Animal Welfare Professionals

If your shelter or rescue group could implement ONE new program to save more lives and cost wasn't a factor, what would it be?

Accessible community veterinary care on a sliding scale. Inability to access and/or afford vet care is the number one reason we see wanted pets surrendered to local shelters. 

I would love to have a secure kennel area where the dogs did not see each other while in their kennel cage and have sound proofing in the ceiling and then play soothing music.  Our kennels face each other - about 3 feet from each other - I don't think that's great for the dogs, especially when they first arrive and are so scared,  plus there is no soundproofing and the noise is unbelievable.  

I'm not sure if would have the room, but when our director started at our facility, the dogs were facing each other in their kennels as well.  She got bricks donated, and a group of volunteers from a church came in and built and painted a very simple half wall going between the kennels so they can't see each other anymore.  They also built a planter into the top, so it looks quite nice.  The plants add a nice ambiance, and are probably nice for the dogs to smell! 

I agree with sarabragg that vet care is a critical component to saving them all. The cost of veterinary care is prohibitively expensive for many people, resulting in countless animals that are abandoned or relinquished to shelters. Other animals may remain in their home but continue to breed because they have not been spayed/neutered. But cost is not the only barrier to accessibility. Underserved, low income communities, as well as rural locations, often have no veterinary services available in their immediate area. Lack of transportation can prevent people and pets from getting to a vet's office. (No pit bulls on the bus! No cats in the Uber!) People's work schedules can make it impossible for them to make an appointment with an office that is only open M-F, 8 AM - 5 PM. I would love to see entire fleets of mobile vet services that make regular rotations through the communities that have a high demand for their services.

Roger Haston had a great slide in a recent presentation about "when free isn't really free" and I think about it all the time. Access has to be a part of the equation! 

We would create an off site adoption center in the busiest part of the city and have open hours 11 hours a day 7 days a week.

We save mainly puppy mill dogs with very high vetting costs. It would help us greatly to have an ongoing fundraising program to cover these costs. We could have a team to set this up, and sustain it. Our vet costs are our biggest obstacle to saving more dogs.

Behavioral help/training....a lot of the bigger breeds/pit bulls are the ones on death row....and they need issues addressed to make them adoptable a lot of times...small rescues are unable to provide it financially.

Humane education of the public and fellow animal advocates. Education in the way that open admission shelters is not the problem but the community it represents needs to be informed. Implementation of correct scientific data along with proven results equal a bigger LRR. By just making it harder for people to surrender means more homeless animals on the street. But also knowing that without those limited/closed intake organizations the open organizations would not save as many lives. Working together for animals is what is truly needed instead of fighting amongst each other. 

Behavior/training team.  Not only to modify behavior that keeps large dogs from being adopted but also to assist with resources and training after adoptions and to offer help in the community before a dog ever is being surrendered.  

We started a program a few months ago called Safe Haven which offers housing for companion animals displaced temporarily due to domestic abuse, a hospital or jail stay, moving, etc. So far, this program has helped almost ten pets stay with the humans who love them. If cost was not an issue, we would have helped 100 pets by now. The need is HUGE! We have a community full of commuters (we are 50 miles from D.C.) and transients (also two military bases) so we have people constantly needing temporary shelter due to moving. If money were no issue, we would be paying deposit fees, housing 10-15 at a time, etc. Some day.

..Look on facebook for RESCUE/ RE.BUIILD......an organization of volunteers who go to rebuild or build from the ground up for many needed things,,.such as your   .SAFE HAVEN..program….... donations fund it...…….Tell others about it.....It can help .a lot of animals and people.   THE GREATER GOOD   recommends it... There .are other organizations .as well such a s THE FOOD BANK.       check with THE GREATER GOOD .for more information.   You also can  email me at charlomail@yahoo.com.  my name is charlie

Bless you fredSPCA--this is a prevention program and so needed--you are taking care of more than the animal, trust me!!

You should look into funding from HUMAN groups for your mission--sometimes more money there...

A Distemper Adoption, Treatment, and Information Center!

I currently don't operate a shelter program, but if I had one I would develop a plan for a community wellness clinic that could be scaled across the country to serve the needs of animals in our lowest income communities, whether it is spay/neuter, care/support, triage to assistance with transport partners, pet food pantry, community cat support, etc. 

Our rescue would love to be able to partner with an emergency care veterinarian for a reduction in costs, or even complimentary services.  We rescue dogs from euthanasia, and we certainly aren't going to put them down because they have become ill.  Emergency care is EXTREMELY expensive for our dogs, and thankfully we have not had to utilize their services very often.  It is very sad and heartbreaking situation when you realize that an eight week old puppy you rescued from a horrendous situation isn't eating because "somehow" his jaw has been broken and he has an indented area on his scalp.

In-house or onsite spay/neuter wellness clinic for all animals in our community.

Unlimited budget wouldn't that be nice. I can't think of just one but I would like my shelter to start a behavior and training program, a sliding scale vaccination/spay/neuter clinic, and expand the size of individual kennels for both cats and dogs.

Behavior and training boot camp for our large difficult to place dogs. 

I think we'd open an additional HQHV spay/neuter clinic.  I'd love for us to be able to provide veterinary care other than spay/neuters, but our local veterinarians aren't having it.  They are convinced that no one would go to their clinic if low-cost care was available.  Maybe we'd require proof of low income status before giving vet care other than spay/neuter, but right now we as a rescue see a huge bottleneck in getting our available animals spayed and neutered at the one spay/neuter clinic in our area.   They do a nice job scheduling rescues but for the public they are scheduling into NEXT YEAR.    They have two full-time vets and one part-time, but it would be nice to open in a geographically disparate area, too, so that those for whom transportation is a barrier could have other options.  It is such great proof that people WANT and WILL USE this service...but the need in our area is just so great!

To have our own clinic would mean our animals get the first shot at appointments, so no more bottlenecking kittens during the summer (I have 8 going in next Monday...have been waiting nearly a month for an appointment for them).  This lessens LOS and allows us to save more--PLUS doing TNR and fixing owned animals reduces the need for our rescue to begin with.  I used to work at the existing HQHV clinic and I was just so happy to see how many people WANT to do the right thing and get their animals fixed.  And not just theirs--we had people bringing in friends' animals (with permission), people working in the community to persuade especially pit bull owners to bring pitties in to be fixed...it's just hard to do that sort of thing when your booking is so overwhelmed.

A traveling microchipping clinic, offering free or low-cost chips, particularly for cats, and particularly in our rural and low-income areas. We have a pretty good RTO rate for dogs, but microchips are our most reliable way to get cats who come in back to their owner. In the rural areas, there is often an assumption that if the cat didn't come home, a predator got it. In reality, sometimes it is with us! It would also be a chance to offer some of the same stuff we offer at the county health department's rabies vaccine clinics: info on our low-cost spay/neuter and food pantry programs, making ID tags, suggestions for low-cost preventative vet care through Tractor Supply's clinic and a local clinic run by a vet school.

It's a toss up between a behavioral team and low cost spay/neuter + clinic. We live in a more rural area and we see a lot of animals surrendered for financial issues. We already donate excess pet food to the local food pantry, but I think being able to offer low cost vet care would also help a lot of people. Actually, it'd be great if we were able to implement a pet food bank right at the shelter, too. Of course, we get a lot of people who want to surrender animals due to behavioral issues, which can often be exacerbated by the shelter environment. We've seen that a lot of people do want to try to keep their pets, but often don't know how to cope. If we had the resources to dedicate to helping these people I think we'd have far fewer behaviorally challenging pets ending up in our shelter.

.for those of you needing extra food for your rescues and shelters.or safe havens such as SPCA FRED .mentioned in his post on the 28th....check with THE GREATER GOOD. on facebook…...they sponsor programs such as the FOOD BANK and .RESCUE /.REBUILD. these programs work with volunteers to help you and are.funded by donations...…...

We would love for their to be some low cost or free dog training to the citizens considering surrendering pets with behavior issues, as well as for adopters.  It would be about dog behavior, common behavior problems and solutions in hopes of avoiding surrendering the pet.

The MAGIC lottery where all our resource needs were met for our animals....oh wait, wake up... . It doesn't hurt to dream!!!

I have found as a volunteer with our shelter behavioral training for experienced volunteers and staff would be most helpful for some of our dogs with "issues". Most have of these dogs have struggles with other dogs (even though many of us believe these would disappear when they went to homes--away from  the stressful shelter environment). I tried to reach out to a shelter in our area to "shadow" a behaviorist in order to help some of our dogs but she never responded to my e-mail. I have come to believe that I will need to seek out training on my own. I am very committed to being a part of the solution. 

Does anyone have any recommendations?

Absolutely establish a spay/neuter clinic to serve our local shelter.  They currently have to rely on the very small number of spots allotted to them by the SPCA, which isn't nearly enough the majority of the time, but especially during kitten season.  Kittens sometimes have to sit at the shelter for weeks before a spay/neuter spot opens up and they can be fixed and sent home.  In the meantime, they get sick or space becomes a matter of life and death for animals that come in thereafter.

Low-cost spay/neuter clinic combined with a free TNR program.

I wish we could afford a program to help owners (particularly of adopted dogs) afford behavioral intervention.

Behavior rehab center, we could save so many more!

Offer low-cost dog training classes to dog adopters to help boost retention/prevent shelter return.

Free spay/neuter for everyone!

FREE spay/neuter with support services (loan of trapping equipment, help with trapping, help with transport).