On the road to rescue
It is not uncommon to hear that the Humane Society of Imperial County is often overcrowded.
The shelter was built in the early 1970s and when it was designed, the growing pet overpopulation definitely was not taken into consideration. The shelter was built to house about 100 animals at a time, but recently there have been times where we have had up to four hundred or even five hundred animals in our care.
This overcrowding has become a serious problem. Our staff and our volunteers realize that this overcrowding is not ideal for the animals. For customers, it is very overwhelming to walk into a loud kennel and see literally hundreds of eyes staring at you, begging for a home.
Due to the fact that there is so much backyard breeding and not enough pet owners spay and neuter their pets here in the Imperial Valley, our shelter has become a dumping site for literally thousands of unwanted pets each year.
At the beginning of 2014, we made a promise that no animal in our care would ever be euthanized for time or space constraints. We made the decision to become the most active and motivated team, give these animals the second chance that they deserve, and find loving homes for them at all costs. As the phrase goes, “Location, location, location”, when it comes to finding homes for thousands of orphaned pets, that phrase certainly applies.
Although we are currently placing an average of sixty cats and dogs a month into homes within our community, unfortunately that is not enough. In order to save as many lives as possible we must send a large number of animals in our care to rescue groups.
Rescue groups are groups or other shelters that take on all responsibility of finding good homes for animals that come from either overcrowded shelters or high kill shelters (or both). Now you might be wondering, “Why send so many animals to rescue groups?” Our rescue partners are in areas where the pet overpopulation problem is not as prevalent as it is here in the Imperial Valley.
This creates a much higher demand for the adoption of companion animals in bigger cities with many other resources.
Most importantly, this helps to alleviate overcrowding in our shelter so that we can keep our promise in not having to euthanize cats and dogs for time or space. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of our staff and volunteers, the love and understanding from our rescue partners, our board of directors, to the folks that donated our Harry Weissman PetMobile, and Wings of Rescue, we are saving more lives now than ever before. Just this month alone (June 2017), we have sent 162 animals to rescue.
All of our rescue partners are outside of the Imperial Valley and are all over the map. Our four legged furkids often go to San Diego, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Orange County, Washington, New York, Idaho, and even Canada!
The rescue groups that we work with are all no-kill groups and have a very high success rate at finding homes for the cats and dogs that they pull from our shelter in very short amount of time. A few of these groups are shelters, but for the most part they function on a foster basis only.
This means that many of the animals are in a home.
Our rescue partners frequently send us pictures of the animals that were transferred to them once they have been adopted and are in the care of their new families. On average, animals from our shelter stay with the rescues for no longer than two weeks before they are adopted into loving homes.
As mentioned before in a few previous columns, we are always looking for volunteers to help us transport orphaned pets on their freedom rides to their second chance at a long and happy life. If you would like to volunteer as a “Freedom Rider,” or for more about donating towards freedom rides, and/ or networking, please contact us for more details 760352-1911.