thepawandfeatherplan

April 23, 2021  Dear Ms. Sadler and DPFL Team,   Certainly you know how awesome your work is, and must see the benefits of what you guys do on a regular basis.   I needed to take a moment to share how awesome your work is from my perspective too. Way back in 2007 I worked at Louisville Metro Animal Services (hereinafter LMAS) as an ACS. I got a job there after having volunteered for some months (before they even had a volunteer program), and after having completed college and discovering corporate America wasn’t for me.   As an ACS, I worked 2nd shift. I got recently-arrived-dogs off of ACO trucks, mostly alive, but sometimes dead, mostly nice, but all scared. I did intake vaccines, I fed 300+ dogs their afternoon dinner, and what I consider most important during this time: I socialized dogs. Back then our municipal shelter, like many others of that time, was euthanizing more than 60% of what came in, mostly for ‘time/space,’ as would be written on their kennel cards. T

 Before we bought our house in 2018, we rented a nice little house in the U of L district.      We moved there from Miami when my son was just 7 weeks old.        -It was late February.       Once the weather was nice, I used to walk up and down the dead-end street with the baby in the stroller, and our then-4-dogs; the dogs and I built our way up to taking longer walks with the stroller pretty quickly.      I consider myself a highly sociable person, and typically befriend many of my neighbors. There was a house on our street a few doors down, across the street, that had a lot of activity.  Cars coming and going, a walker or two coming and going.  There were a 2 cars in the driveway that never left, one could almost assume they didn't run.      One afternoon as my husband and I were walking the dogs and our son, a man in his late 50's hobbled out on his walker, saying he knew we had called the police on his roommate, he knew my husband worked with his roommate's sister, an

What do you feel, or think, when you read this Facebook post? This post circulated on Facebook in early February.    "Yes I can help," was my initial thought when I saw this (a couple of rescue friends had tagged me).     It took about 5 seconds for my brain to process the gravity of this post, and for  ~what I know  to come~ to surface.     " Often a pet is a senior’s sole companion and when they lose their pet, the senior often goes into a downward spiral and we end up losing the senior not long after the pet is gone," as simply put on hospets.org .      Losing a pet, especially for a senior citizen, can be fatal.          So when I read through some of the comments on this post's thread, seeing only, "I can take the dog," "I pm-ed you," and tagging so-and-so and so-forth, I felt helpless, and at the same time wanted to scream.       Hello... is anyone thinking about this lady?!      Of course I commented on the thread, mentioning our rescu

  More Options Now Than Ever for Pet-Loving Seniors   Something shared by a friend on Facebook caught Margaret’s eye last fall. It was a post about including pets in planning. As an owner of 3 dogs, a single, middle-aged, woman, Margaret identified with the post. She had wondered, “who would take care of my pets if something happened to me?” 2020, among other things, could easily be considered, Year of the Pet. With Covid-19 came a yearning for constant companionship in the home, which led many to seek out pet ownership. Fortunately, there are more options now than ever for older Americans with pets. Many Senior Living Facilities are Now Pet-Friendly Most elder care professionals recognize the vast array of health benefits that pets offer seniors, like lowering the rates of bad stuff such as cardiovascular disease, anxiety and depression, and increasing the rates of good stuff , like social interaction and calmness. This has led many senior living facilities to not

 "$300?! If the Humane Society's charging that much for puppies people will just pay a little more and go buy from a breeder!" While I'm embarrassed to admit it, those words came out of my mouth just a few years ago.     Why did I think that way?      Maybe I was spoiled by our low adoption fees from my time working at the municipal shelter in Miami ($65/dog adoptions, $35/2 for 1 cat adoptions and 1/2 off adoptions every Wednesday).     Maybe I thought a 'non-profit' shouldn't be charging so much, weren't they a charity after all?     Maybe I was sincerely worried a lot of people would say, "If I have to pay that much for a mutt, I might as well go by the purebred (insert your favorite breed) I've always wanted."    I'm a "rescued is my favorite breed" person through and through.  But I know that not everyone is. And that's o.k.  -But it took me a long time to 'get there'; I used to not even be able to befriend

Brian is a young man, maybe in his early 30's.  Today he shared some of his story with me during phase 1 of a cat adoption.       "Growing up we always had pets, like a lot of pets.  Mom wasn't savvy about spaying and neutering and all that.  If there were strays in the neighborhood, she'd feed them and the next thing you know, they'd be ours," said Brian.       Working with people during pet adoptions, training, pet surrenders, and (especially) pet retention cases, sometimes I act as a counselor of sorts.  It's my job to help people open up to explore what's going on under the surface.  Some people have no desire to open up; these are the few and far between that seem incapable of bonding in a meaningful way with pets, or people. However, m ost open up with the right questions and a listening ear to follow.  And others, like Brian, are so wise they need no prompting... they 'go there' all on their own.       "You see, my mom