A look back on 2014
This time of year always makes me nostalgic, so it’s appropriate to look back and reflect on the year. We had lots of highlights and positive things happen this year of which we are quite proud. We started the year on a positive note by creating a new position of Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator. One of our long time employees took on that role and has helped to grow both programs.
Our adoption outreach program included monthly visits to Unleashed by Petco on Yulupa Avenue as well as to events as far away as Jack London Square for a huge adopt-a-thon and participation in both the Bay Area Pet Fair and the Northern California Pet Expo. We had a presence at the Rohnert Park Farmer’s Market every Friday night and appreciated the opportunity to highlight one of our adoptable animals on stage as part of the entertainment.
We offered our popular Bunny Days each month. The public is invited to bring their rabbits for free nail trims and to shop at our Bunny Boutique for fresh hay, treats and toys. This opportunity to showcase our wonderful, friendly rabbits has resulted in a big increase in adoptions and a chance to help educate and connect with other bunny people.
The most exciting thing this past year is we held our first two wellness clinics at local mobile home parks. This offered the mostly low-income residents of the parks an opportunity to have a free health exam for their dogs and cats as well as free vaccinations, wormings, flea product, microchip and ID tag. We talked to everyone about our fix-it clinics and offered to schedule appointments for free cat spays and neuters and very low-cost surgeries for their dogs. We saw more than 80 animals at these clinics and felt it was a great bridge to people who wouldn’t necessarily know about or use our services. We hope to do at least two more next year and really appreciate the financial support of the Animal Shelter League and FAIRE to allow us to provide this program.
We also expanded our education program and, again, with support from FAIRE adopted the Monte Vista Elementary School as our first Humane School. Every teacher received a subscription to the wonderful newspaper, KIND news, to share with his or her students throughout the school year. We supplemented this with classroom presentations by our educator and an animal ambassador. We are continuing with Monte Vista this year and gradually hope to add another school to the program to reach even more students.
Speaking of students, we held another seven weeks of our fun and educational summer camp. This popular program brings kids in grades 2-7 here for a weeklong chance to really learn about pet care and interact with the shelter animals. Through a variety of guest speakers, videos, arts and crafts, and fieldtrips, we get the message across about the importance of spaying and neutering, microchips and ID tags, responsible pet care, respect for wildlife and empathy for other creatures.
Social media is very popular and has been one of the most valuable new avenues to help promote adoptable animals and help the lost pets that come through our door get reunited with their families. The shelter has a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/rpanimalshelter) where we post all incoming strays and it’s amazing how many people find their lost pets that way! One goal we did not achieve this year was to have 5000 “likes” on our Facebook page to increase our team helping animals. The easiest way you can help all our shelter animals, without leaving your house or spending a dime, is to share our stories with your Facebook friends. Please consider joining us by liking our page and become part of our social media team helping animals.
There was so much else going on this past year – Amnesty Week for pet licenses; our 5th annual Mutt Strut, a fun day that raised over $10,000 for the ASL; our monthly Fix-it clinics, where we altered 173 cats for free and 80 dogs at low-cost, and more. We could just go on and on. But I’ll stop here and say it was a great year and we hope, with your support, to do it all again in 2015.