Consolidate county

Consolidate county's animal rescue efforts
Kalamazoo Gazette, Letters to the Editor
Sunday, February 11, 2007

By Stephen Lawrence and Aaron Winters

The Kalamazoo community loves its animals. As evidence, there are more than half a dozen rescues active in Kalamazoo County focusing their efforts on helping homeless and unwanted animals find new homes. Each group holds fundraisers in support of its individual mission and, at one time, several of these organizations were considering raising money for their own buildings or shelters.

To try to determine whether these individual groups could work more efficiently together, the Kalamazoo Humane Society and the Kalamazoo County Animal Services and Enforcement Department, with help of facilitator David Artley from Kalamazoo County government, convened meetings of the interested groups in 2004. A major issue the groups hoped to explore was the possibility of working out of a common shelter or ``animal care center.'' Over time, some of the groups dropped out of the joint meetings, but each one promised to support the group's common goals.

Today, three years later, the Kalamazoo County Animal Services and Enforcement Department, the Kalamazoo Humane Society, the Kalamazoo Animal Rescue, and the Kalamazoo Dog Training Club remain at the table, committed to working together to raise private money for a new state-of-the-art building that can house all four groups. The plan is for each group to remain independent of the others while sharing space and working together to help lower the community's numbers of stray, lost and injured animals. At a time when money is tight, it makes sense to work together and consolidate resources. The groups are breaking new ground by creating this model of cooperation that will significantly benefit the animals, the participating groups, and our community.

The Kalamazoo Humane Society will continue to focus its efforts on reducing our community's pet overpopulation through low-income spay/neuter programs and education. Within the new building, the Humane Society will have a veterinary office and surgical wing where low-income families can have their pets altered at cost. There will be a reference library, offices, and a food storage area for the food bank.

Sharing space with Animal Services will allow the Humane Society's veterinarians to spay/neuter the shelter's adoptable animals before they leave the shelter. The Humane Society will be able to provide Animal Services with volunteer assistance as needed, and Animal Services will assist the Humane Society with educational programs and fundraising events.

Most stray and lost dogs in Kalamazoo County are brought into the current shelter and held until an owner or a new family or individual rescues them. The current shelter, though mandated to exist by Michigan law, is not designed well enough to maintain these animals in a healthy state. This new state-of-the-art shelter will hold nearly twice the number of dogs and cats currently served by Kalamazoo County Animal Services and Enforcement and will provide a healthier environment for the animals that pass through its doors.

The drainage and air filtration systems will limit the spread of disease instead of encouraging it as in the present shelter. The new shelter, which will be much more inviting to the public, will hold dogs in spacious pens instead of stainless steel cages. In addition to separate holding areas for the adoptable animals and those that are quarantined or being held for court cases, it will offer easy access to the Humane Society's veterinary wing for spay/neuters and injured strays brought into the shelter.

Kalamazoo Animal Rescue (KAR) will have office space within the building to keep track of the adoptable animals in the shelter. KAR will be able to have its animals treated by the Humane Society's veterinarian. KAR will use its foster care program to help when space is needed in the shelter.

The new building will include a large training room in which the Kalamazoo Dog Training Club can offer classes and club members can practice with their own dogs. Classes offered to first-time dog owners and those who adopt animals will teach them how to socialize and train their dogs so they will be less likely to become problem animals. The new training room will also be used for group adoptathons, seminars and fundraising events.

Possibly most noteworthy, the money for this new building will be raised through donations, not tax dollars. We do not wish to burden taxpayers, and we are confident that our community recognizes that the animals in Kalamazoo County deserve much better sheltering accommodations than our current facility offers.

The Kalamazoo Humane Society has offered to take the lead in raising the money for the shelter so that all donations will be tax deductible. The Humane Society will own the building, and the other partners will lease space in the building. This collaboration between government, private not-for-profit and private for-profit groups, has not been previously accomplished in the animal welfare field. Once again, our community is poised to be a leader in innovation and resource utilization.

With this new animal shelter, Kalamazoo County will become a model for other communities that are struggling with similar animal welfare and financial issues. We believe that a community such as ours, which loves and values its animals, will help the Kalamazoo Humane Society raise the needed funds to build a community animal care center of which we can all be proud.

Stephen Lawrence is director of Kalamazoo Animal Services and Aaron Winters is the executive director of the Kalamazoo Humane Society.