Priotities for Animal Welfare

List of Priorities for Animal Welfare Groups

1. Community Compassion, Empathy and Funding
   This is numero uno. Without it the killing goes on and on and on and ...
   

2. Community Animal Study
   You can't solve a problem unless the problem is defined. If most people properly defined their problem they would find they have more pet retention problems and more feral cat problems than they believe.
   
3. Regional Goals
   Shelter goals are meaningless unless they are part of a total community effort.
   
4. Cruelty Prevention
   Strong Laws, Investigations and Prosecution with high conviction rates. We cannot standby and let cruelty to animals go unpunished.
   
5. Compassionate Oversight of Animal Control
   This was animal welfare's primary mission prior to 1970's. We sometimes become frustrated at what appears to be a lack of professionalism in ac. Instead of politically interceding, animal welfare groups tend to want to take it over, this most often compromises the mission.
   
6. Mobile Spay/Neuter for Low-Income Qualified Pet Owners Only
   Package also includes rabies shot and microchip/visual identification. In order to lower our kill rates we need to make s/n affordable (if it cost more than $10 to low-income it is too much) and accessible. When you do this in great numbers your impound and kill rate will plummet.
   
7. Microchips as the Primary Source of Permanent Identification with Visual Tags as a Secondary System
   The number one reason for death for a dog and cat is LACK OF IDENTIFICATION. This program alone could cut our impoundment's in half and return more animals to their owner. If we are truly animal guardians we should not be timid but go full speed ahead into the microchip age.
   
8. Veterinary Voucher Program
   Discounts s/n to the general public and allows people who loosely own and feed stray cats to get these cats neutered. It also allows vets to discount and still receive just compensation for their professional services.
   
9. Feral Cat Trap/Vaccinate/Neuter/Return
   If we are ever going to create value for the American cat we will need to cut the supply. Unowned, freeroming intact cats are the source of the cat overpopulation problem. We need to empower our communities to trap/vaccinate/neuter/return and animal control and shelters needs to get with the program. It is senseless to impound a feral cat and kill it.
   
10. Community-wide, sliding scale, dog training programs
    This is a bigger part of the problem than most people think. Low-cost training helps all owners understand a dog and cat's nature and works out problems before they become annoying habits that interfere with the human/animal bond. Programs should be $10 for low-income.
    
11. Animal Rehabilitation
    Help treat sick, injured and pets in need of behavior modification.
    
12. Rescue, Sheltering and Adoptions
    What a surprise!! This is last on the list. I can hear everyone now, Is this guy crazy?

The fact is overpopulation is essentially a product of ignorance and indifference and only innovative and aggressive community proactive programs offer the promise of breaking the vicious cycle. We will never stop the slaughter if we continue to allocate 95% of our resources on treating symptoms instead of devoting more resources to the factors that cause the problem. If this is done, the day will come when shelters are not overwhelmed with impoundment's and animals are not killed because their "time ran out." Shelters will have more time to rehabilitate and adopt.

The interesting thing about this list is you don't need a shelter to do 11 out of 12 of these programs.