Making a go of it in the animal rescue world is always a struggle; short funding, too many animals, not enough homes and workers who give hearts and voices to those who cannot speak or vote.
So it is with relief that I read Press Democrat reporter Clark Mason’s story on the the wonderful bequest coming from Rodney Strong’s estate to help build a new animal shelter for Healdsburg.
I volunteered for the shelter briefly last year helping with evaluations of shelter dogs. The one-story cinder block construction near the city’s corporation yard is outdated, exposes animals to the outside elements and lacks even a blade of grass for shelter animals to romp, let alone a welcoming environment for potential adopters to view animals. The staff is hardworking and certainly not in it for the money.
Healdsburg has the time to learn from the mistakes made by other shelter architects and programs. The board of directors should tour the state and find out what works and what does not in improving the lives of animals. The board of directors needs to look behind pretty facades and develop a facility that is a win for the animals and adopters.
But building a successful animal shelter has often very little to do with a building, but what goes on inside the four walls. Warehousing animals is no solution for homeless animals, despite the pretty setting. Before a building gets built, tough decisions need to be made about the definition of “no kill.”
“We do everything we can to get animals into a good home,” said (George) Dutton, a member of the shelters board of directors adding that the shelter has a ‘no kill’ policy and even takes animal from other shelters if they are in danger of being euthanized.
The animal shelters board of directors would serve itself well to research how other shelters handle aggressive and PDA (potentially dangerous animals) dogs and the risks of launching them into a community because of an insistence on a no kill policy. Are all animals really adoptable? There is no simple solution, but the discussion should be visited before a single shovel hits the dirt.
