Photo by Kathy Milani/The HSUS Planning and preparation In 2011, approximately 300 dogs were rescued from a North Carolina puppy mill with help from HSUS rescue team staff, animal control officers from three counties and volunteers from four local animal welfare groups. Whether your emergency shelter is a warehouse, a barn or an off-season fairground, at least it won’t be a giant boat. It’s a tall order-but it’s not impossible. The challenges of emergency sheltering can include finding a location that allows for electricity, water, communications and transportation designing and constructing a space that considers capacity, care and disease control coordinating with other animal welfare professionals, volunteers, veterinarians, government officials and law enforcement agencies implementing intake and triage procedures for a large number of animals gathering and training a transitional staff carrying out daily operations from feeding to emotional and physical enrichment activities reuniting animals with owners or rehoming those who have been displaced permanently and closing up shop when the operation concludes. It’s important to create standard operating procedures ahead of time for crisis scenarios, but if the floods roll in or the dogs are seized, you’ll also need to be flexible and adapt those procedures to the specific situation. Whether you have 15 pregnant goats, 50 roosters and hens or 100 dogs and cats with varying medical conditions, good planning and proper procedures can keep you and your staff from pulling a month’s worth of all-nighters, forgetting which tabby is the biter or contracting a zoonotic disease. It’s a tale as old as time, but if your animal welfare organization ever responds to a natural disaster or large-scale cruelty situation, you might find yourself wondering about Noah’s intake procedure. How on Earth did Noah keep things straight with all of those animals jam-packed in the ark? 7 was one of more than 100 dogs rescued from a Mississippi puppy mill in 2010. Downloadable checklists: From crisis to care Partnerships, planning and protocol are vital to emergency shelteringĪnimal Sheltering magazine July/August 2016 A Sharpie and an ID band are all it takes to create a makeshift yet functional collar.
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