Animal News

Highly reputable Dallas-Fort Worth animal nonprofit expands hours

What a fluffy kitty! TCAP

A Dallas-Fort Worth nonprofit made up of compassionate veterinary professionals who are working to end pet overpopulation in North Texas by providing high quality, affordable vaccines, spays, and neuters is expanding its hours.

Texas Coalition for Animal Protection, better known as TCAP, has added days at two DFW locations:

TCAP Fort Worth will now be open for walk-in vaccines on Tuesdays.
TCAP Garland will now be open on Wednesdays.

They'll offer free rabies vaccines on Tuesdays in Fort Worth as well as Wednesdays in Garland every week in January.

TCAP was founded in November 2022 by Stacey Schumacher, whose vision was to end animal overpopulation by providing low-cost preventative services throughout North Texas.

"From the very beginning, Stacey knew that making spay and neuter affordable and accessible, she and her team could positively impact North Texas animal populations," their site says.

She started out with one clinic in Denton, where TCAP and its veterinary team built a reputation as a competent, effective high-volume clinic.

Eight locations
Since then, TCAP has opened eight stand-alone clinics, has established and maintained a M.A.S.H-style travel program, and has set up a weekend vaccine event program that services more than 40 locations each year, providing more than 630,000 low-cost spays and neuters, and more than 1,225,000 rabies vaccines.

TCAP also provides accessible and essential basic wellness services such as vaccines, microchipping, heartworm testing/ prevention, deworming, and flea/ tick prevention.

With each spay/neuter, Team TCAP eliminates the possibility of a litter of puppies or kittens without a home. With each low-cost wellness service provided, TCAP helps alleviate the cost of pet care for owners struggling to make ends meet. These efforts combined have resulted in keeping hundreds of thousands of pets in loving homes and out of animal shelters.

TCAP partners with like-minded groups of animal caretakers at city animal shelters as well as hundreds of animal rescue organizations throughout Dallas-Fort Worth.

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Unhappy holidays

Porch pirates pilfer nearly $2B worth of Texas packages, study shows

Porch Pirate Person in Glasses Steals Packages

Getty Images

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’Tis the season for porch pirates. If past trends are an indicator, the Grinch will swipe close to $2 billion worth of packages delivered to Texas households this year, with many of those thefts happening ahead of the holiday season.

An analysis of FBI and survey data by ecommerce marketing company Omnisend shows porch pirates stole more than $1.8 billion worth of packages from Texans’ porches last year. Porch pirates hit nearly one-third of the state’s households in 2024, according to the analysis.

Omnisend’s analysis reveals these statistics about porch piracy in Texas:

30.1 million residential package thefts in 2024.
An average household loss of $169 per year.
An annual average of 2.9 package thefts per household.

“Most stolen items are cheap on their own, but add them up, and retailers and consumers are facing an enormous bill,” says Omnisend.

Another data analysis, this one from The Action Network sports betting platform, unwraps different figures regarding porch piracy in Texas.

The platform’s 2025 Porch Pirate Index ranks Texas as the state with the highest volume of residential thefts, based on 2023-24 FBI data.

Researchers at The Action Network uncovered 26,293 reports of personal property thefts at Texas residences during that period. The network’s survey data indicates 5 percent of Texas residents had a package stolen in the three months before the pre-holiday survey.

The Porch Pirate Index calculates a 25.8 percent risk of a Texas household being victimized by porch pirates, putting it in the No. 5 spot among states with the highest risk of porch piracy.

The Action Network included online-search volume for terms like “package stolen” and “porch pirates.” Sustained spikes in these searches suggest that “people are actively looking for guidance after something has happened. Search trends serve as an early warning system, revealing emerging-risk areas well before annual crime statistics are released,” the network says.

Tips to avoid being a victim
So, how do you prevent porch pirates from snatching packages that end up on your porch? Omnisend, The Action Network and Amazon offer these eight tips:

Closely monitor deliveries and quickly retrieve packages.
Schedule deliveries for times when you’ll be home.
Use delivery lockers or in-store pickup when possible.
Ask delivery services to hide packages in out-of-sight spots outside your home.
Install a visible doorbell camera or security camera.
Coordinate deliveries with neighbors or building managers if you’ll be away from your home when packages are supposed to arrive.
Request that delivery services hold your packages if you can’t be home when they’re scheduled to come.
Illuminate the path to your doorstep and keep porch lights on.

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