The things we do for our animals...

This is Meadow and she is a beautiful Boxer mix.  She was found wondering the streets of West Point and was brought in by the city.  She has been spayed and is now looking for her forever home with YOU! She is wonderful with other dogs and even cats! All she needs now is a warm place to call home! 

Beulah is an 8 week old female kitten that was brought into the shelter when she was about 3 weeks old. A wall had to be cut into to retrieve her and her siblings. She loves to be held and played with.  Looking for a best friend? You found her!!!

 

We have a Facebook page called Shelter Pet Profiles and our shelter posts pictures and short descripions of all the animals we have.  Not only do we do this, but we have various fundraisers throughout the year to raise money for our shelter.  We even have a lady who comes and dresses our animals up and does glamour shots of them so that we can have a booth set up at all of our events to showcase them off and try to get them adopted.  There are a bunch of people who are dedicated to getting our animals forever homes and we greatly appreciate your support and help!

Shelter Family

One of our best employees left us this week.  Not sure why or where he is going, but he was one of the best.  He never complained about what we needed him to do.  Whether it was bring a dog in for his/her shots or giving them a bath because they were stinky.  He was always willing to do anything that we asked him to do. Plus, he was the only male that we had working there.  Now, it is nothing but women and very stressful. You when people say there is too much estrogen, they should try working with them on a daily basis.  Going to miss that guy.  We still haven't found anyone to take his spot because no one wants to work for minimum wage and have to do all the work that they have to do.  Hopefully soon though!

Shelter Behavior

When people come to a shelter they are thinking of all the cute little puppies that want to play and well behaved dogs that just sit and wag their tails wanting to be pet.  Now let me pull you back down to reality… This is never really the case.  Most of the puppies, while cute and inocent, are normally scared to death.  They are unsocialized animals that were put out by someone, somewhere and they are trying to get use to being around other dogs and people.  So when you see this just remember that it is not because they are crazy, it’s because they do not know any better.  Get them out and play with them.  The more human interaction they have, the better dog they become.  With the older dogs, when they run up to the cage and start barking at you, it’s not because they are aggressive and want to bite you.  They do this to try and get your attention, to show you that they are the better dog and that they want to be petted and played with as well as the others.  Shelter dogs are not aggressive, they just want a good, warm, loving home to call home. 

Told you so....

The dog I spoke of, literally, a month ago was laid to rest yesterday.  He was an aggressive pit bull that should have never been adopted out in the first place. The lady who adopted him began to fear him and the trainer who's facility he was at did not want him there anymore.  The woman then took him to a pit rescue to try and, in my words, "dump him off" on them.  He bit the woman who runs the rescue as well as two other individuals.  We told that woman she was making a big mistake by trying to adopt that dog out to someone, but instead of listening to people who know dogs and what aggressive behavior looks, they adopt them out anyway.  This is a huge liability anyway, thank goodness for contracts and paperwork.  Once aggressive, always aggressive.  Not only are you doing injustice to others but also to an animal who will never have the quality of life that you want for them.  I hate to say I told you so, but............... I told you so.

Homeward Bound

Homeward Bound is a program that the MSU-CVM students do to get shelter animals adopted in the northern part of the U.S.  The shelters do a PowerPoint of the animals they would like to see go and the students forward those PowerPoints to a few of the shelters in New York.  About a week later they send us an email with their picks and we foster those lucky puppies/dogs out the volunteers for 2 weeks.  They must be out of the shelter environment 2 weeks prior to the transport.  After the first week they come back and get their "halfway check-up".  They do fecal testing and blood work on them to make sure that they are healthy.  They send the foster family home with a couple of wormers for the animals and the next weekend they say "goodbye" to their foster family and "howdy" to a new one in New York! We get success stories from the adopters all the time wanting to know a little more about their background.  "How did they get to our shelter" and why someone would ever want to get rid of such an "innocent creature"?  We try to answer them as much as we can, but there is only so much you can tell someone about how a private citizen found him/her in a cardboard box on the side of the road.... Homeward Bound is a wonderful program for all those unwanted animals that we are overpopulated with here in the south.