Agenda - 09-19-2006-7b - Laserfiche WebLink

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Orange County Animal Services Sheltering Practices and Philosophies 56 in their regions. But while some operate in places so advanced and so blessed with responsible pet owners and forward-thinking public officials that they can actually afford to lobby far off-leash areas, others live in areas so behind the times that letting animals roam is standard practice and few if any leash laws exist, They are often beginning at vastly different starting points, but headed toward the same finish line: a day when there will be a lifelong, caring home for every companion animal, Culturally, politically, and economically, the idyllic, progressive California communities that have the time and resources to debate the importance of dog parks might as well be on another planet-one that seems far, far away to those who live in a place where many dogs see no more of the outdoors than their backyard chains allow and cats are treated like "nuisance" animals. In the mid-'90s, while the well-established and better funded shelters around the country were just beginning to debate the finer points of who was adoptable, who was treatable, and who was "nonrehabilitatable," the animals in Taylor County weren't being adopted at all. Those left unclaimed lived out their last days in a facility with no running water and a "euthanasia" chamber fashioned out of a leaky old freezer, And even now, as community after community sets a goal to stop euthanizing "adoptable" animals within the next five to ten years, there are vast stretches of this country where the animals are all but forgotten-places where dogs are shot instead of humanely euthanized, where shelters are not shelters but just collections of wooden crates, concrete blocks, and chicken wire. As the national and big-city media celebrate the achievements already made for animals in areas like San Francisco and Marin County, the local press in many of America's rural areas have been uncovering a different side of the story-like that told by the dog warden in Casey County, Kentucky, who, on $400 a month, is expected to feed the animals, pay for gas, and use whatever's left over for his own salary, Bridging the Wide Divide In a homogeneous country, every community could apply the same cookie-cutter formula to its homeless animal problem and chart the kind of progress that's been made in communities where animals have finally gained status as sentient beings who are part of the family. But animal shelters are far from immune to the economic and cultural divides that plague U.S. society; in fact, in poor areas, they are often exaggerated mirrors of those gaps, as animals tend to be the last priority on the list of government functions in most communities. There is no better illustration of this contrast than the range of work performed by The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), publisher of this magazine, Recognizing the marked achievements that many communities have made in reducing intake numbers through spay/neuter campaigns and progressive animal