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RAWL asks
for support
To the Editor:
Recently, the Rappahannock Animal Welfare League asked the people of our community for financial help to send our shelter manager, Mary Lou Walters, to an Animal Care Expo in Orlando, Fla. We are pleased to announce that because of the generous donations that came in, Mary was able to attend this event. We want to extend our thanks to those of you who made this trip a reality for RAWL and Mary Lou.
The Expo, put on by the Humane Society of the United States, proved to be a source of invaluable information to our organization. Mary attended seminars on rabies, fundraising, grants, direct mail fundraising, Operation Outreach USA, The Year of the Cat, feral cats, and more. She was also able to talk with many distributors and obtain information on their products. The entire trip was a resounding success, and will prove beneficial to both RAWL, and the animals in our care.
In addition to being a great source of information, the Expo was also a window to the pet overpopulation crisis that exists in the United States today. The grim reality is that over 20 million domestic dogs and cats, lose their lives in animal shelters across the country each year.
It is RAWL’s policy to try to find homes for all the animals that come into our care. The unfortunate fact is that we are finding it increasingly difficult to do. It is not that homes do not exist out there for our animals, but it is because we are so limited on space at the shelter.
By law, shelters are required to keep an animal for five days, after whcih the animal is placed for adoption, or euthanized. The average stay for an animal at our shelter in 1992, was 12.5 days. In other words, it takes about a week to find a home for an animal at the shelter, once its five days are up. Thus far we have been able to provide the extra week for an animal, because we have had the space.
Unfortunately, this year people in our county are relinquishing ownership of animals, and the animal warden is bringing in strays at a faster rate than we are able to keep up with. In order to save the lives of animals whose five days are up, we have been placing animals in foster care homes. This is also becoming harder to do.
The bottom line is, that although we know our community is unique in many ways, we are right up there with the rest of the U.S., when it come to the pet overpopulation crisis. RAWL does not • want our county shelter to become like most
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