Jack is a 9-year-old terrier-Corgi mix with floppy brown ears and a giant pink tongue. In human years, he’d be a member of the Baby Boomer generation. Ideally, that’s the time when a person—or family pet, for that matter—should get to retire from the hectic buzz of the working world, pull up a big comfy chair, and relax.
For Jack, that cozy chair is nowhere in sight. He’s spending his golden years in an 8-by-16 kennel at the Santa Maria Valley Humane Society. Granted, the kennel is cleaned frequently and Jack receives plenty of food and water, but he still lacks the most important thing in a dog’s life: a loving family.
But it wasn’t always this way. Jack was adopted out of the same shelter as a puppy. After nearly a decade together, however, Jack’s family had to return him because they lost their home.
Obviously, Jack and his family aren’t alone: The recession has hit people hard, and it’s hit their pets hard, too, by association.
“It’s really a tough time right now. It’s been tough for the last few years,” Humane Society Executive Director Jill Tucker said. “Financial and housing challenges are usually the top reasons why [people surrender their pets].”
Countless other animal shelters, locally and nationally, are feeling the financial pinch as well. The lack of funding is making it harder to care for an increasing number of homeless animals.
“About 2,000 animals get euthanized in Santa Maria alone every year,” Tucker said.
With the way the economy is impacting humans, it’s easy for some people to think, “Why should I care about animals?”
C.C. Wellman, owner of Happy Endings Animal Rescue Sanctuary in Solvang, has the answer to that question: “I’m helping animals, but I’m helping people, too, because they love their animals. People who hand over pets—unless there’s been abuse—they want to know there’s someone who will take care of them. A lot of people in this world—myself included—consider their animals to be family members.”
Here’s a look at some of the people in Northern Santa Barbara County who are trying to rescue those animals in need and place them in loving, caring homes.
Animal amnesty
The Santa Maria Valley Humane Society is a nonprofit, no-kill animal shelter that has served as a safe haven to thousands of domestic animals since the early 1980s.
“Our role as a no-kill shelter is really important in this community,” Executive Director Tucker said. “Of course, all shelters have roles and purposes. [Santa Barbara County] Animal Services has the unfortunate role of having to euthanize animals.
“We want to be able to take more animals from the county to help with the over-population problem there, but we can only do so much because of our size,” she continued, adding that her organization took in more than 100 surplus animals last year. “It’s a delicate balance, because we need to serve as many pet owners as possible.”
She said many people faced with having to surrender their pets are happy there’s a place that guarantees the animals won’t be euthanized.
“Stuff happens, and people have to give up their pets. We’re not here to judge people. We’re here to be a safe haven,” she explained.
The shelter is currently at capacity, and there are 20 dogs on the waiting list.
“We get pets from people who have had to downsize from a house to an apartment and tell us, ‘I can only have one cat,’ or ‘I can keep my cat but not my dog,’” Tucker said. “We’ve also had people who have to move across the country.”
Along with taking in animals, the Humane Society is working diligently to make it easier for people to keep their pets through various community programs, including a low-cost spay/neuter and micro-chipping clinic and a pet food bank.
“Over-breeding is still a problem,” she said. “People think, ‘I’ll have a litter and I’ll find homes for all of them’—and the dog breeders won’t like me saying this—but if you have a litter you’re directly responsible for that many animal deaths because those are homes that shelter animals aren’t going to.”
The Humane Society has facilitated approximately 21,500 surgeries since opening the clinic in 1998. The number of surgeries has increased 40 percent over the last 12 months, and the clinic is consistently booked weeks in advance.
The pet food bank is a donation-based program offering free dog and cat chow to local residents.
“It’s hard if someone loses their job and is thinking, ‘I can barely afford groceries. How am I going to pay for dog food?’” Tucker said. “The problem with the pet food bank is if it’s out, it’s out.”
In fact, the shelter as a whole relies almost solely on donations from the community; it doesn’t get any federal funding or money from the Humane Society of the United States, which is primarily an animal advocacy and legislation organization.
“Sometimes I think people underestimate the cost to house the animals here. The only way we’d be able to break even on our adoption program is if we charged $1,000 per an animal, but then we wouldn’t adopt out any animals,” Tucker said.
She said the Humane Society’s new facility, which is in the early stages of construction on Stowell Road, will help the organization “catch up” with the pet population problem because it will house twice as many animals and provide space for twice as many surgeries.
The Humane Society has raised just more than $2.5 million to date. It needs approximately $4.5 million to complete the project.
The vast menagerie
When it comes to taking in stray animals, the staff at Santa Barbara County Animal Services has seen it all.
“We got an emu once. We helped rescue 660 wild horses from a ranch in Buellton,” Animal Services Director Jan Glick said. “Just recently we got seven cockatiels in one day.”
Under county law, the Animal Service shelters—one each in Santa Maria, Lompoc, and Santa Barbara—are mandated to act as temporary housing for stray animals and rabies control centers.
“We also operate as an open access shelter, because if we didn’t do that, where would all the animals go?” Glick asked. “They’d end up on the streets and end up worse than if they were in the shelter.”
Glick told the Sun she’s noticed a significant increase in the rate of homeless animals since the economy started to falter. According to shelter statistics, the canine intake population went up by 700 dogs from fiscal year 2006-07 to fiscal year 2008-09.
She said shelter populations nationwide were actually getting smaller—until the recession. Then the number of stray and abandoned animals started going up again.
“I think that’s why adoptions are challenging now as well,” she said. “People don’t want to take on the responsibility [of owning a pet] if they’re not sure they’re able to meet that responsibility.”
Animal Services, she explained, is doing everything it can to find good homes for the animals in its care.
“We have a goal of ‘no-kill’ for all adoptable animals,” she said.
Adoptable means the animal is older than eight weeks, healthy, and behaviorally adjusted. A “treatable” animal is one that is too young to leave its mother or the facility, or has a curable medical or behavioral condition.
“An unadoptable animal is an animal that’s irremediably suffering from a condition or disease like advanced cancer,” she explained, “or the animal has a history of biting or aggression.”
Animal Services took in 4,643 dogs and 3,114 cats countywide last year. Of those animals, 3,871 were adopted, 1,738 were returned to their owners, and 1,790 were euthanized. Those statistics don’t include owner-requested euthanizations, nor do they include the number of bunnies, horses, or other animals in the shelters’ care.
The staff will go to great lengths to ensure an animal’s survival. For example, Glick said, seven dogs in the Santa Barbara shelter were recently airlifted to a no-kill facility in Vermont, and 30 other dogs were transported by car to the Sacramento-based Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
There aren’t any cat transfers, she said, because “everybody’s overcrowded with cats.”
There are several reasons for the prolific feline population. First, cats are highly efficient breeders. Second, the redemption rate for cats is much lower than it is for dogs.
“People tend to think of cats differently [than dogs],” Glick said. “I think people don’t go looking as often for their cats when they’re missing because they don’t have the same investment in them. They’d never think of moving out and leaving their dog, but they’ll do that with their cat.”
To ensure all pets are cared for, Animal Services runs a special program called Project PetSafe, which educates owners about the county’s low-cost licensing, vaccination, micro-chipping, and spay/neuter services—because in most cases caring for one’s animal isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s the law.
Looking for homes on the range
In 2007, C.C. Wellman transformed her five-acre property in Solvang into an animal sanctuary.
“It’d been a dream of mine for a long time,” Wellman told the Sun during a recent tour of her Happy Endings Animal Rescue Sanctuary (H.E.A.R.S.).
Wellman said when she turned 50, her husband said, “You’re not getting any younger. If there’s anything you’ve always wanted to do in your life, now is the time to do it.”
Since then, Wellman has been taking in homeless horses, ponies, bunnies, dogs, birds, and cats.
“I can only take so many because I only have five acres,” she said. “I have 52 animals on my list right now that need homes, and this is just in the Santa Ynez Valley.”
Still, in Wellman’s mind, every little bit helps.
“I feel a duty to care for animals and to educate people,” she said. “Believe me, I would love nothing more than to be put out of business.”
With the help of a handful of faithful volunteers, including veterinary student Kirsten White and horse trainer Tammy Gold, Wellman nurtures animals back to health and, in many cases, finds them adoptive homes.
Last month, the sanctuary helped rescue 13 horses from a property in Solvang. Two of the horses, named Dancing Cat and Prince Charming, are currently being rehabilitated at H.E.A.R.S.
“When I first saw [Dancing Cat] I just burst into tears. She was skin and bones,” Wellman said.
Dancing Cat is the half-sister of one of Wellman’s other horses, Kitty in a Storm, a muscular racetrack flunkee who stands at least 16 hands tall.
“[Dancing Cat] should be big and healthy and buff like her sister, but I don’t think she got a good start in life,” she said. “But she’s come a long way since when we first got her. She used to charge you, but now she lets you get pretty close. And she’s gained about 100 pounds.”
Wellman credits the progress in great part to Gold’s harness-free Liberty Training.
“It’s based on developing mutual respect between you and the animal,” she explained.
“I have no doubt both [Dancing Cat and Prince Charming] will recover and will make someone a great best friend … but not right now. We still have work to do,” she added.
It seems like every animal living at H.E.A.R.S. is a survivor in his or her own right: There’s a pony whose hooves were so overgrown he could barely walk, a horse with one eye, and a bunny rescued from the Los Angeles fashion district. Some of the animals’ backstories are more bittersweet, like the one about an owner who simply could no longer handle the responsibility of owning a 1,000-plus-pound animal.
“I’m still child-like and optimistic that people are ignorant and don’t know how to care for their animals,” Wellman said. “People will buy a pony for their kid or say, ‘I’ve always wanted a horse,’ but do you know how much it costs to take care of a horse? The boarding, the feed, the vet bills? Colic surgery alone costs $5,000.”
As one could imagine, running an animal sanctuary specializing in equine care isn’t cheap, either.
“It cost $4,000 just for this summer,” Wellman said and estimated that approximately 35 percent of the sanctuary’s funding comes out of her own pocket. “And there aren’t many grants out there for animals, especially animal supplies like fly spray and horse fencing.”
Running the sanctuary, she said, is “definitely a full-time job.”
But she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“[The sanctuary] definitely doesn’t pay my bills, but it pays in so many other ways,” she said. “All I have to do is look in an animal’s eyes.”
Contact Managing Editor Amy Asman at aasman@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 6, 2011.