Haywood Spay/Neuter Serving the Community by providing Low-Cost Spay/Neuter Services 2012 Go al: 2,100 Spa y / N euters as o f 3/1: 462 (22%) Spring 2012 Inside this Issue: $10 Special helps 100s 2 What is Estrus? 2 2011 Another Record Year! Every spay prevents an unwanted pregnancy, every neuter keeps the boy at home. Thanks to you, we continue to see the results that endorse our mission: shelter intakes were down another 6.5% (230 animals) last year. The euthanasia rate was down 7% overall but over twice the number of cats were put down than dogs. See page 2 on which dog is most at risk and page 4 on the future of cats. At Risk Animals 2 License Plates Help Haywood 3 Future of Cats 4 Message from Exec Director 4 Please Support Our Sponsors 5 On the Calendar 6 2012 Board of Directors President Connie Hewitt President elect Susan Kumpf Vice President Nancy Lux Treasurer Linnea McAden Secretary Jeanne Naber Board Members Clarissa Kuehn Kit Mills Buffy Phillips Board Member Emeritus Nadean McArthur Executive Director Penny Wallace Get your Sweetie a beautiful flower basket or other goody from our booth at The Whole Bloomin Thing on Saturday May 7th. All proceeds support our lowcost spay/neuter program. Call 452-1329 to donate handcrafted items or plants. Look for our new billboard on I-40 west just before you enter Haywood County. Homeless pets begin as unwanted litters, so help spread the word about affordable spay/neuter and our Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) project. Can you share our brochure or flyers with your friends? Start with this newsletter! Then bookmark www.haywoodspayneuter.org for easy & secure online donations. And Like us on Facebook to stay current on our progress! Only 327 pets were redeemed from the shelter last year. Could yours find you before it s too late? Get a permanent ID solution at our next $15 microchip clinic in May. Call 452-1329 for details. Mingle with animal lovers at our annual HART $35 theater reception Thursday October 4th. Preview the romantic hit The Light in the Piazza with sweeping musical scores Broadway! All proceeds support affordable spay/neuter. Reserve tickets at 452-1329. Our crafty volunteers create colorful self-heated mats for dogs and cats. Available for $20 at The Dog House in Haywood Square. All proceeds benefit spay/neuter. From left above: Marcia Tate, Jan Chicoine, Judy Bromley, Pat Naffin, Connie Hewitt and Clarissa Kuehn. Comfort mats help sooth nervous cats at Haywood County Animal Shelter. From left above: Jean Hazzard, Clarissa Kuehn, Connie Hewitt, Nancy Lux and Penny Wallace. SPAY by FIVE MONTHS
PAGE 2 HAYWOOD SPAY/NEUTER SPRING 2012 $10 Special Helps 100s And our Days of the Stray 2011 event helps 82 Affordable surgeries are possible only if Haywood Spay/Neuter continues to subsidize actual costs with deep discounts or free service. The success of our $10 pet promotion is easy to measure: 914 surgeries! Neighbors helped neighbors take advantage of the $10 special, ensuring better health and behavior for their four-legged mutual friends. We re repeating the $10 Special for pet cats through March 31st. It includes a free rabies vaccine thanks to our ASPCA grant. Spay/Neuter Benefits At -Risk Animals Pit Bull is a term that encompasses mainly three breeds of dog: American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, and Staffordshire Bull Terrier. There are an estimated 3-5 million Pit Bulls in the U.S. Considered a 'bully breed' and subject to discriminatory laws, they are by far the most euthanized breed. Many factors beyond breed affect a dog s tendency toward aggression heredity, sex, early experience, reproductive status, socialization and training. Our Days of the Stray 2011 event for National Feral Cat Day provided free surgery and vaccinations for 82 free-roaming cats, preventing hundreds of unwanted, homeless kittens in Haywood County this spring. There are so many people in Haywood County who want to protect the cats living in their neighborhoods. We're working every day to help, but we can't save lives without raising funds to cover our costs. Clinic fees are $63 for females and $48 for males, including surgery, rabies, distemper, de-worming, and exam. Can you help? Pity the Pit. Then fix it. We put down 1 of every 2 pit bulls at the shelter, sad endings to troubled lives What is Estrus? This is when the female cat in heat is receptive to the male. External signs are not as obvious in the cat as they are in the dog. The main signs seen a r e b e h a v i o r a l l o u d vocalizing, rolling on the floor, elevating the hindquarters and possibly a decrease in appetite. Many people have confused the signs of the feline estrus phase as signs of being in pain. Estrus lasts from 3 to 14 days and average is one week. If the female is not mated, she may go back into heat within several days. Momma cat goes back in heat as early as one week after giving birth. Cats have kittens all year long with man y more pregnancies in the spring and fall or kitten seasons. On average, dogs have two cycles a year. 97% of fatal dog attacks involve an unneutered male used for guarding, social status, fighting and/or breeding. It is a negligent owner who allows unsupervised interaction with children, abuses or neglects the dog, and does not humanely control or confine it. Over 70% of all dog bites involve unneutered males An unneutered male dog is three times more likely to bite 18% of all euthanized Haywood County shelter dogs are pits. It s a PITiful shame with an easy solution! Support spay/neuter.
SPRING 2012 HAYWOOD SPAY/NEUTER PAGE 3 Help Us Stop Unwanted Litters by MAIL: Haywood Spay/Neuter P.O. Box 992, Waynesville NC 28786 ONLINE: www.haywoodspayneuter.org YES of course I will help Haywood Spay/Neuter provide low-cost surgeries to save lives, prevent litters. Here is my gift of $. This is in memory / honor of Name Phone Address City Zip My check is enclosed. I wish to donate by credit card (circle one): MasterCard Visa Discover Card # Expiration Date Cardholder Signature Please email the newsletter to me and reduce the cost of paper, printing, and postage. My email address is No spam! Haywood Spay/Neuter will not share or sell my information to any individual, group, or organization. Ever. Haywood Animal Welfare Association, Inc. is a qualified 501(c)(3) charitable non-profit. Gifts to Haywood Spay/Neuter are tax deductible under the IRS rules governing gifts to charities. Financial information about this organization and a copy of its license are available from the Charitable Solicitation Licensing Section at 1-888-830-4989. The license is not an endorsement by the state. License Plates fund Spay/Neuters It s never guaranteed, but any state reimbursement of low-income pet surgery helps Haywood County. The NC Dept. of Agriculture and Consumer Services Animal Welfare Section reimbursed 27 counties almost $400,000 for more than 8,000 low-income pet spay/neuters in 2011. Haywood County received $38,658 or 15% less than requested for 1,641 low-income surgeries. That left over $7,000 in clinic costs unmet by the state needing donor support. NC Animal Lovers license plates help fund almost 8,000 spay/neuters in 27 counties including Haywood Proof of income is required to receive free pet surgery. I am proud that we are able to help c o un t ie s of f e r lo w -cos t spay/neuter surgeries to lowincome families, because fixing cats and dogs is the best answer to the pet overpopulation problem in North Carolina, said Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, whose retriever, Kate, is fixed. The reimbursements are partially funded by fees collected from the $30 Animal Lovers specialty license plate. More sales helps meet 100% of all funding requests. More good news: The state named Penny Page its first spay/neuter coordinator since the program began in 2001 to help raise awareness and encourage more counties to offer low-cost surgeries. She is traveling the state to meet with county animal shelters and regional organizations that offer low-cost fixes. Watch for her visit to Haywood County!
PAGE 4 HAYWOOD SPAY/NEUTER SPRING 2012 The Future of Cats in Haywood County Community cats need special consideration they are cats, after all. Today s animal control system was developed over 100 years ago to address certain serious harms that dogs posed to humans. It was, and is still today, based on ownership of animals. Animal control laws attempt to control animals by controlling their owners. Animals who do not have owners (the stray population) or whose owners cannot comply are impounded and adopted or killed. This widespread and deeply entrenched system does not meet today s reality. Cats not dogs comprise a vast majority of the stray population today. Most of these cats are not socialized to humans because they are offspring of lost or abandoned owned cats, perhaps descendents of our own childhood pets or barn cats. With a 2011 kill rate of 68% of all cats entering the Haywood County shelter, the safest path for a stray cat s survival is to Message from the Executive Director Our success is made possible by high volume, high quality, low-cost surgeries It is important to say how fortunate we are in our partnership with Humane Alliance of WNC. The high volume, high quality, low-cost surgeries they provide is vital to our efforts and improving the lives of county pets Founded in 1994, its mission is to provide the nonlethal solution to the This lucky kitten was rescued during TNR trapping. Since 2000, Haywood County Animal Services put down over 27,000 dogs, puppies, cats and kittens, with 1,611 euthanized in 2011. avoid the shelter altogether. Since vaccinated cats do not pose the serious harm that dogs pose to humans, it makes sense to exclude community cats from the leash-law ordinance. Controlling colony size with Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) and our Managed Colony approach helps cats become better vaccinated neighbors. Holding pro-cat citizens responsible for the community cats they refuse to watch starve requires a more refined solution homeless, abandoned, and feral animal populations so that euthanasia is no longer an acceptable means of population control. Their mission enables ours: Serving the community by p r o v i d i n g l o w - c o s t spay/neuter services. During NC s 2010-11 fiscal year, we applied for than leash-law citations, fines, and capture/kill. A balanced solution must hold anti-cat citizens responsible f or maintaining a risky environment (open trash, access to crawl space) that draws nuisance wildlife, including cats. Killing all the animals is not the answer. Next step is the first step. The immediate benefit of spay/neuter by five months is no first litter! Neutered dogs are less aggressive. And isn t that what started Animal Control? Here s What You Can Do 1. Don t take cats to the shelter. Instead, trap, neuter, and return (TNR). They have a better chance of survival outdoors. 2. End homelessness. Spread the word about our low/no-cost spay/ neuter solution for pets and freeroaming community cats. 3. Add your voice to the growing call for mandatory spay/neuter and TNR to reduce cat complaints & shelter euthanasia. s p a y / n e u t e r s u b s i d y reimbursement for 1,641 animals of low-income clients. Two counties received more dollars than we did: Robeson and Wake applied for reimbursement for a combined total of 1,754 or only 118 more spay/neuters than Haywood County.
SPRING 2012 Accepting new clients. Please call today! HAYWOOD SPAY/NEUTER PAGE 5 Cre a t e t h e k itchen or bath of y o u r d re a ms with Solid S u rface Specia list p re miu m custom countertops Please Support our Sponsors Show your appreciation of our featured sponsors by visiting them and using their products and services as often as the need arises. And be sure to tell them Thanks for supporting Haywood Spay/Neuter! 452-0991 Thank you Danny Wingate for providing our transport location The Yellow House on Plott Creek Road A Romantic B&B in the Great Smoky Mountains 100 Charles Street Waynesville 456-6051 Give us a Boost At BI-LO, 1% of your grocery purchases benefit Haywood Spay/Neuter when you use the enrollment card below. It takes only one scan during the program year (August through May). Thereafter, we reap the reward every time you use your BI-LO BONUSCARD. Support Haywood Spay/Neuter & SAVE 5 or more per gallon of GAS
828-452-1329 145 Wall Street P.O. Box 992 Waynesville NC 28786 Non-Profit US POSTAGE PAID Waynesville, NC 28786 Permit #54 www.haywoodspayneuter.org Monday through Thursday Noon to 5 PM Serving the Community by providing Low-Cost Spay/Neuter Services We re fixed and luvin it! Place Label Here On the Calendar TRANSPORT DATES Alternate Wednesdays @ 8 AM March 28 April 11, 25 May 9, 23 June 6, 20 July 13, 27 August 1, 15, 29 September 12, 26 October 10, 24 November 7, 21 December 5 We transport your pet to Humane Alliance Spay/Neuter Clinic in Asheville Capacity is limited. Paid reservations required. Transport carrier rentals available. CALENDAR HIGHLIGHTS March 19 Board Meeting April 16 Board Meeting May 05 Lake J. Elem. Craft Fair Booth 12 Whole Bloomin Thing Booth 21 Board Meeting TBD $15 Microchip Clinic 452-1329 June 2 Rux Nursery Benefit for us! 18 Board Meeting 23 Garden Tour Info Booth July 16 Board Meeting August 20 Board Meeting September 17 Board Meeting October 4 HART Theater Benefit for us! $35 hors d oeuvres' reception plus The Light in the Piazza 13 Church Street Art Fair Info Booth 20 Apple Festival Info Booth November 19 Board Meeting December 17 Board Meeting Over 10,000 Surgeries since 2003 2003...769 2004...756 2005...552 2006...314 2007...647 2008... 1,324 2009... 1,921... 1,851... 2,308... 462 by 3/1 2012 Goal = 2,100 Stop Unwanted Litters Prevent Suffering Volunteer / Donate