Skip to main content

Find Happiness


Recently, a small group of us brainstormed about our “slogan” or catch phrase for the organization.  Our old catch phrase was “Giving animals a second chance” which was a great statement for our push to become no kill.  But now that the new facility is opening and we have achieved that goal we needed something else.   We considered using our Capital Campaign slogan of “It’s about the pets” but honestly, so much of what we do relates to people and helping them that it isn’t just about the pets. 

That is when one member of the committee said “Find Happiness”.  And we all stopped and said,

2014 was an exciting year for us.  We helped 2,359 pets at our old facility.  Of those, 1,741 were adopted and 276 were returned back to their owners so we helped over 2,000 pets find happiness.  This equates to a 94% save rate, the highest since we started down this path to No Kill. Our mission is to continue to save more pets in our community and the surrounding counties.

We hope to be a resource to help all owners find happiness with their existing pets through training classes, behavior and supply assistance.   Or if that is not possible, to be a
safe place they can bring their pet to be re-homed.

We want to be a place for people to volunteer and find happiness helping a pet in need of an owner.

We will help owners find happiness through reuniting them with their lost pets.

We will watch school children find happiness at our Center at birthday parties, camps and educational programs.

Giving supplies or monetary donations will both help people find and give happiness.

Your group can find happiness through social events and group meetings.

Many community members will find happiness by working at the new center for pets.

There are so many varied ways to Find Happiness and we hope that more of our helpless, ownerless pets will find their ultimate happiness through new life-long homes.

“yes, that is what we want”, for people and pets to find happiness.  So, as we begin our next phase of work of getting our new Edythe Elizabeth Stauffer Center for Pets opened and our new programs started this will guide the vision for the organization.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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 askin...

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...

When the tables turn

It is not unknown for people to be scared of dogs. Animal shelters throughout history were built on that fear. Dog catchers were employed to capture packs of nuisance dogs that were roaming and pestering communities. Pounds were built on the edge of towns near the dump to remove stray dogs from towns and in most cases, destroy them to prevent public endangerment.   Fast forward to now and shelters are referred to as centers, instead of strays we say adoptable, we don’t say animals we say pets, and dogs are family members. Getting a dog without a home into a family is a community effort and #adoptdontshop is a movement.  So how strange it is that the COVID-19 pandemic has made us fear being too close to people and has increased our desire for pets?  People want to foster or adopt pets, now more than ever! At the Lynchburg Humane Society’s Center for Pets there has been an increase of 85% more pets in foster care than at this time last year. The Lynchburg Humane...