Big Change Announced at the Annual Fund Kickoff Party

The Lynchburg Humane Society announced last night at their annual fund kickoff party that it will undertake an aggressive goal:

By the year 2015 all saveable pets sheltered by the Lynchburg Humane Society will be given the medical and behavioral treatment they need to be placed in caring homes.

In the long-range plan there are additional main focuses and goals:

Researching to see if the community will support a new shelter with better living environments for the animals
Increasing the adoptions by 10% each year for the next five years
Increasing the redemption rate so more owners find their lost pets
Feral cat plan to reduce the population of feral and free roaming cats in our community
Targeted spay/neuter plans to reduce the numbers of cats and pit bulls in our community

“This plan is not going to be easy and will take the support of the city and its citizens,” says executive director, Makena Yarbrough. “We feel that it is no longer acceptable to euthanize healthy or treatable abandoned animals. We certainly can’t do this overnight which is why we are giving ourselves time to raise the money needed to implement this plan and provide the services required to reduce the animal over-population problem.”

Comments

IS LHS UNDER ATTACK?

In 2013 the Lynchburg Humane Society (LHS) ended the year with a 92% save rate for the animals in our care, the highest year end figure since we began down the path to No Kill. We were able to reduce the number of cats we took in by 294, compared to 2012, due primarily, we believe, to our spay/neuter efforts. YOU made this possible. We believe the Lynchburg Humane Society is about to be embroiled in a controversial attack by another humane organization because of all the great work we are doing. We want our community and our supporters to know why and to be informed about this controversy because without you we could not do what we are doing. You all are partners in our efforts. This is long so please hang in there and read it in its entirety because there is important information throughout that you probably don’t know. In April PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) sent us a letter asking us to change some of our life saving programs i

They know what they know so don’t give them the facts.

I had the pleasure of having an interesting conversation with a member of another humane organization this past weekend. They are an SPCA that takes in animals for a number of localities and operates as the pound for their area. She asked how we were doing in Lynchburg and I, of course, was excited to tell her about our recent success about our save rate being 84% and having no healthy animal lose their life in our shelter in 2010 and how much the community has embraced the changes as we move toward becoming No Kill. She immediately went to defense mode and asked me loaded questions to prove I was wrong and of course explain to me how our programs wouldn’t work for them. The appointment system, wouldn’t work – pet owners aren’t responsible enough to do the right thing. People must be just “dumping” their animals in other localities.” Fact : The counties that reported their stats for 2010 in the Lynchburg area saw a reduction in the number of animals they took in and more

Rumors can be funny sometimes

Rumors really crack us up or make us super frustrated. This Tuesday morning we got a phone call that made us all laugh out loud. One of our partnering vet clinics in Chatham has had a few of their clients share that they heard the State Police was at the Pet Center assisting David Smitherman with removing animals on Monday, July 30th. A few clients suggested it happened last Thursday. We had one dog leave the Pet Center on Thursday through adoption. Monday we did transfer 11 dogs and 14 cats to the Lynchburg Center, which we featured on facebook Tuesday afternoon. We also transferred to the Lynchburg’s Center 7 cats and 6 dogs from the Appomattox shelter. This year the Lynchburg location has seen 375 pets transferred internally from the other two facilities. Why? Why not? This past weekend Lynchburg adopted out 71 pets. Pittsylvania only adopted out 12 from Friday - Sunday. Pets are not getting adopted as quickly in the other counties so when we have space and w

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