Pima Paws For Life began as an idea born out of necessity. With the numbers of animals dying in local shelters in Pima County at crisis proportions, approximately 12,000 every year (about 50% of live intake for Pima Animal Care Center), many people in our community knew that there must be another way to address the problem. We found that there was another way, and that there are not only individual shelters but entire communities across the country who have acheived a 90% or better save rate. These are not all 'private shelters', who have the option of limiting their intake, but also municipal 'open admission' shelters, which must take in every animal brought to them. There are also communities who have both open admission municipal and private shelters that are working together to achieve this goal. You can see a list of these shelters/communities here, at OutTheFrontDoor.com.
Putting the programs into place that these successful shelters have to reduce the killing is not only the moral and ethical thing to do, but also the logical choice to make.Once built, Pima Paws For Life's Adoption Guarantee shelter will be immediately implementing programs 4 through 11. We will increase our services over time to include programs 1 through 3.
These programs (known as the No-Kill Equation) include:
1. Feral Cat TNR Program
2. High-Volume, Low-Cost Spay/Neuter
3. Pro-Active Redemptions
4. Foster Care
5. Comprehensive Adoption Programs
6. Pet Retention
7. Medical and Behavior Rehabilitation
8. Public Relations/Community Involvement
9. Volunteers
10. Rescue Groups
11. A Compassionate, Hard Working Director
It is our intention to help relieve our community's open admission shelter, Pima Animal Care Center, of some of the burden of the high number of animals that they take in each year. By doing this, and following the programs above, we will be able to significantly reduce the numbers of animals who die needlessly in Pima County each year.
Currently, we are raising funds to purchase property with existing structures that we have already chosen to be the site of our shelter. We are not disclosing the exact location until the sale is final. Intake of animals cannot occur until this first step is taken. We will be accepting both dogs and cats, but will not intake strays immediately at start up. We hope to become the largest transfer partner for PACC, thereby relieving some of the pressure from our only open intake facility in the county. All funds currently being raised will be going towards funding the actual shelter, and subsequent funds will go towards operations.
There may be people who doubt that these numbers of lives saved can be reached. Even if we suppose this is true, despite evidence to the contrary, why would we not utilize every avenue possible to reduce the number of deaths as much as we can?
The people of Pima County are no less compassionate than the people in these successful communities. With the support of the public, we will be able to help make Pima County one of the safest communities for pets in the state of Arizona. Please join us in making a difference!
