About five years ago, one little dog’s journey started a big project. After searching online, Janet Williams found a Chihuahua she wanted to adopt. There was just one problem: Williams, who lived in Maine at the time, had to figure out how to transport the dog from a shelter in Tennessee before she was scheduled to be euthanized.

“I’m ashamed to admit that, in the 21^st century, I didn’t realize that in this country we still euthanize animals for space in shelters,” Williams said. “I thought we actually sheltered them. So it was a real eye-opener trying to save this dog in Tennessee who was on death row.”

Williams and a network of several friends worked together to get the Chihuahua to her new home, each transporting her part of the distance. The experience inspired Williams to investigate shelters in the U.S., especially in the South, and what she found horrified her. One story about a woman’s challenges running a small rescue in South Carolina struck her especially.“I sent an email to the woman saying, ‘you’ve really changed my life.’ And the very next day I filed the papers to start The Pixel Fund,” Williams said. “And we’ve never looked back.”

Since 2011, Williams estimates that The Pixel Fund has saved about 1,500 cats and dogs. After having been in business for about a year, Williams moved to Florida, expanding The Pixel Fund to a second state.

“One day, I got an email, like I get every day,” Williams said. “I remember the subject line said ‘Puppies.” And I can’t tell you how many emails we get every day rom people wanting us to take this dog or that dog, and most of the time we’re just overloaded; we can’t take another beating heart. But I happened to open this email, and it wasn’t someone asking me to take puppies. It was someone asking me if I had puppies.”

The email was from Major Dyanne Alves, superintendent of the Brevard Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Cocoa, Florida. The facility had recently begun a foster program called Teens Assisting Puppies, or TAPs, and Alves was reaching out to local shelters to participate.

“She was on an effort to really humanize the experience for the kids in the detention center, and she thought of introducing puppies and teaching the kids how to care for them, and making time with the puppies contingent on good behavior,” Williams said.

Since partnering with The Pixel Fund, TAPs has expanded to two other detention centers in Florida, and Williams hopes it will continue to grow.

“We’ve had an idea of possibly expanding into residential facilities, if we can get a toehold,” Williams said. “We would love to start a program where residential students actually will take a chosen puppy from the short-term facility, a puppy chosen for its temperament or its intelligence, and we’d like to do some advanced training to get that puppy custom-trained for either a disabled veteran or a disabled citizen that has special needs.”

Williams sees the TAPs program and other work by The Pixel Fund as beneficial to both the kids and the dogs. She wants this to be one of many programs that educates people how to respect and care for animals from a young age, hoping that this generation can stop the animal abuse, neglect and other issues that make shelters so overcrowded.

“Sometimes, for some of these kids, it’s the first time they’ve ever felt love of any kind,” Williams said. “They’ve never had responsibility for another life, and it really does change lives.”