In recognition of this wonderful holiday stretching from the 19th-25th, I reached out to one of our partners, Davyd Smith, Founder of The Colorado No Kill Association, to gain information on their efforts toward their goals of making Colorado the safest state for homeless animals! He brought attention to many subjects that I thought were extremely interesting and relevant as to why it is up to us to be the voices and justice for animals! These things take time, dedication, and power in numbers of both people willing to try and statistics of the hard work and success stories like this one...
The Humane Society of Fremont County joined the No Kill mission in 2014. They have held the highest open admission save rate in Colorado for the last 8 years. Named one of the two best animal shelters in the Country in 2017, landed in the top 1% of the Country for shelter-saving rates in 2017, 2021, and 2022. Last year they ended the year with a 98.30% save rate. The chances of an animal entering their shelter and leaving healthy, assisted, and alive is close to 100% year in, and year out!
One of the biggest goals we set for ourselves when joining the 2023 Open Arms Challenge was to get to know the community of shelters around us, and it truly has given a whole new aspect of excitement to make a bigger impact than we could have ever thought before!
Below, I am pasting Davyd's email for those interested in their Colorado involvement!
HOUSE BILL 21-1160 "CONCERNING THE CARE OF PET ANIMALS IN THE CUSTODY OF CERTAIN PET ANIMAL FACILITIES"
The bill is here: https://leg.colorado.gov/.../2021A/bills/2021a_1160_01.pdf
"Over 50 animal welfare orgs joined us in fighting that bill. We got minor changes to the language. After a bill is passed it goes to something called "rulemaking" We fought again there. We don't know if we will make any progress. We did get a publicly recorded promise from Nick FIsher that PACFA will not tell any rescue or shelter they have to kill an animal. But the door is still open for regressive shelters to kill any animal they want, even if they are healthy and treatable. Homeless pets have zero protection in Colorado.
The rulemaking meeting can be watched here: I think it starts talking about this bill at minute 12:15 min. You can skip there. Nick Fisher (Section Chief PACFA) introduces the thoughts on the rules, then you will hear a lot of testimony opposing what he said (including myself) and a few people supporting what he said." -Davyd Smith
These links are no longer published but you can still get to them for historical information:
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Elise Smith
Executive Director
Fostering Love Rescues
Franktown, Colorado
Fosteringloverescues@gmail.com
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