Animal Sheltering magazine Winter 2017-2018
: Table of Contents
Feature Article
The woman desperately needed to get out of her house and away from her abuser. But she couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her dogs with someone who might hurt them. She’d had her three big dogs since they were puppies, and they’d gotten her through some really tough times. In tears, she called the Animal Rescue League (ARL) of Iowa and asked how to surrender them.
Feature Article
From the trailhead that leads to Havasu Falls, you can gaze over a vast, wild place still largely unaltered by humans. From the edge of the canyon, looking out at the towering stone ridges and the sun-speckled desert valley, listening to the wind whistle around the rocks, it seems like it could be 100, 1,000, even 10,000 years ago, when this isolated Arizona chasm leading to the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon would have looked much the same.
Scoop
Do you want chips with those tips?
Weighing the costs and benefits of microchips for community cats
Easy riders
When transporting cats, battle stress with familiarity
Positive politics
When a bad law was affecting good cats, New Hampshire animal advocates lobbied for change
President's Note
Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, each born in the Atlantic in late summer, upended the lives of millions of people and animals. The scouring winds and unstoppable storm surges these hurricanes unleashed tested not just the resilience of the people of Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, but also their survival skills. Two of the storms also flattened other parts of the Caribbean, including the British Virgin Islands.
Mouthpieces
People don't realize how easily disease can spread in a shelter environment. Download this Mouthpiece to encourage shelter visitors to wash their hands.
Browse additional Mouthpieces designed to aid your community outreach. To submit a PSA your organization designed, contact us at asm@humanesociety.org.
Q&A
In Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black,” Adrienne C. Moore brings humor and heart to the role of prisoner Cindy “Black Cindy” Hayes, who memorably undergoes a religious awakening in season 3.
101 Department
Twelve years ago, Hurricane Katrina left chaos in its wake. Animal welfare agencies across the country hustled to get animals to safety, but the scope of such a massive response made it difficult to coordinate efforts. Sometimes it was hard to tell who was in charge of what, who had the authority to make decisions, or where animals had gone post-evacuation.
Rescue Central
With his wagging tail and happy demeanor, the golden retriever-spaniel mix looks like a friendly, approachable dog. And for a brief moment, he is.
“You can pet him for about two seconds, and then he’ll nail you,” says Karen Deeds, a trainer and certified dog behavior consultant in Fort Worth, Texas.
Shelter Medicine
It wasn’t that long ago that we failed to understand pain in our companion animals. You may recall veterinarians in the past saying things like, “Animals don’t feel pain like we do.”
In fact, when I went to veterinary school in the late-1980s, we weren’t taught to provide pain relievers for animals after common procedures such as spay/neuter or dental work, including extraction of teeth. Typically, our patients received short-acting pain medicine in the hospital, and then were sent home to rest and recover.
Unforgettable
In the rescue world, we see just about everything, but nothing prepared us at Tanner’s P.A.W.S. in upstate New York for our first puppy mill rescue dog. We named her Lucky, because that’s what she was.
An 8-month-old miniature poodle, Lucky was rescued from a puppy mill in Ohio. (We’re part of a team of rescue groups that pulls dogs from mills.) We were told she had a hip issue. Our rescue team told us to have a wheelchair ready because they didn’t know if she was ambulatory. We stepped up and made the commitment to save her.
Magazine Article
At a time of life when most people are savoring a more leisurely pace, Harold Sims of Cullowhee, North Carolina, is busier than ever and has no intention of slowing down.
Magazine Article
I came to the Humane Society of the United States in 2014 after a decade (more if you count those years I spent as a kid sitting in cat rooms and walking dogs way too big for me) overseeing operations at animal shelters. I wouldn’t say I was particularly excited about or motivated to fit policy into my daily workload of caring for homeless pets—until I worked for an animal shelter that was located in a city with breed-specific legislation, flawed policies that ban certain types of dogs based on their physical appearance.
Magazine Article
To see Teddy and Millie now—playful and friendly, outgoing and affectionate— you’d never guess what they’ve endured in their short lives. As part of an unnecessary test commissioned by Dow AgroSciences (now Corteva Agriscience), the beagles were force-fed a pesticide every day for more than seven months at a laboratory in Michigan.
Magazine Article
Vinnie Van Gogh, a reticent feline, spent four months at Dakin Humane Society before his photo appeared on the shelter’s website with the headline “The Socially Awkward Cat for the Socially Awkward Adopter.”
“Seriously all this guy requires is a couch and someone to give him his daily necessities,” the write-up by the Springfield, Massachusetts, shelter read. “Take him home, and have a perfect buddy for all those times that going out is just not worth the effort. He understands.”
Magazine Article
Two leaders in the animal welfare field, Washington, D.C.-based Humane Rescue Alliance and New Jersey’s St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center, announced a merger in early July to create what’s believed to be the first organization of its kind in the country.
As a result of this unique combination—two community-based, but regional-focused, animal welfare groups working across state borders—the joint organization has more resources to make a bigger impact in the areas it serves and beyond.
Magazine Article
If you watched the Golden Globes back in 2016, you couldn’t miss her: Collecting a Golden Globe for best actress in a television series, musical or comedy, Rachel Bloom was visibly ecstatic, motor-mouthed and breathless, practically leaping from the screen.
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