IT'S ALL IN THE FAMILY

IT’S ALL IN THE FAMILY

by Edythe “Edie” Hubler, FOTAS Board of Directors

Over the past weeks, we have written several times about the FOTAS foster program, where mama dogs and their puppies or dogs needing special attention are temporarily cared for in a loving home environment until they are ready for adoption.  We’ve heard about fostering from dedicated volunteers, from one lucky dog who was being fostered, and from a happy family who adopted a fostered dog.

This week and next we want to celebrate some of the children of foster families.  We asked Abby and Audrey Wiseman, Caroline Wolcott, Isabelle and Sean Igoe, Josh, Parker and Bailey Daniels and their parents to share how the experience has affected and shaped their lives.  These are two of their stories.

“The children have learned the responsibility of having to feed and care for pets, but more significantly, they have learned about life,” says Heather Wiseman, who along with her husband, Grant, and two daughters, Audrey and Abby, have fostered over 200 puppies. “Fostering has taught our family how to prioritize and think about what is most important in our lives.”

Her daughter Audrey says, “The puppies love us even though we are imperfect in so many ways.”  She says the love you see in their faces when they look at her melts her heart. “It’s an easy and fun way to help Aiken and the nice people at the shelter.”  She also thinks the puppies are funny when they howl.

Audrey’s sister Abby likes animals because they are different, but very much like us.  The puppies make her laugh because “they are so small that when they sneeze or shake their head, they fall over.”

Caroline Wolcott is the daughter of Randy and Girl Wolcott, who have sponsored close to 150 puppies and their mamas.  “The most fun about foster puppies is the age when they are just stumbling around and learning to walk.  It’s fun to watch them take their first little steps,” says Caroline.  She thinks it’s really funny when they get the “crazies” and run around their kennel.  “And then boom - they fall asleep.”

All these children are active participants in the care of these animals.  They pick up dirty newspapers, feed, give medications, bathe, and hold for the dreaded toenail clipping. All have seen first hand the miracle of birth. 

The positive effect of the fostering experience on these children has been so much bigger than simply performing a kind act for an animal.  It has taught them compassion, empathy, discipline and planning.  It develops their self-esteem because they know their role in socializing these puppies is an important factor in getting them adopted.  It brings them joy.

Sounds like a pretty good deal all around, doesn’t it?  Bring your family together; join the FOTAS foster program.  You and our many needful dogs and puppies will be glad you did. 

Call the FOTAS hotline at 803-514-4313, or email us at info@FOTASAiken.org.

FOTAS Volunteers work with the AIKEN COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER, 411 Wire Road.  For more information, contact “info@fotasaiken.org” or visit FOTAS on line at www.fotasaiken.org.

Aiken County Animal Shelter:  “By the Numbers”

 

Oct. 28 - Nov. 2, 2013

 

15 dogs adopted

Year to Date:  

617 terrific pets adopted

 

THANK YOU AIKEN COUNTY COMMUNITY!

Aiken County Shelter “Pet of the Week!”

**All adoption fees include:  spay/neuter, heartworm test, all shots, worming, and microchip.

SUKI -- Shephard mix, female -- 11 months old, 55 lbs.    Only $38

C.C. -- domestic short hair, female -- 4 years old, 9 lbs.    Only $35

FOTAS Gives Thanks for Many Things

This year, Friends of the Animal Shelter have much for which we can be grateful.

We are deeply indebted to individuals, families, neighborhoods, schools, clubs, and communities throughout Aiken County who have given generously of their time and money to help the animals at the County Shelter. 

We are grateful for our local business community’s ongoing support.  Talent, expertise, professional services and resources, and dollars have been invested over and over in our cause.

FOTAS is a 100% volunteer organization, and we are so very grateful for that spirit which moves our volunteers to go out to the shelter day after day, week after week, to assure our adoptable dogs get the attention and exercise they need; to spend time with the cats and kittens; so our homeless pets can be seen as potentially great family members.

Our volunteers plan and execute fund-raisers like Woofstock, Breakfast at FATZ, the FOTAS Hunter Pace at Three Runs Plantation, golf tournaments, and special “giving parties.”  We have clubs like Future Farmers, Girl Scouts, Serteens and NJROTC who dedicate themselves to advancing the FOTAS Mission to help provide a Community Shelter in which we can all take pride.  We are so thankful for all they do.

We have a state-of-the-art website because of a volunteer.  We have broadcast email capabilities, keeping our membership 1000-strong up to date on our progress, special needs, and involvement opportunities – all because of a volunteer. 

We are blessed with rarely talented volunteers who understand database management, how to maintain financial accounts, how to recruit and organize the right help at the right time, and those who can appreciate contributions in just the right way.

We are profoundly grateful for the volunteers who take on litter after litter of abandoned puppies and kittens, who find transfer partners at no-kill shelters, and who see that some very lucky dogs and cats find their way to forever homes.

We have volunteers who are developing targeted spay/neuter programs across the county, who make the calls, who help the owners, rescuers, businesses do the right thing and spay/neuter as many dogs and cats as they can in their communities.  We are so very thankful for all their combined efforts.

We are blessed with county staff and county officials who have joined us in one of the finest public-private partnerships ever seen in creating a better community.  For the officers in the field and shelter staff dealing with daily heartbreak, to county administration and officials determined to find the optimal combination of resources and outcomes, we are thankful.

Perhaps there is nothing for which we in the FOTAS family can be more grateful than the miraculous creatures whose cause we champion day in and day out, our pets.  Dog lover or cat lover, we know the loyalty, affection, entertainment they bring us. 

If we let them, our pets can teach us about tolerance, patience, forgiveness, honesty, and love.  We are thankful always for them, and the opportunity to live up to their image of us.   

FOTAS Volunteers work with the AIKEN COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER, 411 Wire Road.  For more information, contact “info@fotasaiken.org” or visit FOTAS on line at www.fotasaiken.org

Aiken County Animal Shelter:  “By the Numbers”

November 12^th thru 18^th   

Received: 37 dogs and 46 cats!

Adopted: 8 dogs and 1 cats

Euthanized: 48 dogs and 22 cats

 Aiken County Shelter “Pets of the Week!” So much LOVE for so little!

TIGER – +/-1 yr, 34 lbs, He has stripes.  He is great on a leash.  Super friendly and only $35

 

SHADOW – Golden boy.  3 months old. Lovely, quiet personality. Purr-fect gentleman! $35

 

Plans for the New County Shelter Beckon County-wide Involvement

The crowning achievement of the public/private partnership between Aiken County and FOTAS will certainly be the completion of the new Aiken County Animal Shelter planned for next year. 

Three busy years have passed since FOTAS was founded by three women seeking to make a difference in the welfare of thousands of animals received and destroyed each year at the Aiken County Shelter.  The organization’s progress has been huge, a direct result of a magical teamwork that evolved among the players: County and Shelter Staff, Council, FOTAS volunteers, community groups, businesses, and local governments.

What began as an initiative to address dire conditions at our grossly inadequate, understaffed, underfunded shelter, has  become the very essence of what Gandhi meant when he said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” 

Just substitute “county” for “nation” and you capture the spirit of the FOTAS/ Aiken County team.

Last Wednesday, FOTAS volunteers sat down with the architects from Macmillan, Pazdan and Smith to talk about how to convey critical elements of the project to the public.  As the essential needs of this shelter building project take shape, FOTAS and the architects are reaching for broad community support through the Capital Campaign necessary to complete it.

The conversation among those at the table last Wednesday was already well-versed in the barebones, pragmatic obligations of animal control law.  The challenge then became adding principles of responsibility and morality to animal welfare in our public shelter, then creating a facility that could act as a hub for Helping to promote those values throughout the county.  

 The architects’ initial drawings reflected their deep understanding of: the way shelter staff work; the animal control obligations of county government; and, the animal advocacy dreams and desires of FOTAS members.  

First, it will be a humane, healthy environment for homeless animals.  It will be a place where minimal staff can work most effectively and efficiently.  The new shelter will provide access and space appropriate for all the public demands it must accommodate: the animals brought to, developed within, and adopted from it.

Adopting lots of animals into responsible, forever homes requires a place that invites public involvement: volunteers to get the pets ready, and adopters willing to come to their public shelter to look for a pet.  Ultimately, our new shelter will have an open stable-like feel, and multi-purpose indoor and outdoor spaces for fun and productive people-pet interactions. 

Finally, our new Aiken County Shelter will provide a hub for county-wide programs that build commitment to spay/neuter and responsible pet-ownership.

FOTAS is working with the county shelter to improve data-gathering; to assist funding opportunities for future shelter-based programs; to prevent unwanted pets; and, to  give back to the larger community.

The new Aiken County Animal Shelter is a beginning, and it will be a healthy, happy place where no adoptable pet has to go to die, and the heart of a responsible, animal-loving county.

Join us.  There are many ways to help.

Aiken County Animal Shelter:  “By the Numbers”

For August 6 thru 12, 2012

Received:  66 dogs and 51 cats

Adopted:  10 dogs and 2 cats

Put down:  57 dogs and 33 cats

COWBOY – 1 yr. “Singing Chihuahua!”  You sing; he sings.  Cute as a bug for only $35!

 Aiken County Shelter “Pets of the Week” are HALF PRICE*!

DIABLO – Baby male tabby.  Bold gray stripes and white mittens.  Too cute for only $35. 

Volunteer Family Marks FOTAS ‘Making a Difference’ for 3 Years

It was 1999, and Marcia and her teenage daughter, Samantha, were at a local veterinarian’s when they spotted the notice of urgent need for two homeless dogs on the wall.  Having recently moved to Aiken with their equestrian experiences and equestrian dreams, they had a farm and decided that they could save the dogs.

Unfortunately, the clinic had just shipped the dogs to the county shelter, so Marcia and Sam set out Wire Road to rescue them.  At the shelter, when they told the woman seated beyond the glass window what they wanted, she acted as if recovering the two dogs was not just impossible, but absurd.  The dogs could not be found and she would not bother to ask anyone to look.  That was 1999.

For ten years, Marcia, husband Dan and Sam, would recoil in horror at any mention of the Aiken County Animal Shelter. 

Then, around 2006 or ’07, one woman chose to challenge the status-quo regarding homeless pets.  She was serving on a policy committee for county animal control and was appalled at the prevailing attitudes about our public shelter.  The woman began by walking one dog, proposing one volunteer policy, recruiting one animal advocate, at a time. 

Then a transfer policy, one dog or cat saved, an entrenched attitude, one ally, one risk, one favor, and one miracle at a time, FOTAS was born, summer 2009, already teamed with a renewed and reenergized county shelter staff. 

One day, Marcia and Sam see the article about FOTAS and the Aiken County Animal Shelter in the paper.  The story tells how badly foster homes are needed for puppies and kittens.  It quotes the shelter’s commitment not to euthanize healthy litters that are fostered.

“We can do that!” the mother-daughter team decide, and off they go to join the cause.

That was seven or eight litters, lots of lessons and many stories ago: like the promise that if they kept a puppy they were out of the fostering business…well, except for Misty May who Sam adopted because she had to.

“That’s the only one we ever kept,” Marcia says sheepishly. Then she gives credit to their Chow-cross, Nina, who says, “No more dogs!” and means it. 

Samantha’s career has taken her and Misty May to Florida, but Marcia and Dan carry on. Their vacant barn hosts the litters and the fallow garden pen makes a secure play yard. 

In the last three years, the couple has learned that a determined dog can climb a 10-foot barrier to escape a box stall; that a normally sweet stray can be pretty fierce about protecting her pups; that not all babies survive; and, that the job comes with enough joy and miracles to be worth it.

“Any day you save a dog’s life is a good day,” Marcia says.

On Friday, Dan and Marcia hooked their double-axle pickup to Herbie Brown, the FOTAS Rescue Waggin’, to haul nine lucky dogs to catch a transfer north.

Now that’s Making a Difference! 

Aiken County Animal Shelter:  “By the Numbers”

For July            2012    vs.  2011

Received	449	461
Adopted Cats	18	7
Adopted Dogs	34	46
Transferred	41	12
Euthanized	(72%)  324	(81%)  373

Aiken County Shelter “Pets of the Week” are HALF PRICE*!

BRANDY – 1yr. Lab mix. Affectionate, energetic, intelligent.  Highly trainable great pet!   $35!

JESSE – 1yr, gorgeous green-eyed tabby, already spayed.  Come get her for $35!

*All adoption fees include: Spay/Neuter, heartworm test, all shots, worming, and microchip and are  

half price thru 9/8/12!

 

FOTAS Celebrates Our “Animal Nut” and an Adoption Event

Birgit’s Max is 13 years old now and his age marks the time since Birgit began rescuing animals in Aiken County.  Molly’s Militia had Max when Birgit adopted him.  She brought him home to her husband and two other dogs, and then started fostering dogs herself.

Birgit spent eight years fostering dogs for Molly’s.  She fostered adult dogs, and puppies, dogs with behavioral issues, dogs and puppies with health problems.  Some were not adoptable and stayed on; some didn’t make it and broke her heart. 

After eight years Birgit took a badly needed break, but she couldn’t stay away.  When she started fostering again, she would help the SPCA some, but mainly worked with the Aiken County Animal Shelter. 

“My heart has always been with the Aiken County Shelter,” she said, “At times I had as many as 20 dogs!  So when FOTAS started their volunteer program with the County Shelter, it was natural to get on board.”

When asked how many dogs have come through her home, she doesn’t know; she’s lost count.  She had to stop doing the puppies because she could no longer handle the emotional devastation of parvo losses.

But Birgit still specializes in the tough cases: the skinny ones from neglect or abandonment, those heartworm positive, the sick ones, and abuse cases with trust issues.

“Gosh, people aren’t perfect,” she says, “But they expect animals to be.” 

Birgit currently has eight permanent resident dogs, along with horses she doesn’t ride, cats, her foster cases, and a husband who gives her the support she needs to do what she does which is love and care for them all.

“If you have a partner,” she advises, “They have to be supportive or it won’t work.  You really need the support.”

Since joining up with FOTAS three years ago, Birgit has become the captain of the FOTAS adoption events.  Once a month she loads the kennels and crates, table, sign boards, and bin of leashes, treats, bowls, food, water, newspapers, towels and toys, the donation jar, envelopes and brochures into  her truck and heads out to the county shelter. 

She picks the dogs, puppies, cats and/or kittens for the event, loads them and their paperwork, and heads for Petsmart.  By 10am she is set up in the store where she and her assistants will stay until 3pm, hoping for a good home for their charges.

This month, Birgit will be heading a special FOTAS adoption event sponsored by Brusters Ice Cream in front of Publix on Whiskey Road,  July 28^th from  11 to 3pm.

Herbie Brown, the FOTAS Rescue Waggin’ will be there with adoptable dogs.  Brusters will pay the adoption fee for the first adoption.  They will also provide a free ice cream cone and “doggie sundae” for every adoption that day.

Come on out.  Learn about volunteering, fostering, adoptions and transfers.  Eat some ice cream.  Meet Birgit, who says of her role in it all, “It’s what I do; it’s part of me.”  She’s a star.  

FOTAS Volunteers work with the AIKEN COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER, 411 Wire Road.  For more information, contact “info@fotasaiken.org” or visit FOTAS on line at www.fotasaiken.org

Aiken County Animal Shelter:  “By the Numbers”

STRIPE - 1yr, boxer mix.  The volunteers adore this guy!  Your best buddy for $70

 



DELILAH, tortoise tabby & SAMSON, golden boy – 5 yrs.  They love each other and hope to stay together. Only $35

A Tale of Two Cats and a Breakfast at FATZ

The middle of a ten-acre tree farm, well off the paved road, is the perfect place for a resourceful pair of animal lovers like Don and Fran.  And the animals that need them the most seem to somehow find their way to this unique sanctuary, especially cats.

Anyone who shares their life with an assortment of animals with complicated pasts will recognize the magic and mystery of Fran and Don’s latest experience among their four-legged friends.

The story begins a few months ago with a friendly, semi-feral, charcoal gray tomcat.  He had been captured and confined in a shelter where he contracted a feline upper respiratory infection. 

Had it been the County Shelter, he would have been euthanized.  Instead, he spent six weeks quarantined in a cage.  At the end of his confinement, the gray cat was so traumatized he was deemed unadoptable, so he ended up with Fran and Don.

The gray tom arrived terrified and angry.  He did not fight with the other cats; he hid from them.  He would not allow Don or Fran to touch him.  He hid.  They named him Gray Ghost for the way he would vanish into the bathroom or under the bed.

“Little Mama” cat was another miracle of survival in residence.  She had been abandoned for two weeks with five kittens in a vacated rental the previous summer.  Dehydrated and emaciated, she had given everything she had to her babies, and the vet didn’t think she would make it.  Don and Fran nursed her with the baby food they fed the kittens and she gradually recovered.   

Little Mama, afraid of being shut in the house, preferred living outdoors and coming in if she chose.  Then, when it seemed like she’d stayed out for weeks, one night she came in and stayed all night.

It was during that rare visit, while Fran and her little granddaughter stroked Little Mama, that Fran felt inspired to explain to the cat about Gray Ghost.

“He’s had a rough time,” she said, “He’s still so frightened.  Can you talk to him?  Tell him he’s home now… that he can trust us…”

The next morning, the gray tomcat lay curled in Don’s recliner.  As Fran approached, he was wary but didn’t run.  He let her pet him.  Then he let Don pet him.  During the day, he wandered around the house in the open.  He accepted treats and curled close by Fran in a window seat.  He allowed Don and Fran many more pets.  That night he lay on the sofa next to their granddaughter and rubbed himself into her small hand.  True story.

There are so many beautiful cats and kittens waiting for their own miracle at our County Shelter cat colony, C.A.T.S.  They are half-price, and a pleasure to visit on their screened-in porches. 

On Saturday, the 16^th, FOTAS’ benefit breakfast for our cats at FATZ Café will feature Herbie Brown and adoptable kitties, prizes, and pancakes.  Why not make some half-price magic of your own?  

FOTAS Volunteers work with the AIKEN COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER, 411 Wire Road.  For more information, contact “info@fotasaiken.org” or visit FOTAS on line at www.fotasaiken.org

 

Aiken County Animal Shelter:  “By the Numbers

20 dogs and puppies now in foster homes- please considering fostering and help us help more!

Aiken County Shelter “Pets of the Week”

 All Pets Half-Price thru July 7^th!!

LITTLE BUSTER – 2 yrs, 15 lbs. This little guy will fit into any lifestyle.  Wants your love.  Only $35. 

 

 

 

JINX is a 3 year old handsome male kitty. He is neutered and ready for his forever home. $35.

All adoption fees include: Spay/Neuter, heartworm test, all shots, worming, and microchip!