there is a very short blurb about Town Lake Animal Center and the Animal Advisory Commission with a link to Austin Pets Alive! There was a heartbreaking picture of a dog that was euthanized today. I hate to show it to you but it is what we see everyday and it is what keeps us moving FAST to get to No Kill.
Last night, I walked the euthanasia list with our normal volunteers (who are amazing beyond words). I can't tell you how hard that was to walk by the cages of these dogs (I couldn't bring myself to even look at the cats) and know they were going to die before noon the next day. We had to leave 2 dogs and a family of cats behind to die (one dog was pictured, the others not). In the summer the list will be as long as 75 animals each day...
Why did we leave these dogs? I will tell you exactly:
We don't have enough adoption sites to hold more big dogs (we need a vehicle to open another one which will save 8-15 dogs a week).
These dogs needed a little training (we need a facility so that we can hold them long enough to go through "3 day boot camp") before going out to offsite adoptions.
Why did we leave these cats?
They had a nonfatal form of upper respiratory infection (the human cold equivalent) and needed 2 weeks to recover. We don't have enough fosters that can keep sick cats away from personal cats.
We don't have a building to house them in case of no fosters.
It hurts to think that time, fosters, a vehicle, or a building is all that is standing between life and death for these animals. It hurts even more to know that tonight there was another list and more animals that we had to leave behind. And tomorrow night and the next....
Please Austin, help us get to the point where we are saving 90%. We are so proud of being able to save 10% of the list each night but that does little to ease the pain of the leaving the others behind.
We know what we need to do to save these animals, we just need the support (financial, volunteer, and foster) to get it done.
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