Wow! All one can say is wow, about the design for the new Healdsburg Animal Shelter unveiled Friday during a press conference.
The 7,000 square-foot building replaces a very sad, very dark, cinder-block structure directly across the street from the planned building site off Westside Road. The shelter will have radiant floor heating, a sod roof plus a solar array. It will be one of the few LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) designed shelters in the country.
These are not your dad’s animal shelters being built anymore. The Sonoma Humane Society’s along Highway 12 uses “habitats” instead of kennels and a lovely atrium-like main hall that sucks energy like a son of a gun. Ever since the building opened, the Sonoma Humane Society has struggled to pay the bills to keep it that way.
If you want to see wow in a shelter, check out the Humane Society of the Silicon Valley.
One must admit that building something better for the animals to live in, until adopted, is a terrific idea. It’s also better to provide an inviting environment for people to visit, if they are considering a new pet.
Whenever I make runs to other, overcrowded shelters, especially in the Central Valley, invariably they are located in the worst industrial parts of the city tucked behind loud garbage transfer stations and garages.
Applause to Healdsburg and the Strong family for remembering the most vulnerable members of society. The Rodney Strong estate set up the seed money for the shelter’s construction. One cannot knock that.
What makes these shelters a little problematic is how over-the-top they seem to be. Do the cats and dogs inside really care a building has a sod roof? Do they appreciate the thoughtfulness of a solar array?
What the animals likely do care about though is the happy people these pretty places bring in. But once the newness wears off, animals still need homes. So the pretty shelters are great, but it’s the humans who make it humane.
