Rebecca Forbes, president of Operation Pets Alive, said she joined the team because she wanted to make a difference in stray animals' lives. Operation Pets Alive is a no-kill, nonprofit organization in Montgomery County that works with volunteers to increase awareness around the need for a no-kill community for homeless dogs and cats.
OPA was founded in 2010 and has since placed over 20,000 animals into forever homes, she said.
After serving the community for over 10 years, OPA was recently awarded a spay and neuter contract from the state of Texas under a new pilot program that will allow it to expand community spay and neuter services into six additional counties including Walker, San Jacinto, Liberty, Grimes, Waller and Polk, Forbes said.
The organization
Operation Pets Alive started with transport services for dogs to help get Montgomery County as close to being a no-kill community as possible.
It launched a public spay/neuter program in 2012 to help decrease Montgomery County’s pet overpopulation crisis, Forbes said. OPA has subsidized over 4,000 spay/neuter surgeries for animals owned in Montgomery County.
The numbers
In 2025, OPA helped find homes for 444 dogs and 193 cats. In order to help speed up the adoption process, it transports pets to out-of-state rescue partners who have higher adoption rates such as Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire and New York. OPA is 100% volunteer-based, and Forbes said her hope is that more people will work together to rescue animals.
“There's times that people get in too deep and they're too scared to ask for help, and I think if we all were just a little bit less judgmental and more kind to each other that we could make a huge difference,” Forbes said.
The past/present/future
Forbes became the current president for Operations Pets Alive after getting involved as a Montgomery County Animal Shelter dog walker.
“I had never really been in a shelter ever," Forbes said. "I come from the rural state of New Mexico. We don't have those things there, so I thought it was cool to go walk dogs and that's where I met the president of OPA. I got into the assessment team and just learned exactly how bad the problem that we had was ... even walking the dogs, I didn't understand the mass amount of the problem, so I started there and I fostered very heavily for transport,” Forbes said.
Once she learned that she could find homes for animals in Texas, she started getting involved with local adoption at events. She became the foster coordinator and later joined the board as vice president for a year before taking over as president.
Like other animal welfare organizations in the county, OPA faces pet overpopulation challenges.
“Veterinary services aren't cheap, so that is a huge problem that we face. It’s not that people don't care about their pets, it's that they don't have the means to. That’s what started our public spay and neuter program that we piloted out, and we've done over 3,000 surgeries for [pets of] Montgomery County residents,” Forbes said.
Get involved
The organization has several events coming up for the community to get involved in its mission in helping animals get adopted, and in addition to fostering they welcome volunteers to help with paperwork and other aspects of the nonprofit.
Volunteers will also be able to participate in OPA's largest fundraiser, Rescues on the Runway, which is coming up at 6 p.m. on April 2 at The Peach Orchard Venue. At the event, dogs will walk the red carpet with The Woodlands-area models and boutiques.
“We always need more volunteers because we do puppy therapy at the schools, puppy yoga, we have Rescues on the Runway coming up, so we have tons of ways to get involved," Forbes said.
- P.O. Box 132104, The Woodlands
