Houston, TX
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Sponsored by No Kill Houston
Come to the all-day seminar which has been called “a prerequisite for rescue groups and organizations that are serious about changing their communities to No Kill.”
Workshops include:
Building a No Kill Community: Cost-effective Lifesaving Programs
In 2003, the open door animal control shelter in Tompkins County saved 100% of healthy and treatable animals, and 100% of feral cats. Over nine out of ten dogs and cats were saved, without big bucks and without a big shelter—a reduction in the kill rate of 75%. At the same time, the agency went from a $120,000 a year deficit to finishing the year with a surplus, raising more money than it spent. Using the same model, the open door animal control shelter in Charlottesville, VA saved 92% of all dogs and cats, while Washoe County, NV reduced the death rate by over 50% in one year. Since then, other municipalities have achieved similar success. Learn what programs and services help save lives.
Big Dogs, Shy Cats & All the Rest: Finding Homes for All of Them
Pit Bulls, Rottweillers, big black dogs, shy cats and cats with attitude. Learn the strategies to increase adoptions, effectively market shelter animals, and find loving, new homes for all the healthy and treatable pets in your shelter, including those hard to place ones. Using this model, a community that takes in tens of thousands of dogs and cats annually increased dog adoptions by nearly 60% and more than doubled cat adoptions (104%) in less than one year.
Saving Shelter Dogs: Evaluation, Socialization, Treatment & Placement
Some shelters have adopted the rhetoric but not the programs of No Kill. As a result, they are using “temperament testing” to deem dogs unadoptable and make their statistics look better. Saving shelter dogs is as much about fair and proper evaluation, socialization and stimulation in the shelter, treatment and rehabilitation strategies and marketing, as it is about adoptions. You’ll learn strategies from evaluation to placement from a pro-life No Kill perspective.
Feral Cat Care & Advocacy
Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) is not only humane, it’s effective. But beyond the basics of trapping and spay/neuter, a comprehensive program to save the lives of feral cats and reducing the number of kittens coming into the shelter involves resolving neighbor disputes, working with the media, dispelling myths about predation and public safety, and changing the attitudes of your health department and animal control agency. This workshop will give you the tools you need to effectively do that.
Reforming Animal Control: A Guide to Citizen Action
How do you get animal control to shift from a reactive, public health model of sheltering based on killing, to a proactive one which balances its animal control and animal care responsibilities in order to maximize lifesaving? This workshop will provide strategies for helping animal control change on its own when it is willing, will debunk the “open vs. limited admission” myth, and provide strategies for forcing animal control to change when it is resistant to doing so.
For more information, go to www.nokillhouston.com
To register, go to nokillhouston.eventbrite.com
Proceeds benefit No Kill Houston.
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Notable: The Bark magazine has named Redemption an Editor’s Pick as a notable read in the current issue (Jan/Feb 2009). You can also read my article on a renewed hope for No Kill in next month’s issue (available wherever books and magazines are sold).