A DREAM OF MANY ANIMAL ADVOCATES.


WHO KNEW THAT TWENTY-TWO YEARS AGO, ABANDONED PET RESCUE would become Fort Lauderdale’s no kill animal shelter? Certainly, not a small group of people who decided to make a difference in their neighborhood. Their accidental rescue work began with the discovery of a colony of feral cats, living around the parking lot of a liquor store. The cats were being fed, but no one was taking responsibility for their care, beyond putting out food. So, this small army of


Odin is a fighter, but not a good fighter. He picks fights and always loses. An Abandoned Pet Rescue dog, Odin ended up back at Broward County Animal Control. He is safe with Abandoned Pet Rescue, now.


Mork is half of a bonded pair that an older couple adopted together from Abandoned Pet Rescue. After the folks realized that two dogs were just too much for them, they returned both Mork and his pal Mindy.


THE NEVER-ENDING STORY.


Today, county officials estimate that there are more than 400,000 feral cats living on the streets of Broward County. That number seems insurmountable, and Sue sighs, “I hear from so many people that it’s a never-ending problem. But, if we hadn’t done anything 22 years ago, we would probably have a million more feral cats on the streets, here.” Sue told us that the county offers free vouchers to the


volunteers set up traps to capture the cats, have them spayed or neutered and then returned to the neighbor- hood. It’s called TNR - trap, neuter, release. While the task at hand had been accomplished,


there was no time to pat themselves on the back. That’s the thing about rescue work. You cannot un-see what you’ve seen. You cannot un-know what you now know. “Once we had what we thought was one location


under control, someone noticed another group of feral cats living in the parking lot of another shopping cen- ter,” Sue Hanson told us one recent afternoon. Sue is the founder and current director of Abandoned Pet Rescue. The original ragtag group of volunteers quickly


became more committed, involved and organized. As their TNR efforts grew from one neighborhood to the next, some of the volunteers began an outreach pro- gram. Awareness and education are key to successful TNR programs.


52 THE NEW BARKER


public for spay and neuter. “But, now with county budget cuts, they’ve reduced the number of spay/neuters back to just 15 a day,” she said. “That’s hardly a drop in the bucket for the prob- lem we have.” In addition, grant money is scarce. And, while Florida’s Spay/Neuter license plate program, Florida Animal Friend, provides grant money to programs across the state, “The grant money seems to concentrate its efforts on mainly Central and Northern parts of the state,” said Sue. When food is put out for feral cats, eventually the stray


dogs come out to eat as well. Volunteers continued to try and control the problem, often pulling dogs off the streets, fostering in their own homes, vetting them, and then adopting them out. Sue knew something more had to be done to sustain the fledg- ling rescue. It’s the dream of many all-volunteer rescue groups to “someday buy a piece of property” to shelter more homeless dogs and cats. “Someday, when I win the lottery...” Thankfully, a scratch-off lottery ticket is not the only


way to reap the benefits of a windfall. “A donor, who has cho- sen to remain anonymous, purchased a building for us in 1998,” said Sue, “Just two years after we received our 501c3 certification.”


www.TheNewBarker.com


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