From our colleagues at the Florida Animal Control Association (FACA):
FACA is working to support HB 157 by Representative Jeff Holcomb and SB 518 by Senator Nick DiCeglie. These bills would protect the contact information of citizens who adopt animals from city and county animal shelters. Today, Florida law requires the release of this information to anyone who asks for it.
Providing opportunities for medical staff, whether certified or on-the-job trained, to grow their knowledge base and continue to develop in their practice is essential. For certified technicians, a certain number of RACE continuing education hours are needed every two years in order to maintain their certificate. For on-the-job trained technicians and assistants, continuing education training provides the opportunity to explore topics that they find interesting but may not run into very often. Finding these opportunities can be challenging, below are five resources to help you get started.
Fear Free Shelter Program
As COVID cases continue to rise in Florida, many organizations are seeking to rethink their workplace safety guidelines and protocols. Leaders are grappling with decisions about mask mandates, vaccination requirements, and how they can best protect employees and the public they serve. Below are some resources that my help as you navigate changes in your organizations policies.
Animal shelters do not often have the opportunity to commit to a major renovation or new building project. So, the decision to start fresh with a new facility or to transform your current space needs to be thoughtfully considered based on a variety of factors, including fundraising capability, site availability, and animal capacity needs now, and at minimum, a decade into the future.
Understanding your fundraising capacity is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. You cannot properly evaluate fundraising capacity without some analysis of your current and future needs. However, you won’t be able to fully define the scope of the project until you know how much money you can raise. We recommend a needs assessment to understand how much it would cost to design and build the project if you were to undertake a major renovation or potentially build a whole new shelter. With this information, your fundraising feasibility consultant can do his or her work more effectively.
With increasing number of natural disasters, there is a need for effective and efficient ways to manage the number of animal transfer to and from your organization. As evidence with California fires or the hurricanes in Louisianna this past year, more and more transfer networks are being created to help get animals quickly out of harms way.
That’s whyPetPoint, in coordination with Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), have built the all-new Transfer Manifest Report — a report designed to make transferring animals, even in emergencies, easier than ever before. Display the animals ready for transfer, along with their vital medical details and behavior status, in a report that opens in Excel for easy sharing or sorting.
How we occupy and move through spaces have been altered by our need to adapt our lives to controlling the spread of COVID-19. It’s now routine to drop-off and pick-up your pooch through the window of your car while waiting in the veterinary hospital’s parking lot. We suspect that many shelters have already adapted operations by, for example, moving some adoption processes on-line, limiting how many potential adopters can be in the lobby at one time, or making your people-traffic go in one direction with separate entrance and exit doors and floor-mapping flow through animal housing.
There are several design techniques that were already prevalent in the animal sheltering world that others now realize will help make all buildings safer to use and occupy during our time of COVID-19 and afterward. Those in the animal care community already know that air quality, flow and filtration help control the spread of airborne pathogens. Compartmentalizing animal housing into smaller spaces makes it easier to contain a disease outbreak and sanitize a space more rapidly. Automatic door openers make it easier to bring crated and non-crated animals through the doorway and provide a touchless entry.
Across the industry, 2020 was an unprecedented year requiring transformation. We at 24Pet understood as a result of COVID-19, our shelter partners may have experienced heightened levels of stress as they continued to care for animals in need and may still be experiencing that. Our industry pivoted to a new normal and we committed to supporting animal welfare and our shelter partners through challenging times. Despite 2020’s challenges, together, we were able to help advance many aspects of your organization’s practices through initiatives that include:
Combating homelessness or a domestic violence situation is a cause that the Humane Society of North Central Florida says some shouldn’t deal with alone.
“And they will not leave that situation if they cannot take their pet with them,” mentioned Margot DeConna the Director of Advancement at the non-profit.
Furry Friends Adoption, Clinic & Ranch (Humane Society of Greater Jupiter/Tequesta) has been nominated for three 2020 Hats Off Nonprofit Awards:
The awards ceremony will take place virtually on December 7th. We wish Ms. Deshong and Furry Friends the very best of luck and congratulate them on the hard work and dedication that led to these nominations.
In September, Southeast Volusia Humane Society put a fancy twist on cat adoptions with their Real Housecats Adoption Promotion. For the entire month, adoption fees for cats featured in the event were just $20! Volunteers with the Society got creative with wardrobe and accessories giving these cats all the bling with NONE of the [email protected]!ch often seen on the popular Real Housewives TV series. The promotion was loads of fun and a huge success for cats (all found homes!) and adopters alike.
Story and photo courtesy of The Association of Animal Welfare Advancement
When the pandemic first hit, Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando regularly asked staff what they needed and how they were doing. Their top 3 concerns? Their safety, their paycheck, and their families. In order to fully support employees who needed a safe space for their children to finish up the school year remotely, the Florida agency set up a Bring Your Child to Work Program.
Here are the key components that made the program such a success:
Photos and information courtesy of Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League
Each year, dozens of local animal rescue groups join together for the Countdown 2 Zero (C2Z) Adoption Event - Palm Beach County’s largest one-day adoption event- in an effort to save the lives of hundreds of animals. Due to COVID-19, the 7th Annual Countdown 2 Zero Adoption Event was held as a virtual event and took place for one-week, instead of one-day.
Article featured in The New Barker Dog Magazine
As our nation responds to the COVID- 19 pandemic, reports of increasing rates of domestic violence have surfaced across the country, including Florida. Thankfully, a new lifesaving law (SB 1082), signed by Governor DeSantis, went into effect on July 1, 2020.
