It's a widely known fact that shelters cost money. LOTS of money. Even with in house or discounted vetting, shelters are darned expensive. Everyone knows this because most shelters work their booties off advertising the fact and asking for help. Depending on where the shelter is located it may or may not receive aid from it's city/county/state, but regardless, it still costs tons of money to run a shelter responsibly.
Oh, there are TONS of ways to cut expenses, namely running the shelter IRresponsibly, but not one person I've ever met is in animal rescue for the paycheck. Not one person I didn't want to euthanize personally, that is.
Running a shelter is about balance. There is an equilibrium to be sought between the administrative, the financial, the practical, and the dream. Shelters exist to save lives and ease suffering; they should not exist solely to control the population. EVERY shelter has its capacity, a magical number calculated from space, supplies, time, finances, aid, and manpower. A capacity is not a hindrance to an ideal, it's a necessary number. A capacity keeps the animals who achieved a place in the shelter the BEST possible care. If you take in 50 animals a week and by Friday they all have meals in their tummies, blankets and litterboxes, and are protected against communicable diseases, you've done infinitely better than if you took in 100 animals and all of them starved to death or died of blah virus. Capacities reign in the idea and make the physical shelter possible.
So when some asshat from Connecticut tells me at my hotel job that he "oversees" a city shelter in his hometown, and they don't HAVE volunteers, and their employees are paid VERY well, and they don't HAVE caps, and they don't NEED a budget, I can't help but get a little frustrated. What are you, some future-of-animal-rescue guru? You know what that kind of shit tells me?
It tells me your shelter...
- Is a high-kill joint, and/or
- Doesn't provide adequately for in-house animals, and/or
- Turns down more animals than you say, and/or
- Is understaffed thanks to the glorious pay the admins/vets receive (since you mentioned you are all paid well and that vets make FAR more pay), and/or
- Cuts corners on humane care, vetting, quarantining, or any of those other pesky practices that take time AND money, and/or
- Kills/removes/vanishes healthy, young, or adoptable animals to keep up with atypical arrivals from animal control
Or maybe your shelter just keeps the lights and heater on with magic and unicorns. Makes you wonder if that guy really "oversees" the shelter and if the people who work there are sick of him not pitching in yet.
Ooh, and you know what else? He has the balls to tell me that Peta said shelters in the South are less likely to take in cats and dogs than them...and then I cut him off. Because at my job or not, no one is going to talk Peta to me. Peta and the HSUS create more problems for animal shelters, and work more toward the destruction of pet ownership and animal life/care than any other two related organizations I know. If he ACTUALLY involved himself in the workings of "his" city shelter, he'd know how badly organizations like that screw rescues on a regular basis. Oh I was very polite about cutting him off, but this is a no-Peta zone. About a 10 foot radius around me. Peta kids bounce off it like a force-field.
This is my hotel job. When I come here, I come prepared to handle drunks, room keys that don't work, and comically Murphy's-Law-esque breakdowns of technology. Bringing up Peta, when I'm barely keeping my cool in the candy-coated discussion already, is enough to really knock me off balance. Let's just get back to you going away and sleeping off your drinks, yeah?
*grumble bitch*
-Mouse
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