From Ron Kitchen regarding the Animal Shelter in case you missed it: I think the recent proposal of building a new multi-million dollar animal shelter in Citrus County, raises a few questions. Why build a new shelter when the one we currently have is not open all weekend, not fully staffed and in need of basic operating requirements such as air conditioning? How can we seem to find money for a new building but not to maintain and staff the current shelter? How could a county that was so broke it had to increase taxes more than 30 percent just to balance the budget, now consider funding such a facility? I think what is missing is a discussion of what can be done to fix the problem; building a new shelter will do nothing to eliminate the problem of unwanted animals in the shelter. I like to gather information from the experts, so I recently visited a shelter that has the reputation of being one of the best “no kill” shelters in Florida and is operated by the Humane Society of Sarasota County. Executive Director Kristi Dorman gave my wife and I a tour and answered some tough questions to help me understand the facts of the issue. I was particularly interested in her opinion of what we need to do to fix the problem. Ms. Dorman stated, “It is a common myth that pet overpopulation means there are not enough homes for all the shelter animals. In reality, there are more than enough homes, but not enough people are choosing to adopt from a shelter.” To support her statement she presented the following statistics: Approximately 8 million animals are taken in at shelters across the country each year. Of those, almost half, about 3.7 million are euthanized. This would lead some to say there is not enough demand for all the animals, but this is not true, since about 17 million people buy new pets each year. Only about 20 percent choose to adopt a new pet from a shelter. The main problem is too many animals at the shelter for too long and not enough adoptions to curtail the euthanizing of animals. So, what is the answer? There is not a single answer, since the problem needs to be addressed from multiple aspects, but here are the places to start. Pet owners need to understand the need to have their pets spayed and neutered to avoid more unwanted and uncared-for animals being produced. But most of all, according to the above statistics, if people wanting a pet would adopt and/or rescue one from a shelter before considering purchasing one, this alone would eliminate much of the problem. Space and word limitations do not allow me to go into all the solutions available, but needless to say, there are many that do not require the building of a new multi-million dollar structure that will do nothing, according to the experts, to reduce and ultimately eliminate the problem. Ronald Kitchen Jr.--Homosassa
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 21:37:39 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015