Letter to the Editor

Everybody ought to do their part

Monday, June 25, 2007

To the Editor:

I feel the need once again to share with our community what I know from weekly visits to the Greene County Humane Shelter. Thank you so much to Rene, Rachel, Cricket, Donny and Bill for the excellent hard work they do daily at the shelter trying to put a bandage on the gushing wound of this county's problems with abandoned and neglected animals. They have all the animals named and have things clean and orderly for the animals people bring there for them to figure out what to do with. I heard one figure this winter that astounded me. The shelter took in at least 33 litters of puppies this winter. If one figures an average of 4 pups per litter that is 132 puppies. I want to plead with the people in this county to have their cats and dogs spayed and neutered. If you have done so already, thank you. Encourage your friends and neighbors to do the same.

There are some other things that I've found I can do to help. Maybe you could see yourself being able to do some of these things because you have a love of animals. I visit the shelter with my 6-year-old daughter and play with the kittens and cats in the cat room. We take pictures of the animals and put them up around town. I have a computer program called "Create a Card" that I use to make the posters that I mount the pictures on. I foster animals in my home. Right now I have a black momma kitty and her three black and white kittens. Stephanie Arthur, Sharon Sparks, Kristi Bladen and I, who teach at Bloomfield High School, fostered dogs recently. If strays show up at my house, as they do because I live near the shelter and people dump their animals there during the night, I put them in the paper here in town. An ad for a "dog free to a good home" is free. I get between 5 and 10 calls on each add, and I have placed several dogs in good homes within a week of their arrival on my doorstep. My Methodist Church has a tote designated for donated items for the shelter. Bloomfield High School has a Humane Society Club.

If you are an animal lover, please join in the efforts of the shelter to help the overwhelming numbers of extra animals in this county to find loving homes. Each person's small effort added to all the small efforts of each other individual can add up to a huge difference being made for all of these animals. The shelter is full to capacity of kittens of every color right now. If you have room for one, maybe you could go adopt one or foster one today.

Thanks,

Lisa Tarr-Bauman

Linton