Pet Talk

by Cathy Davis
www.houltonanimalshelter.com
    A lot to cover this week! First and foremost, my sincere apologies to Darlene Kenney, our Web designer – I misspelled her name last week when telling you about our website and wanted to make sure to clarify that. Sorry Darlene!
    If you haven’t had a chance to visit the site yet, take a minute to stop by and look at all the beautiful animals available for adoption, post a comment, or check out our upcoming events.
    This past weekend the Littleton Agricultural Museum hosted a benefit supper for the Museum and allowed the Shelter to have a dessert auction afterward. Many thanks to all the cooks who brought cakes, pies and squares. We earned about $600 with this event with the highlight of the afternoon being the battle of bidders over the last raspberry pie. High bidder paid $80 for this pie and it was just great fun watching gentlemen enjoy the spirit of the bidding! And speaking of the museum, if you haven’t stopped by yet, you really should, it is just absolutely amazing, the amount of work and energy that has gone into this fantastic collection and restoration. The Ross Ridge School is something you really must see.
    Also this past weekend we transported some of our resident cats up to the Potato Blossom Festival in Fort Fairfield and are happy to report that five of our kitties are going to new homes as a result of this effort! This is a great day and we are so fortunate to have board members and volunteers who will give up their weekends to work at adopt-a-thons.
    This coming weekend we will have another group of kitties going north for a two day adopt-a-thon at the Aroostook Centre Mall.
    Just think how lucky you are, you don’t have to travel all the way up there to get a look at our fine assortment of adoptable pets, we’re right around the corner from you, so we invite you to stop in this week and check out the animals we have available for adoption. Remember, it won’t be long and the field mice will be starting to move in for the fall so a good mouser would really come in handy!
    Also, keep your eyes on the bulletin boards at the grocery stores and other locations. Quite often there are animals advertised who need new homes because owners are moving or have newly discovered allergies. It is our desire to help place all animals needing to be re-homed but not all of them can come through the shelter, simply because there is not enough room. I’m not sure how to explain it other than we have a ten gallon bucket and people keep trying to dump twenty gallons into it. It just can’t work, until we empty out a few gallons, we can’t pour more in!
    And if you don’t mind, I’d like to add just one more thing. Recently Dr. Abouleish ran a series of letters encouraging people to be courteous – this really hit home with all of us who work with the animals because I can’t tell you how many times someone has come through our doors and used foul language and screamed at the staff because their dog was running at large and animal control picked it up and brought it to the shelter. There is no need for this kind of treatment. I have had cases where the staff is abused because they have made a very difficult decision not to adopt to someone based on information on the pre-adopt form, and it just makes me wonder what people think they are accomplishing by screaming and using bad language. Do you think we would be more inclined to adopt to you when you call us bad names?
    Please remember that the people who work at the shelter do so at great cost – they don’t make much money, they have a very difficult job with back breaking labor, lifting heavy bags, getting down on hands and knees to scrub, being bitten and scratched by frightened animals, and their ultimate goal is to see that every animal is well taken care of, healthy, and placed in new homes just as quickly as possible. Please treat them with the respect they deserve.