSTER-HOME BASED
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501(c)(3) NONPROFIT
Giving dogs the care, safety, and second chances they deserve.
We Rescue. We Rehabilitate. We Rehome.
OUR MISSION
Coastal Sheltie Rescue is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Virginia. We find loving new homes for unwanted, stray, and abandoned Shelties, Collies, Old English Sheepdogs, toy poodles, and other small breeds. Based in Virginia, we have helped dogs from Delaware all the way dlown to Georgia - including Maryland & DC
NEED TO REHOME YOUR SHELTIE?
We Understand. We're Here to Help.
Life changes. Sometimes, despite your best intentions, keeping your Sheltie is no longer possible. Whether it's a move, a health issue, a new baby, or a change ir circumstances - you are not alone, and reaching out is the kindest thing you care for your dog.
We will never judge you. We will always put your dog first.
Confidential & Compassionate.
Your situation stays private. We handle every surrender with care, dignity, and zero judgment.
We Find the Right Home
Your dog goes into a loving foster home while we carefully screen adopters - never a shelter kennel.
You Stay Informed
We keep you updated on your dog's journey Many owners stay in touch with the adopting family.
ATTENTION SHELTERS. ANIMAL CONTROL & RESCUES
We Take Every Sheltie. No Exceptions.
Municipal shelters often receive Shelties labeled as "problem dogs" - anxious, reactive, shut down, or difficult to handle. We don't care. We have seen it all. and we will take them anyway. We also welcome ransfers from other rescues and shelters that are at capacity or need breed-
specific support. No Sheltie should lose their life because there is nowhere to turn.
Behavior issues, medical needs, age, or rescue transfers -- email us today.
HOW ADOPTION WORKS
Simple Steps to Your New Best Friend
1. Read Our Guidelines
Review our adoption requirements and placement policies to make sure Coastal is a good fit for your family, home and lifestyle.
2. Submit an Application
Complete our online adoption application and required application donation. Once reviewed, we’ll contact you regarding the next steps.
3. Home Visit & Meet and Greet
Complete a virtual home visit, or an in person visit when appropriate. If approved to move forward, we’ll arrange a meet and greet with your family, resident dogs and the dog you’re considering.
Our Roots. Our Mission. Our Future.
Coastal became its own independent 501(c)(3) rescue in 2018, but our roots in Sheltie and Collie rescue reach back to the 1980s, when Donna established Collie Sheltie Rescue of Southeast Virginia. She remains an active volunteer with Coastal today, and several members of our organization have been working together in rescue for more than 20 years. Coastal may be a newer organization, but the experience, friendships, and commitment behind it have been built over decades.
We created Coastal because we saw a need for a foster-home-based rescue willing to look beyond the easy cases. Dogs have come to us from across the country because they were overlooked due to age, appearance, medical needs, temperament, or simply because they did not fit someone else’s idea of the “perfect” Sheltie or Collie. To us, rescue has never been about whether a dog is pretty enough, young enough, easy enough, or marketable enough. It is about whether that dog needs help and whether we have a responsible way to provide it.
Shelties and Collies will always be our foundation, but compassion sometimes takes us beyond breed. A mixed-breed dog running out of time in a rural shelter, a senior facing extraordinary medical needs, a frightened dog with nowhere else to go, or a dog hundreds of miles away who has simply run out of options — when we can help, we try. We cannot save every dog, but we can show up for the ones we can.
What has kept us going all these years is simple: we work together and keep the dogs at the center. We believe good rescue requires respect, loyalty, kindness, accountability, compassion, grace, humor, cooperation, and a strong ethical foundation. There are simply too many animals in need for rescue to become a competition.
We are entirely volunteer-run and independently governed. Coastal’s decisions are made by the people responsible for the dogs in our care, with accountability to our community, our donors, and the legal and nonprofit requirements under which we operate. We believe credibility is demonstrated through the work, not conferred by a title. Leadership in rescue is measured by service to animals and community — not by what an organization chooses to call itself.
Our Code of Ethics includes responsible stewardship of rescue funds. Donations entrusted to Coastal are not used to fund personal lifestyles or to buy dogs at auction. They support the animals in our care through veterinary treatment, medications, food, rehabilitation, foster support, emergency cases, and the practical costs of getting dogs safely from crisis to home.
Decades in rescue have also taught us something important: compassion alone does not keep a rescue alive. We have personally watched Sheltie rescue after Sheltie rescue close its doors because there was not enough financial stability, because leadership remained concentrated in too few hands, or because the knowledge was never passed to another generation. We learned from that. Financial stability matters. Growth matters. Change matters. Mentorship matters.
That is why fostering the next generation of rescuers is part of what we are building. Many of us were young when someone took the time to teach us, trust us, and give us a place in rescue. Today, we do the same. We mentor younger volunteers, share what decades of experience have taught us, and give them meaningful opportunities to learn, contribute, make decisions, and eventually lead.
Our goal has never been to remain in charge forever. Our goal is for Coastal to remain standing long after any one of us has stepped aside.
One day, the people leading this rescue may be in their twenties, thirties, or forties while those of us here today are older, retired, or simply supporting them from the sidelines — just as people who began this work decades ago still support Coastal today. We hope that years from now, another generation will look back at 2026 as part of their own rescue history and recognize that the people who came before them did something important: we gave them something strong enough to inherit.
That is legacy to us. Not holding onto a title. Not remaining in control. It is teaching someone else everything you know, trusting them to take it further, and being proud enough to stand behind them when it becomes their turn to lead.
Our dogs live in foster homes as members of families while we learn who they truly are and what they need in a permanent home. Around them stands an extraordinary community of foster families, volunteers, veterinarians, donors, transporters, adopters, shelters, and friends who continue to show up when it matters.
After all these years, what we believe is actually quite simple:
Work together. Keep learning. Treat people with kindness. Be responsible with what has been entrusted to you. Teach the next generation. And always put the dogs first.
Decades of experience. Generations of rescuers. One shared mission.
Rescue. Restore. Rejoice.
Animals Are Our Mission
Our mission is to find loving homes for Shelties, Collies, Old English Sheepdogs and other small herding breeds that have become homeless through no fault of their own. We want to educate families in the care and well-being of their pets and if the need arises, to help those families maintain care and ownership of their beloved herders in a temporary crisis.
Donate dog food
$75.00
Dog food for 1 dog runs about $75.00 a month.
Help feed one of our Coastal Fur kids for a month
We also have an amazon wish list too.
Contact Us
Rescue. Restore. Rejoice.
We love to help Collies and Shelties in Virginia
COASTAL SHELTIE RESCUE INC
Coastal Sheltie Rescue Inc. 2509 George Mason Dr. # 56162 Virginia Beach, VA 23456
Coastalsheltierescue@gmail.com Please only text us after normal business hours if you have an emergency sheltie or collie needing placement 804-552- 1 eight eight 4 we are foster home based so adoption/ meet and greets are by appointment only.
Hours
Open today | 09:00 am – 07:00 pm |
