Why Phideaux’s Flea Market Matters

Aiken County Animal Advocates

THE VOICE OF PAWS

(Palmetto Animal Welfare Services, Inc.)

By Joya DiStefano

This Aiken County Animal Advocates Columns was posted in the Aiken Standard on 06/13/2014

“The continued use of euthanasia to control the size of its cat and dog populations is a choice a community makes, not a necessity.” – Peter Marsh, author of Getting to Zero

What is the cosmic connection between the routine killing of dogs and cats to a Saturday flea market?  The answer lies in an illustrative tale.

Palmetto Animal Welfare Services, more commonly known as PAWS, has a program called SNYP (Spay Neuter Your Pet).  In partnership with the Aiken SPCA, SNYP offers “free” spay/neuter surgeries throughout Aiken County for qualifying households.  

Humans call SNYP volunteers on behalf of their companion cats and dogs and SNYP volunteers work to assure the pets get fixed.  The co-pay is $20 and includes rabies vaccine and a micro-chip. No one is turned away.  

Some get referred to one of the voucher programs, or Lenny’s Brigade for cats, but everyone who calls can get a deal on preventing unwanted litters.  

The conversations are warm, supportive and take a positive problem-solving approach.  Most applicants prefer to self-schedule directly with the SPCA Clinic, but PAWS will transport if necessary.

SNYP costs money, but begging and pleading wears on relationships.  So when the SPCA offered PAWS a spot to raise funds at their monthly Phideaux Flea Market and Dog Wash, we figured that we would give it a try.  

What could be so hard about getting all that stuff out of closets, attics, storage, garages, and selling it?  Well, the answer is if it was that easy it wouldn’t be accumulating in all those handy spaces.

Flash to North Augusta where Todd and Jeannie thought that it was going to take six or eight months to sell their house while their new house was being built.  Yes, the real estate market is soft, so who would have predicted that their house would sell in 29 days and they would be in a crunch to get rid of all that “stuff?”  

Voila!  We start our maiden voyage as flea marketeers with a horse trailer full of yummy stuff.  You have to see the nearly new Mongoose stunt bicycle, and “Clemson-opoly?”  Truly, a find.

But the synchronicity of the last-minute need to empty a house under contract, and an inaugural attempt to turn cast-offs to cash, symbolizes more than the affirmation of one effort.  

Palmetto Animal Welfare Services exists to insist that if we work together, we can save them all.  And I personally believe that if the first step you take is the right one, the road will rise to meet you.

PAWS was founded to address chronic and counter-productive gaps and rifts among a broad array of stakeholders in animal welfare issues in our county and the surrounding region.  As our Facebook page and website claim, “PAWS is a vocal advocate to assist any and all animal welfare efforts in and around Aiken County to end the unnecessary killing of shelter animals.”

We began by forming PAWS as an “umbrella” 501(c)(3) non-profit by uniting a consortium of animal welfare efforts within the corporation.  We also constituted PAWS governing body with people who were already doing the work to which PAWS committed: getting and keeping animals out of shelters.  

Affordable and accessible spay/neuter through SNYP (Spay/Neuter Your Pet) serves the entire county.  SNYP is PAWS core program.  Then Shelter Animal Advocates Aiken Foster Network provides short-term foster care bridging the time between the county shelter and private rescue groups.  Heartbeats raises the funds (averaging $600) to treat dogs who test positive for heartworm while impounded, so that they can be pulled for a partnering rescue.  LEASH Squad in Wagener rescues and rehabilitates dogs that have been victims of cruelty and who need the kind of care few places are equipped to give.

All animal welfare efforts need the support of their communities to function.  Achieving tax-exempt status with the IRS by becoming a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, an expensive and time-consuming process, encourages and expands the essential support by validating the mission of the public charity.  The PAWS group received a letter from the IRS recently informing PAWS that its tax-exempt status should be official by the end of August.  Perhaps it represents another sign we are on the right road.

Tomorrow PAWS will join other flea-marketeers and crafters at the SPCA’s Albrecht Center for Animal Welfare from 8 am until 2 pm.  Should you care to stop by and shop, or deliver some prized item for us to sell, or browse and chat you may find yourself inspired.  

Join the No-kill movement.  Help us “get to zero” with unwanted pet prevention, well-homed pet retention, and pro-active rescue. 

A retired organizational problem-solver and radical educator, Joya Jiménez DiStefano is an artist, Servant Leader, co-founder of FOTAS, and founder of PAWS, Inc.

www.PAWS4NoKill.org

info@paws4nokill.org

www.facebook.com/PAWS4nokill.org

twitter.com/Paws4NoKill 

pinterest.com/paws4nokill

instagram.com/PAWS4SNYP

Changing the World Begins with a Dog

Aiken County Animal Advocates

THE VOICE OF PAWS

(Palmetto Animal Welfare Services, Inc.)

By Joya DiStefano

This Aiken County Animal Advocates Columns was posted in the Aiken Standard on 05/17/2014

“Rescuing a dog will not change the world, but it will change the dog’s world.” The significance of this slogan from the Weimaraner Rescue of South Carolina, located in Aiken County, is clear to all of us involved with rescue.  

Ask any of the local shelter staff and volunteers with the SPCA Albrecht Center or the new Aiken County Animal Shelter who see thousands of homeless pets every year. Or talk to Shelter Animal Advocates, Molly’s Militia, Happy Tails, L.E.A.S.H. Squad, and Home for Good Dog Rescue, or “breed” rescues like Weimaraners, they may tell you that, if done right, the change only starts with the rescued animal.

I am a romantic and an idealist.  I like to insert “pragmatic” as a modifier, just to suggest that I have evolved, but I will admit to the belief that whatever my current occupation, and there have been quite a few, I am always changing the world.  So when I saw the slogan about rescuing and world changing, it got me wondering.  I think the process can, and should, be bigger than that. I also think Weimaraner Rescue and other local rescue organizations are making it happen.  I’ll give you the guided tour through my reasoning.

P.A.W.S. (Palmetto Animal Welfare Services, Inc.) gets many, many calls from residents throughout our very large county who are responding to our offer of low-cost spay/neuter for their pets.  In the course of these conversations, we hear about the many previous or current litters.  I always ask, “What did you (or will you) do with the puppies (or kittens)?”  Answers vary, but they say that they find (most of them) homes.  

Of course no one says, I just take them to the county, or dump them, or call the county and say that they were dumped.  Those folks probably don’t bother to call PAWS.  In short, free dogs or cats are very easy to come by.  And we all know where many of them end up, and then some of the “lucky” ones get their world changed by being rescued. This is the world as we know it.

Now go to the SPCA website (letlovelive.org) or Home for Good Dog Rescue (homeforgooddogs.org), or Weimaraner Rescue (weimrescuesc.org) and look at their adoption guidelines and processes. 

The SPCA specifically tells people about the considerations and cost related to owning (read: providing a good home for) a pet.  No Christmas puppies, no indulge-your-kid’s-whim.  They address the costs for routine vet visits, vaccines, heartworm prevention, food and supplies.  That’s monetary costs; then there is the time to train, exercise, and be a good companion to your companion animal. Then there is the adoption process itself; you would think that a child was being placed in a home.  Actually, for many of us, that is exactly what it is like.  And that is where our world begins to change.

If you look closely at the adoption criteria for these rescue groups, you will find basically the same ethic running through the process.  They want to know what kind of family and home the applicants are prepared to provide.  They are not charging a lot of money, as if they are dispensing some rare commodity, they are stewarding a precious life, for which a great responsibility is felt.  They want to know about lifestyle and living arrangements and habits and temperaments.  They are prepared to do everything in their power to assure a good fit for the animal.

Home for Good, screens, checks references, arranges meet-and-greets for the prospective families and their dog-interest.  SPCA follows similar protocols. And with their “Phideaux University,” they have prepared their charges to be ready for a well-prepared and discerning human.  

Weimaraner Rescue, knowing the propensities of their breed, goes out of the way to make sure that appropriate education and training are part of the mix.  Even Aiken County Animal Services, with their new shelter and their passionate and highly experienced adoption coordinator, has begun basic prescreening for animal adoptions.

So, you ask, how does this change the world?  Here’s where being a little bit of a pragmatic idealist and romantic helps.  Imagine a world where, life by life, home by home, family and community by family and community, we begin to think about how we need to treat those who have a right to depend on us.  

Imagine if we learn to tune in to the simple and simply magnificent needs and talents of our dogs and cats, and then we commit to providing for them with love and compassion, what we might also commit to for our children, our elderly, our poor and needy.

The devotion to love, compassion AND responsibility that our rescues bring to the world, not only will change the world, it already is.  Onward!

A retired organizational problem-solver and radical educator, Joya Jiménez DiStefano is an artist, Servant Leader, co-founder of FOTAS, and founder of PAWS, Inc.

www.PAWS4NoKill.org

info@paws4nokill.org

www.facebook.com/PAWS4nokill.org

twitter.com/Paws4NoKill 

pinterest.com/paws4nokill

instagram.com/PAWS4SNYP

The County Vet Tech’s View

Aiken County Animal Advocates

THE VOICE OF PAWS

(Palmetto Animal Welfare Services, Inc.)

By Joya DiStefano


“The one thing about this job,” she began, “is that you can never get up thinking you are going to the same old job.”

Sandy Larsen is a senior vet tech at the Aiken County Animal Shelter.

She may arrive at the gate early in the morning and find a box full of kittens or puppies or a dog tied to the fence.

The gate is on heavily trafficked Wire Road, where the speed limit is 55 mph. Sometimes the box is empty, or the leash chewed in half. Maybe the temperature dipped into the 20s that night. This is how a workday may begin.

Sandy remembers when the shelter was built and meant to hold 100 animals.
The number impounded at the shelter this October was 467; the previous October was 485, and the October before that was 491.

In the last 10 years, only October 2007 saw the intake number under 400 at 362.
Otherwise, the average for Octobers is 450 animals, the last three years being the highest of four in 10 years.

Intake is much higher from April to August.

What does a veterinary technician do in this environment? Nearly everything, except bring the animals to the County Shelter.

If Sandy’s week starts on Monday, she is up at o’dark-thirty to come and get the been-here-too-long-pet-of-the-week and take it on television.

She has not missed a Monday in years. Her spot airs at 6 a.m.

“Sometimes I have even brought that box of abandoned puppies or kittens to show what some people will do.”

SANDY LARSEN

At the shelter, first task daily is to check the dogs on “the adoption floor;” the current shelter does not actually have a separate wing like the new shelter will provide.

There is a wire gate separating the “5-day holds” from the adoptable animals, all sharing the same air, the same open drainage trenches, the same smells and sounds.

“We check the floor for kennel cough and diarrhea, and medicate accordingly,” said Sandy.
Next, the 5-day holds are reviewed so see who might be eligible to move up to the adoption floor on a space-available basis. These candidates will be checked for heartworm.

If positive, they are not eligible for adoption and will be euthanized if a rescue cannot be located who will take them.

If negative, they get wormed and shots and another chance at a good home.

The strays with mange, the cats with upper respiratory infections (URIs), the dogs disabled by age or injury find their final rest in the compassionate hands of a vet tech like Sandy.
The two county vet techs field calls from the foster families calling with health concerns for puppies or kittens in their care.

And before the county added a custodian position a year ago, they supervised the county inmates who work cleaning and feeding and dong the routine maintenance, if anything can be called routine in such an overcrowded, understaffed facility.

Three days a week, people who’ve adopted puppies and kittens bring their pets back to be spayed and neutered.

The vet techs assist the county vet with surgeries Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. They order and maintain records on all medications, for the sick, surgery and those being fostered.

They do paperwork for intake, adoptions, transfers and disposal. They help volunteers keep the Petfinder website up to date. And for 6.5 hours a day the doors are open to the public.

The dog-walker volunteers arrive and want to know who got adopted since they were last there.

“What happened to Jake, or Millie, this one, or that one? They know all the dogs so well,” Sandy said with appreciation.

Things have changed in Sandy Larsen’s world since Friends of the Animal Shelter helped establish the volunteer, foster and transfer programs beginning in 2009.

Referring to the recent adoption special for November, “Back-in-Black really helped with adoptions,” Sandy said.

A lot has changed for a shelter staff that saw only 265 animals re-homed out of 5,717 impounded in FY04.

In FY13, 1,581 animals were either adopted or transferred out of 4,794 impounded. Or put another way, in 2004 less than 5 percent of the impounded animals were saved; last year it was 33 percent.

Tired after another long day in another busy week, Sandy turned to a particular heartbreak.
Hard to bear that people will abandon helpless pets, unwanted and unnecessary puppies and kittens, but worst of all for Sandy are those who sacrifice their elderly pets saying, “I don’t like this dog anymore.” “I just don’t want it,” because it can’t do what it once could, because it doesn’t suit their needs.

“We live in a world where everything is so disposable,” Sandy says sadly thinking that, if she retires, she may give one or two of these seniors a very loving home.

Aiken County and our animals are blessed to have public servants like Sandy Larsen.


A retired organizational problem-solver and radical educator, Joya Jiménez DiStefano is an artist, Servant Leader, and co-founder of FOTAS, Inc.

How Wagener Led the County in Targeted Spay/Neuter

Aiken County Animal Advocates

THE VOICE OF PAWS

(Palmetto Animal Welfare Services, Inc.)

By Joya DiStefano

Oh, Wagener area residents, you have no idea how proud you can be of what you have started here in Aiken County.  Let me tell you.

In the spring of 2012, a bunch of animal advocates got together and took advantage of an opportunity to compete to raise the most money of any other rescue group participating.  The contest was sponsored by an outfit called Pawmetto Lifeline in Columbia that had just opened a high-volume clinic, and it was out to spay or neuter any animal they could get their little scalpel on.  The Aiken County group won the contest and was rewarded with nearly $5,000 credit at the Pawmetto Lifeline clinic.  That money served to begin a targeted spay/neuter project that is gradually establishing itself in local communities throughout Aiken County.  Wagener was chosen to be the pilot project, and, with the tireless cooperation of Town Hall and local resident, Dottie Gantt, Wagener remains the most successful community-based spay/neuter assistance program going.

Why Spay or Neuter your pets?

Perhaps you don’t care all that much what happens to all the unwanted dogs and cats in your area.  As long as they don’t bother you, it should be someone else’s responsibility, right?  Then they are in your yard, in front of your truck, dying along the roads, converging on your bitch-in-heat, fighting with your male dog, howling through the night.  This is not a problem one can shoot his way out of.

Most people who have pets care about their welfare.  Most…  Your animals will be healthier, happier pets if they are spayed or neutered.  They will be content to remain home.  They will have way fewer incidences of cancer.  They will mark less, fight less, and mess in your house less.  You will find they are more loving, because they are less frustrated.  A male dog can sense a female in heat within a mile in every direction.  Unaltered, the poor animal has to function with a message screaming in their brain, I NEED TO BREED! By altering them, we eliminate that message and all the physical complications that go with it.

There are a bunch of old-wives tales about the negative effect of spaying or neutering your animals.  It is not true that your female will get fat and lazy.  Fat and lazy is due to too much bad food and not enough exercise.  If your dog hunts, it will still hunt.  If your dog is protective, it will still guard.  And, no, breeding your beloved pet will not give you a replacement copy.  Breeding your pet will put more breeding animals into an already over-populated environment.  And they can start young; dogs by 6 months and cats by four months.

How to Get ‘r Done!

The local Spay/Neuter Assistance Program has made it so easy to get your pets fixed, you just can’t put it off any longer.  Here’s how it works:

For Household Pets

1. You go to the Wagener Town Hall and ask for an enrollment form.
2. Fill it out your contact information and identify the dogs or cats you want to have fixed.
3. Provide information regarding your income status/ number of animals you own.
4. Leave the completed form at Town Hall

Based on the number of animals in the applications, a surgery date will be scheduled at the SPCA Albrecht Center for Animal Welfare in Aiken.  If you want your animal(s) transported from Wagener, you will be told what day to bring it/them to the Wagener Gazebo on the morning of surgery.  The animals will be returned the following morning.  Arrangements can also be made for you to self-transport in either or both directions.  

The cost is $20 for each animal and includes rabies vaccine and a microchip.  

For more information call: (803) 634-0564

Lenny’s Brigade for “Community Cats”

 A community cat is an unowned cat that calls the outdoors home.  Community cat colonies develop where there is shelter and a food source.  Without assistance, they can often get out of control.  People, who like cats, take pity on the strays and feed them, often find themselves facing the painful situation of being overrun.  Lenny’s Brigade offers a humane approach; one that does not promote killing healthy cats; one that can help bring the situation back under control.  If you or someone you know is in such a plight, call the Lenny’s Brigade Hotline: (803) 507-6315.  Someone will get back to you and tell you how to proceed. 

People of the Aiken County East, you have led the way!  Let’s not stop now.  You have a solid core of animal advocates among you who can help you continue to show Aiken County the way!  Spay and Neuter your pets. Let’s put an end to unwanted litters, and the cost and heartbreak they bring.  Let’s do it together!

A retired organizational problem-solver and radical educator, Joya Jiménez DiStefano is an artist, writer, local Servant Leader, and co-founder of FOTAS, Inc. who lives with eleven dogs, one amazing cat and a husband who is a saint.

www.PAWS4NoKill.org

info@paws4nokill.org