HSNBA has once again found ourselves over capacity. While we are no longer putting dogs in the hallway in kennels – because that is what lead to our parvo outbreak last month - every single kennel in the facility is full.
One dog gets adopted, pulled by a rescue or a foster and 2 more come in through Animal Control. It's a daily battle to find places to put all of these lost, abandoned and forgotten dogs.
While the NUMBER of dogs entering the shelter is about the same as always, we are getting far more large breed, adult dogs, often 2 and 3 at time rounded up by Animal Control. These dogs have a MUCH higher length of stay than small dogs and puppies, who typically fly out of the shelter.
So the problem is two fold – not only do these dogs tend to stay here LONGER, they are more expensive to shelter – they eat more food, use more preventative medications, are more expensive to spay and neuter and overall are more costly. And after they stay here 100 days, we often reduce or eliminate their adoption fees in a desperate last ditch attempt to get them out alive, losing any revenue we may have gained by their adoption fee.
HSNBA’s finances are more precarious today than they have been in a long time. We are struggling monthly to make payroll, pay exorbitant utility bills and buy food, vaccines and parasite protection we need to have on hand to insure we are doing the very best we can for all of the animals that enter our shelter.
We have no control over WHAT comes into our shelter, our contracts mandate that we take in EVERY stray dog and cat picked up in our jurisdiction. We are the only open intake shelter in Comal County. In 2022, we took in 1920 dogs and 2616 cats. 90% of those animals left alive in 2022. So far in 2023, 96% of the cats entering the shelter have left alive but only 85% of the dogs. We’ve already been forced to euthanize 40 dogs this year, either due to illness or injuries we could not afford to treat, behavior issues that are too difficult for our average adopter to manage and now, simply because we are out of space.
Here’s a cold hold truth about Animal Sheltering…. It is a lot cheaper to euthanize animals than to take care of them by vaccinating, microchipping and spaying and neutering them, not to mention to mend broken bones, treat heartworm disease, ringworm, upper respiratory infections and other ailments and house them for however long it takes for them to find a new home. We are currently looking at $64,000 budget shortfall this year to add to an already stressful environment.
We can’t do this in a vacuum. We need the community now more than ever – to adopt, to foster, to volunteer and to DONATE.
Without your support, we will no longer be a No Kill Community and it is breaking my heart and the hearts of my brave, hardworking, underpaid teammates who are certainly not doing this job for the money, but the love of animals and their hope that we can indeed give these animals a Second Chance at a First Class Life. But we need your help.
Please help if you can.
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