Indy animal shelter slowly seeing improvements

Indy animal shelter slowly seeing improvements Zeus barely hesitated before lunging at another dog in a fit of playful roughhousing. There is other evidence of progress for the shelter, a division of the Department of Public Safety that has weathered a sequence of leadership changes over a decade and still grapples with bare-bones funding from the city. "The biggest challenge is to get people to be responsible for their animals and spay and neuter them," said Susan Hobbs, an Animal Care and Control advisory board member. Intake figures have decreased slightly, to about 17,100 animals last year, but the shelter has made marked progress from a decade ago, when it was considered a killing factory. In 2003, the city shelter euthanized 13,110 animals, 61 percent more than it put down last year. Thousands of animals that the city's shelter would have euthanized a decade ago now routinely find new homes. What's more to a 2009 decision abandoning a policy of euthanizing unclaimed pit bulls and pit bull mixes -- dogs sometimes mistreated by their owners or used in fighting -- the shelter and animal advocacy groups have promoted adoptions more aggressively in the community. With City-County Council members and the mayor paying attention, advocates are implementing aspects of a plan they drafted in 2009. Aleshire and other advocates are focusing instead on increasing the availability of cheap spay/neuter services. They point to Kansas City, Mo. Spay how the shelter and the agency that runs it will fare in next year's budget, that will be tighter than ever for the city and Marion County. A 2009 report recommended exploring a revival of pet licensing, potentially charging a lower fee for owners of spayed or neutered animals. A charitable arm augments the supplies and veterinary care budgets. "They do not have enough staff to provide the level of care that one would like," said Teri Kendrick, the former chief. I'm more than happy at the progress that's been made, but there's still too much to be done. The Humane Society of Indianapolis is aiming for July to open a low-cost vaccinations clinic inside the new Animal Welfare Center, 460 N. on the Westside, expanding access to basic shots that keep pets healthy. If fundraising efforts succeed, the same center later could add low-cost spay and neutering services. John Aleshire, the Humane Society's chief executive officer, said the new center's spay/neuter program would be targeted to residents of the 10 ZIP codes that contribute more than fifty percent of the unwanted or stray animals taken in by the shelter, along with a large share of nuisance and stray reports. Advocates have high hopes that such a program could put adent in overpopulation. The shelter's live-release rate reached 71 percent in February and 65 percent in March, though Zach Adamson, a Democratic at-large council member who has become an advocate for the shelter, cautions against reading too much into those hopeful numbers. "I think they're still in dire straits," Adamson said. But not so now. The shelter's progress has come despite big challenges. That has diverted more unwanted and more difficult-to-adopt animals to the larger city shelter. . Indy animal shelter slowly seeing improvements Trade News selected by Local Linkup on 11/05/2012