Monday, July 19, 2010

Caution

Rugby is here just warning everyone - Click it or Ticket!!!
Turns out he much prefers his car seat!! Ha!
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On a completely different note, I started to volunteer for NAIA Shelter Project.
"A program dedicated to further reducing the number of adoptable pets that are euthanized in our shelters...

...The centerpiece of this project is the collection and publication of shelter data. Specifically, we are gathering shelter statistics that show the number of dogs and cats impounded, returned to their owners, adopted out or euthanized..."

The beginning of this is first finding where the data is going to come from. It is my job to make a list of shelters and rescues in Maryland, and it has really been an eye opening experience!

With over 200 Maryland organizations listed on Petfinder.com alone, the thing that confuses me the most is that everyone and their mother wants to start a rescue. Why does there need to be 230 rescues?? A number of these have no dogs. An ever bigger number of those rescues has less than 5 dogs. Can't they all just get together to help each other?

Maybe if the shelter system was consolidated, the different shelters can cooperate by trading dogs, etc instead of the empty ones importing dog from foreign countries to stay open.

Lastly, how can sooo many rescues who are trying to help dogs list some of the biggest animal rights groups on their websites? Don't most animal rights groups just kill 95% of the dogs they get in?

I hope the Shelter Project will help answer/resolve some of these questions! If you have some spare time, shoot them an e-mail to see how you can help!

2 comments:

  1. Well, I'm guessing that you have many breed-specific rescues, who only deal with dogs who are primarily of that breed. You also have rescues with VERY limited resources, and five dogs may be all that they can support at a time. Some breed rescues have a really wonderful network system. I think this is one area where Greyhound groups excel most of the time. If a track closes and hundreds of dogs are suddenly flooding the resources of an area, many will do what they can to take a few dogs, even when that means transporting the dogs from one area to another. However, within Greyhound adoption, there are several different philosophies and sets of beliefs. Some strongly oppose racing, some are decidedly neutral and others are supportive. All three of those main groups work in different ways and in different areas. However, because there are often high emotions involved in people's feelings about that issue, there are times the groups don't work together. That's just about one specific breed, too! I'm sure each breed has its own issues. With some all breed rescues, there are other divisions about philosophies. Some are willing to take bullie breeds and others refuse to do it. Yes, in a perfect world we could have less rescue groups and they could all work together, but there are so many factors that play into it, I think there will always be a pretty broad range of groups.

    In a perfect world, we wouldn't have backyard breeders flooding our shelters with a surplus of puppies and kittens. We'd have responsible pet owners not breeding dogs and cats that have no business being bred. People wouldn't pay outrageous sums of money for mixed breed dogs, either. It's a never-ending circuit.

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  2. Safety first whenever car-riding!

    Pat
    www.critteralley.blogspot.com

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