The Pets ALIVE
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Welcome to Pets ALIVE! 1st Newsletter!
By Karla Kamstra, Board President
What great timing for our first newsletter! The beginning of a new year, as we launch our new fundraising campaign to find a permanent home for Pets ALIVE!
Many of you reading this have been involved in our efforts to help the homeless animals since our first Adopt-A-Pet in December of 2002. We thank you for your compassion and commitment. Some of you are new to our organization, and we welcome you! Hopefully this newsletter will be informational – and inspirational. So read on…
Our biggest news this issue is the closing of our beloved Adopt-A-Pet. Adopt-A-Pet-has been a wonderful avenue to introduce Pets ALIVE! to the community and more importantly, to help homeless animals find forever homes. It also was a great opportunity to partner with the Bloomington Animal Shelter – a partnership that has been successful in launching other programs. Relying on the generosity of others to help us our first 15 months has proved to be a successful leap of faith. AND in order for us to enter our next phase of growth, we must concentrate our efforts on finding a permanent home.
Speaking of our next phase of growth. How exciting – and vital – this is. You will hear our board say this often – “In order for a community to effectively address pet overpopulation, spay/-neuter must be a priority.” It’s the only way to DECREASE the number of animals entering a shelter. We are not turning our back on those cute little faces staring back through the cages. We will be working to make sure that surplus animals aren’t born in the first place. And while we work for our new home, we will continue to recruit foster families for the shelter’s fostering program, provide funds for spay/neuter and care for feral cat colonies, fund and operate the puppy train, and we will continue with mobile Adopt-A-Pets when weather permits.
I would like to take a few sentences to thank our hardworking board: Jennifer Elston, Jennifer Londergan (affectionately known as the Jennifers), Loretta Hutchison, and Katrina Sturgeon. When you see one of them, thank them for carrying on the behind-the-scenes work that keeps Pets ALIVE! going, and believe me, that work is crucial for our continued success.
So Welcome to Pets ALIVE! In this issue you will learn about our true visionary, Katrina Sturgeon and how her dream of a compassionate community coming together for the animals was realized by her one simple act – a letter to the editor. Learn about our programs, our successes, and how you can become involved in making Pets ALIVE! Spay/Neuter Clinic & Adopt-A-Pet a reality!
For the Animals,
Karla
Success Stories: Houdini —
Believe in magic!
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Houdini at the Monroe County Animal Shelter, posing
plaintively and winsomely for his picture with a Pets ALIVE! volunteer.
The odds were against Houdini from the beginning. He was a young, energetic Border Collie mix who wound up in the shelter without a bit of training after being tied up in a backyard. After being in the shelter for a long time, he was adopted, but not for long. He was returned because one of his new people was allergic to him, then adopted again, only to be returned once more because (never having been trained) he was destructive when the family left him alone in the house. He was given a ride on the Puppy Train to Wisconsin, but was rejected there. Back in Bloomington, Houdini’s time was up. Pets Alive volunteers had only 24 hours to save his
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From the Editor
Welcome to the first issues of Pets ALIVE! PawPrints. With this publication we plan to:
[pic]keep our volunteers and friends informed of our activies and opportunities for participation,
[pic]bring to the attention of potential volunteers and friends in the community the work that we do toward our very important goal of ending pet homelessness in south-central Indiana, through spaying and neutering and innovative adoption programs, and
[pic]inform the community of the importance of spaying and neutering as a way to eliminate the
Houdini, since renamed Gus, then Merlin, then Gus again,
meets the sheep with his new pal Lady.
Houdini frolics with Lady on his new sheep farm.
life. A plea went out on our website and with time ticking away, a wonderful family responded to our plea. They adopted him immediately and he now enjoys a sheep farm with a large pasture, a canine buddy to romp with and a loving family who considers him their new best friend! Each homeless animal has a place; it just takes some a little while longer to find it!
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very unfortunate necessity of killing highly adoptable puppies, kittens, dogs and cats who find themselves in our shelters with nowhere to turn.
We will be bringing you articles on the activities of Pets ALIVE!, and regular features including letters from our board president, profiles of board members and volunteers, some of our success stories, and reports on our recent activities as well as upcoming events and volunteer opportunities.
If you have suggestions for future issues or other comments, please contact me at
clayton@indiana.edu.
Mary Clayton
Why SPAY/NEUTER?
By Sherry Jeffers, Pets ALIVE! Volunteer, and Karla Kamstra, Board President
By the time you read this, Adopt A Pet will have closed after a very successful 14-month run. To close our beloved Adopt-A-Pet was a difficult decision, but an absolutely necessary one —necessary, because we need to address our entire mission in order to effectively address pet overpopulation.
What is our Mission? It reads “Our Mission is to increase adoptions, lower euthanasia, and ultimately end pet homelessness in south-central Indiana.”
We have addressed adoptions and euthanasia through Adopt-A-Pet, puppy train, and our Petfinder website. But have we addressed “ultimately ending pet homelessness?” Unfortunately, this can only be done by reducing the number of animals entering a shelter, either as unclaimed strays or as give-ups, and this we have not yet done. Addressing pet overpopulation through adoption programs alone has been compared to attempting to drain a river using a bucket — some water will be drained, but the river keeps on flowing.
However, there is good news. An ad hoc committee consisting of community leaders and those interested in the welfare of animals has been formed that is reviewing animal welfare related ordinances to determine if more can be done to encourage responsible pet ownership and humane animal care. More information will be forthcoming in the near future on this committee’s work.
Animal shelters will continue to be extremely overcrowded and euthanasia rates high unless concerned pet owners, animal activists and local authorities take action to fix the problem at its origin, not at its outcome. The bottom line is this: animals die daily because of irresponsible pet owners who let their pets reproduce freely.We must look at the reasons why pet owners do not spay or neuter their animals and use this information to educate and to change attitudes towards sterilization. Spaying and neutering is recognized as our best defense against all the sources of shelter over-population.
A regional spay/neuter facility is the most efficient, effective means of accomplishing an aggressive, targeted sterilization campaign. Pets ALIVE! plans to model its spay/neuter efforts after very successful facilities that serve a multi-county area. Our future plans call for initially spaying and neutering 15-25 animals per day, eventually reaching 50-65 per day. Imagine the impact on pet overpopulation if even an additional 6,500 animals are sterilized each year!
Pets ALIVE! will continue with our partnership to help the shelter increase its adoption rate. Finding a permanent home ensures the continued success of Adopt-A-Pet and additional adoption programs to help the homeless animals. In addition, our board members and many of our volunteers remain active volunteers with the Bloomington Animal Shelter, fostering animals and helping in many capacities. We remain compassionate to the plight of the beautiful animals facing death if homes are not found. However, reducing the flood of unwanted animals is best done not just by finding homes for a relative few, but in addition by stopping surplus animals from being born in the first place.
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|A Word Of Thanks |
|Pets ALIVE! would like to express our deep apreciation to the |
|following veterinarians and veterinary hospitals for all they have |
|done to promote the health and comfort of the animals in our care |
|and to further our goals of spaying and neutering. |
|Arlington Heights Veterinary Hospital |
|Bloomington Veterinary Hospital |
|College Mall Veterinary Hospital |
|Combs Veterinary Clinic |
|The Cat Care Centre |
|Dr. Tess Peavy (The Neuter Scooter) |
|Dr. Arthur Woodruff |
Meet the Board and Volunteers
Never doubt the power of a single person. Pets ALIVE! exists today because of Katrina Sturgeon. When Katrina read in the Herald-Times about the unbelievably high kill rate at our shelter, she wrote a passionate letter to the editor, inspired by the wonderful work of the dedicated people of Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, in which she let people know that there are alternatives to just killing healthy adoptable animals. She told readers that we would not be blazing a trail, that many communities all over the country are working toward the goal of no more homeless pets by working aggressively on spay/neuter and on innovative adoption programs. She listed some resources for more information and encouraged people to talk with everyone they could to encourage positive change for these beautiful animals who depend upon us for their care. Karla Kamstra and Theresa Block read the letter-and individually discussed it with their veternarians, Dr. Jim Koch. and Dr. Mary Alice Cox. Since Drs. Koch and Cox knew all three, they provided contact information and a movement began.
Reviewing some of the work of Pets ALIVE!, Katrina reported, “Fostering of cats began right away at the first Adopt-a-Pet at Ben Franklin because once cats were taken from the shelter to the Adopt-a-Pet site, their cages at the shelter would be given to other cats, so if they were not adopted on Saturday or Sunday there would be no cage to which they could return. Many, many cats were given a second chance to find a new forever home because of the absolutely fantastic, loving, dedicated volunteers who were responsible for their care. In addition, compassionate and dedicated volunteers continue to welcome foster dogs into their homes, making a huge difference by better socializing them and freeing up kennel space at the shelter.” She continued, “We are also very grateful to the veterinarians who have helped with the animals’ health care. Every person who cares about these beautiful homeless animals can help in some way as we work toward the day, as Michael Mountain (President of Best Friends Animal Society) says ‘when no animal will be born who doesn't already have a loving home awaiting him/her.’ Thank you all for caring and helping. Together we ARE making a difference.”
Katrina’s quiet demeanor and strong character make her a role model for our entire board. She and her husband, Bill, are the “quiet workers”. When no one else is around they clean, move, store, care for critters, change cat boxes, whatever needs to be done. When she’s not caring for the animals, Katrina is helping make the world beautiful at Salon 26, where she’s a stylist. Pets ALIVE! exists today because of Katrina, and we thank her for her passion and commitment.
|THANK-YOU’S |
|There were so many wonderful people who made ADOPT-A-PET a |
|success. We thank all of you and we want to send a huge thank-you|
|to |
|ABODES Management |
|Wininger-Stolberg |
|Invisible Fence |
|for keeping a roof over our heads. |
Foster-Pet Mini-Bio: Lily/Cleome
Lily was from one of numerous litters of spring kittens who attended Adopt-A-Pet events and was fostered at Invisible Fence. She and her brothers suffered from the usual respiratory infections and diarrhea that plague young kittens kept in too-close quarters. But eventually she melted the heart of a volunteer and thus found a home. Her new family changed her name to Cleome, because her drooping whiskers and eyebrows reminded them of the old-fashioned garden flower. But now, as she approaches her first birthday, she is frequently known just as ‘Little Bit’. She is sassy and alert and spends much of her time in the company of the man of the house, who used to claim that he ‘wasn’t a cat person’, but can’t say that any more.
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Lily behind her two brothers at Invisible Fence. Cleo in fall of 2003.
Upcoming Events
and Volunteer Opportunities:
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Pets ALIVE! will be setting up information booths at community events and businesses. The purpose of this “tabling” is to provide information about Pets ALIVE!, to explain the importance of spay/neuter, and to solicit donations for our clinic. We currently have information booths scheduled for T&T Pet Food Store, 2375 South Walnut, just south of Bloomington South High School, the 2nd Saturday of each month. Volunteers are needed to staff these booths. It’s a great way to help us realize our goal of a permanent home. If interested, please contact:
Jennifer Londergan at 345-1645 or bloompetsalive@
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We’ve just received exciting information on fundraising for our new home! Start saving your used ink jet and laser cartridges and be sure to tell all your friends, co-workers and office managers to save theirs too! Watch for information in the upcoming newsletter to tell you where to take them. We can receive from $1.00-$12.00 per cartridge to go towards our dream building!
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Foster-Pet Mini-Bio: Simba
Simba came to be fostered at the Invisible Fence building with his housemate Rosie when their former people moved and for some reason didn’t include them. These two were among the last of the “Invisible Fence Felines” to be adopted, not because they were in any way problematic or undesirable, but simply because they were adults who no longer had the “aww factor” of kittenhood. Simba is five, going on six -- the prime of adulthood for a cat, and should live another ten to twelve years. He’s an affable guy, large (fourteen pounds until he went on a diet and lost a few ounces) and happy-go-lucky. He immediately decided that he owns his new home and everyone else just lives there.
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Want to learn more about Pets ALIVE! and how you can help the animals? Attend one of our volunteer sessions. Our first orientation will be Wednesday February 25th, 6:00 p.m., at the Invisible Fence building, 1499 West 2nd Street, just east of the sportsplex. For more information, contact Jennifer Londergan at bloompetsalive@ or
or 345-1645.
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Those interested in the feral cat program will want to watch their e-mail for news of an informational meeting to be held later this month. You may contact Jackie Gerth at jackie@ to place yourself on the e-mail list or to request more information.
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Pets ALIVE! will be needing help from time to time with such tasks as copying, folding and mailing, distributing materials, etc. If you are interested in this opportunity to help, please contact Karla Kamstra at
bloompetsalive@.
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Above, Simba then. Below,
Simba now.
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Board Directory
Karla Kamstra—fundraising, Public
Relations, Puppy Train
Loretta Hutchison—Web Design,
Treasurer
Jennifer Londergan—Volunteer
Coordinator, Spay/Neuter
Katrina Sturgeon—Feral Cat program
Jennifer Elston—Marketing, Petfinder
How to Reach Us
E-mail: bloompetsalive@
Address: 899 S. CollegeMall Road #295
Bloomington, IN 47401
Telephone: 812-345-1645
Volume 1 no. 1. January 2004
The Pets ALIVE! PawPrint
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Volume 1 no. 1. January 2004
Volume 1 no. 1. January 2004
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