Columnist Janie Greenspun: Standing up for pet protection

Janie Greenspun

Thursday, March 18, 1999 | 10:07 a.m.

Blame it on allergy season, but I'm feeling slightly cranky these days.

First of all, I am sick and tired of having to defend the Animal Foundation against negative, unjustified and personal attacks made by people with grudges and too much time on their hands.

We're far from perfect, but we're mighty close to changing the way animals are cared for in the world of sheltering. As a proud member of the board of directors, I'll shout it from the rooftops: When the doors of our new shelter open, not another healthy, adoptable pet will die in Las Vegas.

We have set the standard as a low-cost spay-neuter clinic and hope to become a model shelter for the rest of the country, thereby making the accepted practice of killing cats and dogs an obsolete social ill. We can win this one, and we will, in spite of the crazies who would rather destroy our work than pitch in and join the battle.

This is one of the hazards of being involved in the animal protection movement. As Merritt Clifton, editor of Animal People, a Washington-based magazine, writes: "A lot of the best people and organizations in the animal protection field take a nonstop bashing, simply because they are too busy doing the job while others do little or nothing but cultivate good media relations." He adds, "I've found reams of stinking, reeking self-aggrandizement and corruption in various aspects of animal protection, but I've never yet found any of it in running low-cost neutering clinics, and damned little in any branch of hands-on care. ..."

When the Animal Foundation, led by President Mary Herro, took over the sheltering contract for the city of Las Vegas in 1995, adoption rates rose from 14 percent to 44 percent. Because of an innovative foster care program, the lives of puppies and kittens too young to be placed for adoption were spared. Weekly obedience classes, free spaying and neutering of feral cats, lower adoption fees for the less desirable animals and adoptions seven days a week have contributed to fewer numbers of animals being euthanized.

The numbers are impressive. Last year the Animal Foundation handled 19,707 animals. Of those, time ran out for 615 adoptable animals, even with the month they're given to find homes. Six hundred and fifteen too many, but still, our success has been astounding despite the antiquated shelter in which we're working.

Our goal is to raise $5 million in the next 15 months to build the most complete, modern, people- and animal-friendly shelter ever built. Noted architect Jess Holmes has donated a beautiful plan, contractors have offered concrete and time, we've raised nearly $2 million and yet, in the midst of all this good, we got slimed in the media. The Internal Revenue Service was called on us, as was the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Although we've passed all inspections, the constant attacks these past couple of months have taken a toll. Adoptions were down by 200 last month and spay-neuters were off by 300.

The crime is that more animals will die. So that's the real reason I'm cranky these days.

The biggest hazard of being in the animal protection movement is that your heart gets broken a lot.