How do you start an animal shelter?
Most everyone loves and enjoys animals and want to do their part in keeping animals healthy and finding a good home for them. But, starting up an animal shelter takes time, effort and evaluating the rules and regulations needed to start an animal shelter and to keep it going.
First, look at your community to see if there is a real need for one. Look for information on current animal shelters to see how they’re doing, what problems that have and still have and if your community can handle more than one animal shelter.
Second, how much experience do you and those who will be working with you, have? If you don’t have a lot of experience, think about helping out at a shelter to see what exactly goes on in one. This will open your ideas as to how they are run, the challenges they have and if you truly want to continue with your plans for a shelter. While you’re checking out a shelter, go a bit further and check out several.
Third, after visiting several shelters and forming a group of people to help you, decide what kind of shelter you want. Most shelters offer many different kinds of programs such as cruelty investigation, animal rescue, and education for the community. There are “no Kill” shelters and are usually funded privately and sometimes do not accept all animals that are brought to them. But, once the animal is accepted, they are never destroyed unless they are disabled, sick or have behavior that is dangerous for others. There are also sanctuaries that focus on giving lifetime care to animals, promote adoptions and have limits to their admissions.
Fourth, make plans to raise funds for your shelter. How to do this? You can of course, communicate to any and all persons that in your area and perhaps have bake sales, corporate sponsorships, dog walks and such to raise more money.
Fifth, get your shelter going and keep it well maintained. Keeping your shelter clean and maintained effectively, you will need to keep stress reduction and disease control as your two main priorities when planning on how to separate your animals. In addition, you will need to keep your floors clean and dry, your walls at least four feet high, your heating and cooling at moderate and safe temperatures, have a security system installed, have cages installed that are stainless steel or custom made, ensure proper feeding and cleaning of the animals, good record-keeping and decent methods of euthanasia.
Take your time when planning, for there is much to be done when starting up an animal shelter but once you execute your plans, you will be doing a great service for your community and most importantly, for the animals you help.
