Small moves in the right direction

City hires vet for shelter

I am hopeful about the new veterinarian the City of Las Cruces hired for our municipal animal shelter. Dr. Laura J. Henckel has worked many years in the animal welfare world, with extensive experience in high-volume spay and neuter as well as having worked for a couple of years at one of the most beloved places for down-and-out animals in the United States: Best Friends Animal Society in Utah.

It is also good to see that Dr. Henckel got her veterinary degree from the university that has been at the forefront of shelter medicine for some years now: the University of California, Davis. As a discipline, shelter medicine is fairly new and wasn't documented very well until a few years ago. The UC Davis Shelter Medicine Portal contains a vast amount of factsheets and advice for shelters struggling with disease management and trying to save more lives. Check them out via the following link:

UC Davis Shelter Health Portal

I sincerely welcome Dr. Henckel to the area and hope the vision she has is to help turn our shelter around in the area of the veterinary care our homeless animals receive as well as lifesaving efforts. This includes a big welcome back to our shelter offering low-cost spay/neuter and vaccinations for those less fortunate but who still love their animals and want to care and provide for them.

Additionally, protocols and procedures that outline proper intake, routing, and assessment of animals is a must for any shelter wishing to improve its save rate. I am already having dreams of vaccinations at intake or shortly thereafter and the end of darker days of the past when mistakes led to unnecessary death to large groups of animals who should not have been introduced to disease in the first place.

111 animals altered in Chaparral

The partnership between the Dona Ana County Sheriff's Department and the Spay Neuter Action Program got the new mobile spay/neuter van on the road for the first time in our county. The last two weekends were spent in Chaparral, and more than 100 cats and dogs were altered. Congratulations to all of those involved.



To help start making a dent in our community's kill rate, the van needs to stay on the road for many months in outlying areas of the county, which contribute about 60% of the animals that end up at our shelter. SNAP is planning to run the van next in Radium Springs and Hatch in January and February, but I urge other non-profits to join their ranks or donate money to SNAP to keep up the good work. I also strongly challenge our County Commission to look into allocating more funds to this important effort, as well as the City of Las Cruces.

The last I heard, the City Council decided to stop its funding of SNAP programs next year because of the new vet that was hired at the shelter--assuming this one person can handle providing spay/neuter services to the entire city. However, that is a big mistake and very short-sighted.

In order to get to the kind of volume we need in spay/neuter in our entire community, we need to attack the issue at all fronts. We need many programs and services and opportunities for everyone in the city and county to do the right thing. That means we need the shelter to provide services to City residents, but we also need SNAP's voucher program to get funded and keep up the volume in the city from that end, and we lastly need the mobile van to run in outlying areas of the county each weekend to target those people who cannot or will not drive to the city to get their pets fixed.

Last but not least: stop the cat killing

It is truly time for our community to open its eyes and see that the way we deal with stray/feral cats is sorely outdated and does nothing to reduce their population nor protect public health nor mitigate issues people complain about regarding loose cats. Our city and county leaders need to look at model ordinances from around the nation that allow for feral cat management programs and change our local laws to emulate these. And, our animal control departments need to do some research, too. They could start by talking to others in the state, such as those working TNR in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, etc. Even our next door neighbor and fellow border community in El Paso supports TNR efforts and has ordinances in place to allow for this.

Until we stop killing up to 300 cats a month at our shelter, our kill rate will not go down. More importantly, these deaths are doing nothing to help people deal with the reality they face every day in their neighborhoods. Most of the calls I get for help are from people who want to continue caring for a group of cats that have moved onto their property. They mostly need help getting them fixed and vaccinated and wish it was not against the law to feed and care for the animals.

Very few people want to see these animals hauled off and killed, which only creates a void that other cats come in to fill anyway. We could even go as far as raising funds to help people put up cat fencing on their properties as well. I'm about to put up a cat fence in my home which I purchased from the Deer Busters company online, but there are other options for cat enclosure systems, including instructions from Alley Cat Allies on buidling a fencing system from scratch and at a much lower cost and from items you can purchase at a home improvement store:

Do-it-yourself cat fence
HSUS: "Fence Me In"

If you have not read the information provided by Alley Cat Allies and others who are working hard to save the lives of homeless cats, please do so. It is the start to dispelling the myths we have operated from for too long.

County mobile spay/neuter van successful this past weekend

Thanks to SNAP and the Dona Ana County Sheriff's Department

This past weekend's run of the county's new mobile vehicle that can be used for various animal-welfare needs, including as a spay/neuter clinic, was a success in Chaparral. About 65 surgeries were performed on dogs and cats, and the van will be back in Chaparral this coming Saturday and Sunday.

For the latest information on where the van will be next and to find out how to volunteer for this enormous effort at raising the volume of spay and neuter in targeted areas, please log onto
www.snapnewmexico.org.

Coming soon: a coalition aimed at action

In January, we are forming a coalition that will perform a logical community assessment followed by actions we can take to start saving more animal lives in our community TODAY. As soon as we have our first meeting time and place set, I'll let everyone know. Look out for announcements on this blog, in the newspapers, via e-mail, etc. If you are interested in participating, e-mail me at cheressemm@gmail.com.

More from interview with Sue Cosby

Here is another great response to a question from the Las Cruces No Kill Study Group's survey from a shelter director in NJ who has experience and know-how in working toward no kill in a community. Her responses alone were instrumental in my own personal change of perspective in that convincing our leaders that no kill is possible in our community cannot be achieved by writing another report, no matter how detailed or well-written. We need to start showing them that it can be done here.

Q: What other shelters or No Kill resources do you think we should contact for the purposes of this report--which is to try our best to describe what is going on in our nation in regards to No Kill advancements? As a successful director yourself, do you have any advice about the path we are taking in writing a full report on the state of No Kill in our nation today in hopes it will show our leaders that more and more people are showing success when the programs are implemented correctly?

A: This is just my opinion, so please don’t be offended! There are lots of different ways to accomplish your goals but this is my take on it and how I generally operate:

I’m much more of a believer in doing rather than talking or writing although I use writing to support the accomplishments. When you talk (or write) about things before doing, you open the door to the endless criticism that comes from anti-no kill camps, which does nothing to advance the cause and can actually hurt worse in the end. No matter how many examples you can find from around the country, you will always be attacked by the basic premise you noted above – "it can’t happen here". Other arguments include demographic, financial, you-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about, you name it.

When you DO things and then tell people about it, the criticism is quite often meaningless or blunted because you can let the world know that what you are talking about actually works. You’ve done it in your community.

While your effort is laudable, I don’t believe it will be as effective as jumping in and accomplishing something important such as tackling one aspect of the No Kill Equation and proving that change can happen within your community. Then your writing efforts will be more effective because you are coming from a position of accomplishment within your own community. You will be viewed less as someone who is criticizing and more as someone who is a knowledgeable person in the field.

One of my favorite phrases to hear is when someone overtly or implicitly gives me the challenge “prove me wrong” when it comes to saving lives. I also love it when my staff does it to me if I think they are in over their heads. The next time someone says a particular program that you believe will work is impossible, prove them wrong by getting the job done.

These are just my thoughts, and I’m sure that other people will have differing opinions.