Dog Community

I love my animal shelter!

Cita

Posted : 1/25/2007 4:26:27 PM

I went back to my local animal shelter today after not having visited for many years. I used to volunteer there back when I was still living in the area. And my goodness, it is such a peaceful, nice, caring place.

The buildings are surrounded by grass, with little paths winding around the property so volunteers can take the dogs for a walk. Volunteers have to go through a fairly rigorous training/tryout period before being allowed to handle the animals. (You need extra training to work with the "exotics" such as pigs or goats that occasionally come in.)

There are boxes of brushes, toys, and treats for the dogs. You can put them in a pen to play with other dogs (with special permission depending on the particular dog(s) in question, of course), take them for a walk around the premises, brush them, play with them, and otherwise give them attention for as long as you want.

For the cats, there are two "play rooms" (that are also "audition" rooms for prospective adopters). You can let the cat out in the room to run around, play, or just hang out in a non-caged environment. There are scratching posts, toys, and other such cat-interesting things. They try to let each cat out once a day if they can, and if no volunteers are around they'll give cats free play time in those (glass-walled for supervision) rooms.

Even the rabbits and other small animals get great care. There are portable exercise pens for volunteers to take the animals out and let them run around in the grass. They get to hop around outside, nibble on grass, and snuggle with the volunteers if that is what they so desire.

The staff there is super friendly, really knowledgeable, very caring, and just overall amazing. It's a "no kill" shelter, obviously well-funded, that relies heavily on donations. If only all shelters had the resources and staff to be so comfortable, right? But hey, one at a time...

I'm just so happy to see a shelter done "right" that I had to share

Irvine Animal Care Center: [linkhttp://www.cityofirvine.org/depts/cs/animalcare/irvine_animal_care_center.asp]http://www.cityofirvine.org/depts/cs/animalcare/irvine_animal_care_center.asp[/link]

lorib

Posted : 1/25/2007 8:45:26 PM

We have an old shelter that a group is raising money to replace. I can hardly wait because we are going to have a great area like your shelter does!! Our animals get good care, but we would loooove to have a "get acquainted" area, and just more room.

Margaret Tyler

Posted : 1/25/2007 9:28:15 PM

Our local county animal shelter is doing better by leaps and bounds.

rwbeagles

Posted : 1/25/2007 9:30:07 PM

Awesome! THAT'S what I like my tax dollars to fund [

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tacran

Posted : 1/27/2007 1:33:06 AM

It's always enouraging to see shelters that are using progressive ideas to make the experiences for people and pets who go to them a pleasant one. Sounds like a great effort has made it a great place!

One thing I wanted to point out is that most shelters are private, non-profit shelters. That is, they get ZERO funding from tax dollars, whether federal, state, or local. If it's a shelter that is run by the county or local government, then tax dollars support it. Otherwise, the shelter relies 100% on donations from the community and income from it's own programs (adoption and surrender fees, training classes, retail sales, etc.). Also, they're usually independent, not affiliated with "national" organizations like ASPCA or HSUS, so they don't get funds from them either. So if your area shelter isn't funded by the tax base, you may want to support it with donations of money or supplies, volunteer work, participating in fundraisers, etc. They need the support of like-minded community members to help bring them to the best level they can be!