Making a Difference One Four-Pawed Critter (Cat or Dog) At a Time
– By Tom Garrison –
Jackson Day Animal Rescue (JDAR) is based in Hurricane and serves southwestern Utah. The 501(c)(3) non-profit, no-kill, volunteer animal rescue organization exists to reduce euthanasia rates at regional shelters through spay and neuter programs, public education, and discovering houses for cats and dogs. It saves animals from Washington County federal government shelters or ill or undesirable animals their owners can no longer look after, puts them into foster houses or at the PetSmart Adoption Center, and eventually discovers them long-term houses.
While no animal well-being organization or federal government company is accountable for collecting nationwide data, some nationwide companies—the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), and Best Friends Animal Society based in Kanab, Utah—do offer price quotes stemmed from studies. In addition, sites such as Petpedia collect a wealth of details about the state of cats and dogs in the United States.
The information is spotty due to an absence of reporting requirements, a huge selection of little animal shelter/rescue groups that might never ever be gotten in touch with, and numerous states that don’t need reporting. Nevertheless, some realities do emerge.
According to Petpedia, there are around 14,000 animal shelters and rescue groups across the country. With numerous exceptions, the numerous government-operated and financed animal shelters (“the pound”) are eliminate operations. Conversely, many non-governmental, non-profit shelters and rescue groups are no-eliminate. Are these labels, kill and no-kill, precise? To a degree, yes.
While there is dispute in the animal well-being motion, many concur that shelters can euthanize as much as 10% of their animals for factors of health and habits and still be thought about no-kill. Best Friends Animal Society says, “Typically, the number of pets who are suffering from irreparable medical or behavioral issues that compromise their quality of life and prevent them from being rehomed is not more than 10% of all dogs and cats entering shelters. Therefore, we designate shelters that meet the 90% save rate benchmark as no-kill.”
Others state no-kill ways actually that, no-kill.
Due to an absence of space and/or resources, a normal kill shelter keeps domestic family pets and strays for an established variety of days (it differs from one state to another) and after that eliminates them.
According to the ASPCA, each year, around 920,000 animals are put down—390,000 dogs and 530,000 cats. While in human terms, this totals up to genocide, it is a huge enhancement. In 2011, around 2.6 million shelter cats and dogs were killed.
Until a couple of years back, the circumstance in Washington County resembled the majority of the nation. Fortunately, and through goodwill and deal with both sides (no-kill supporters and city board), all 6 federal government and non-governmental animal shelters in Washington County are now no-kill. In contrast to Washington County, 20 of 61 shelters in Utah stay kill shelters, specifically in backwoods.
Imagine yourself as the supervisor of a government-run shelter. You have kennels for 25 dogs and 30 cats. What takes place when the 26th dog or 31st cat is generated? Overcrowding the animals or an interest the city or county governing body for 10 extra areas for the animals? You might succeed with the latter, however possibly not. There is constantly intense competitors for limited resources (generally money) at every federal government level, and the care of animals is rarely a top priority. Say you achieved success in your effort for extra financing. That put simply off the day when you have more dogs and/or cats than the center can house.
Recently signing up with the JDAR family is Gina Bolstad. Gina is retired from printing and workplace work. Her printing and style background is plainly shown in her function as social networks master for JDAR. With the help of her 3 cats, Gina reveals what concise, properly designed, instructional, and typically funny Facebook posts must appear like. I motivate everybody to go to the JDAR Facebook page and experience the work of a pro. (https://www.facebook.com/jacksondayfoundation)
Gina is enthusiastic about animal rescue and thinks all cats and dogs are worthy of a safe and caring home. She works about 12 hours a week for JDAR making certain the message about cats and dogs waiting on their permanently home reaches as large an audience as possible.
The ASPCA approximates that 6.3 million buddy animals, 3.1 million dogs, and 3.2 million cats go into shelters every year, possibly most in federal government shelters. (This represents a decrease from around 7.2 million in 2011.)
What can be done to stem the tide of undesirable buddy animals? The apparent and most gentle response is detailed spay and neutering programs. Clearly, there are countless undesirable cats and dogs. About 85% of dogs and 80% of cats in the United States have actually been made sterile or sterilized. “Fixed” family pets statistically live longer, tend to participate in less battles, wander less, and are consequently less most likely to be struck by automobiles, are less aggressive, and have actually minimized incident of specific kinds of cancers in female cats and dogs. Additionally, the cost of repairing a family pet is less than the cost of raising a puppy or kitten for a year.
The animal overpopulation issue is resolved by numerous shelters. JDAR just embraces out animals that have actually been made sterile or neutered, depend on date on vaccinations, and are microchipped. Since a lot of the animals JDAR admits are not repaired, this is a big, continuing expense for the organization.
Along with spay and neutering programs, embracing rescue animals is vital. According to the ASPCA around 4.1 million shelter animals are embraced each year—2 million dogs embraced and 710,00 dogs who got in as strays are gone back to their owners. For cats, the numbers are 2.1 million cats embraced, and 100,000 cats who got in as strays are gone back to owners. In 2022, 167 cats and 93 dogs were embraced from JDAR.
JDAR’s PetSmart Adoption Center is handled by Judith Figlo. No complete stranger to a chaotic schedule, Judith volunteers around 30 hours weekly for JDAR and has a cat and dog in her animal family. She makes sure the cats are well looked after at PetSmart and arranges regular adoption occasions.
Judith is a just recently retired medical pharmacist and in her extra time serves on the JDAR adoption committee and board of directors. She has actually been offering and promoting for animals all her adult life. During her 2 years of JDAR work, the regional animal well-being neighborhood has actually found out not to get in between Judith and a clingy cat. She is increasingly protective of her furry charges.
A rarely discussed, however vital part of non-governmental shelters and companies is promoting. Fostering is an important action on a family pet’s journey to discovering their permanently home. A home environment enables animals to feel safe and secure to become their finest selves. In some cases, the foster animals are ill or hurt and require care to go back to health and adoptable status. Others are the young or undesirable senior animals with just a couple of months or years to live—near to crossing the rainbow bridge (animal enthusiasts promote the death of a family pet). Fostering enables cats and dogs to sharpen their social abilities, if required get healthy, and establish favorable habits towards individuals and other animals to provide the very best possibility for success in their adoptive home. Fosters hold true heroes, nursing an animal back to health or interacting socially a child, and ending up being mentally connected, all the while understanding the cat or dog will wind up in a brand-new permanently home.
Thirty-5 years of age Margaret Ertel is the JDAR foster organizer for cats. Margaret has actually offered for JDAR for a year and credits her animal caring and promoting youth family environment for her love of animals. She volunteers about 30 hours a week and holds down a full-time job as a receptionist. She enjoys promoting animals and says, “I foster so I don’t need to adopt more animals to add to my one dog and two cats.”
Retired research study organizer with the University of Washington and the University of California at San Diego Lisa Day Mercer is president and cofounder, with Darryl Wolcott, of JDAR in 2019. She says it takes about $5,000 a month to keep the organization feasible. That seems like a lot till you think about the typical $3,5000 veterinary and medication expenditures each month, plus insurance coverage, dog and cat food, and so on. For financing, JDAR counts on numerous little contributions under $100, some big contributions, a number of fundraising events, and grants. It is all volunteer, nobody—dog and cat volunteers, other volunteers, fosters, board members—is paid.
Keeping JDAR running efficiently is a continuous obstacle. While the variety of volunteers, consisting of fosters, varies in between 35 and 40 at any one time, all essential tasks are finished. Often this suggests volunteers, some with fulltime routine jobs, spend a part of their nights at the PetSmart Adoption Center to tidy litter boxes, feed, groom, give medications, and fraternize the cats. Or spend their Saturdays at adoption occasions.
For Lisa, who does JDAR work about 60 hours weekly, the very best experience is confessing a clingy animal—possibly ill, or hurt, or old, or unsocialized—nursing it back to health, and embracing it to its brand-new permanently home. While it is not humanly possible, she “wants to save them all.” She likewise keeps in mind that JDAR would not exist without its team of generous (with time, energy, and money) volunteers.
Another issue in the animal well-being motion are the many feral/abandoned cat nests throughout the land. Called neighborhood cats, these strays (typically abandoned family animals) and ferals (born to complimentary roaming moms and never ever fraternized human beings) tend to form loose knit neighborhoods.
Due to their worry of human beings, they are typically not adoptable. Estimates of the variety of neighborhood cats differ hugely, The Humane Society says there might be 30 to 40 million in the United States. They are discovered in many areas and might be source of issues—eliminating birds, battling with outside domestic cats, consuming dog or cat food positioned outdoors, and digging in lawns.
Kris Neal leads the neighborhood cat network (the organization is “One More Chance”) in southern Utah. She likewise works carefully and speaks with JDAR about numerous cat problems and a few of her neighborhood cats are embraced from JDAR.
At initially take, one might presume she is simply another insane cat lady. Don’t catch the stereotype—even a brief conversation with Kris reveals her as an enthusiastic, well notified, politically smart, eager beaver of energy concerning community/feral cats. This Utah native started a trap-neuter-return (TNR) program in St. George more than 25 years back.
The program intends to support, and ideally lower, the variety of southern Utah neighborhood cats. Instead of eliminating neighborhood cats, the TNR program traps, neuters (and in numerous locations immunizes), and returns the cats to their neighborhood area. Along with being neutered and immunized, the pointer of one ear of the cat is snipped off, tipped. This makes it simple to recognize a caught cat as already neutered and it can be right away launched.
Kris personally handles 20 big cat nests while a cadre of volunteer caretakers monitor ratings of community nests. The tasks consist of leaving food and water for the felines; trapping the cats for spay/neutering, vaccinations, and healthcare; and returning them to their nest.
The TNR program is more effective long term and definitely more gentle that merely eliminating neighborhood cats. The organized damage of a neighborhood cat nest almost constantly results in the “vacuum effect”—either brand-new cats move to the abandoned location to make use of whatever food sources brought in the initial residents or survivors breed and the nest restores itself. Eradication is a short-term option, yielding no long-term advantages. TNR is plainly the most efficient way to manage neighborhood cat nests.
JDAR volunteers are amongst the approximated 44% of American households to have a dog member of the family (around 78 million dogs) and the 35% with a feline part of the family (around 85 million cats). (I have actually been a JDAR volunteer for more than a year and have 2 cat relative.) They, and the thousands like them operating in shelters/rescue groups around the nation, are unique. For them, having animal relative and contributing numerous hours at the shelter, walking dogs, cleaning up cat boxes, taking animals to the vet, fundraising, providing medications to dogs and cats, arranging adoption occasions, and so on is a way of life since animals matter. It can be securely presumed all those volunteers think conserving a dog or cat will not alter the world. But for that cat or dog, the world modifications permanently.
“Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.”
Arthur Schopenhauer, German theorist and author (1788-1860)
You can call JDAR at:
Jackson Day Animal Rescue (JDAR)
Phone: 435-200-5253
Email: [email protected]
References
American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). “Pet Statistics.” 2023.
American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). 2023 “Shelter Intake and Surrender.”
Best Friends Animal Society. “Explore our policies and positions on important issues in animal welfare” 2023.
Best Friends, No-Kill 2025. “Utah” 2023.
Best Friends Animal Society, No-Kill 2025. “Washington County, UT.” 2023. /utah?:linktarget=_self&:embed=yes
Best Friends Animal Society. “What no-kill really means.” 2023.
Cvetkovsko, Ljubica. “44 Shocking Animal Shelter Statistics (2023 Update).” in Petpedia. December 7, 2020. https://petpedia.co/animal-shelter-statistics/#:~:text=Altogether%2C%20there%20are%20around%2014%2C000,across%20the%20US%20every%20year.
The Humane Society of the United States. “Outdoor Cats FAQ.” 2023. https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/outdoor-cats-faq#:~:text=Back%20to%20top-,Why%20are%20there%20so%20many%20cats%20outdoors%3F,own%20proclivities%2C%20these%20cats%20reproduce.
The Humane Society of the United States. “Why You Should Spay/Neuter Your Pet.” 2023.
Ilijasic, Tea Turkalj.”35+ Key Spay and Neuter Statistics (2023 Update).” Petpedia. 2023. https://petpedia.co/spay-and-neuter-statistics/#:~:text=About%2085%25%20of%20dogs%20in,have%20been%20spayed%20or%20neutered.
