LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – On Saturday, the Animal Foundation held its annual public meeting.
The shelter is required to provide this yearly update on its operations, programs and expenditures, and give the community a chance to ask questions and provide feedback.
It has been a busy year for the Animal Foundation. Staff says the number of animals coming into the shelter is up almost 18% from last year, leading to continued overcrowding problems and new programs to mitigate these issues.
The Animal Foundation presented these numbers during its annual public meeting, as required in the shelter’s agreement with Clark County. The crowd had some tough questions and criticisms about how the animal foundation is using its funding.
“They shouldn’t be making money in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and we’re still having a huge crisis of animals being dumped and breeding out in the community,” said one meeting attendee.
“I have a hard time supporting you guys getting more money when we need more animal control officers. We need to enforce our backyard breeder laws. We wouldn’t need to warehouse animals and have more shelter if we actually prevented those litters from being born,” said another attendee.
The Animal Foundation also revealed how many animals have been put down — including almost 1,900 dogs humanely euthanized, which is a 25% decrease from last year.
“Before you decide to put them down for behavior, problems and process that you’re going to make sure that you try to train them? Because if you pick up earlier but one of my five dogs, they’re going to get euthanized because they’re going to give you a hard time because they’re not used to being with strangers, so my question is: Is there a process?” said Las Vegas City Councilwoman Victoria Seaman, who attended the meeting as well.
“In terms of the behavioral euthanasia, that is something that we have a whole team of departments within our organization that participate,” said a shelter representative. “If we don’t think they’re ready for adoption, can we try foster transfer. We look at all those different pieces, but there are sometimes cases we’re not only is the behavior that we have seen dangerous, and not able to finish the community. Sometimes they are deemed dangerous by Animal Control.”
The shelter also highlighted some changes and improvements in their operations — including big strides in fostering programs, with more than double the number of foster families than last year.
“I’ve been a volunteer for 3 years, and I’ve seen the changes that are taking place at the Animal Foundation,” said one shelter volunteer.
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