Humane Society expand centers

City of San Diego has a new contract with the Humane Society to provide animal services

 

Lilyana Espinoza | News Editor | The USD Vista

Minutes away from the University of San Diego’s campus lies a different kind of campus — the San Diego Humane Society campus. Located on Gaines Street, it is filled with animals seeking homes and loving families, and the Humane Society campuses across San Diego are about to get much bigger.

The Humane Society and the City of San Diego have agreed on a more than $20 million animal control service contract in which the Humane Society will begin providing services on July 1 of this year.

The San Diego county will no longer be providing animal services to Carlsbad, Del Mar, Encinitas, Santee, Solana Beach, and San Diego. This meant that something had to be done with the thousands of animals residing within animal shelters across the county. When this was realized, the San Diego Humane Society wanted to step in to assume those responsibilities.

Senior Kelly Kennedy realized that the county pound and the Human Society differ, especially when she was looking to adopt a dog four years ago on Gaines Street.

“I think there is a real noticeable difference between the pound and the Humane Society,” Kennedy said. “There is a difference in the amount of resources that they get and in their intention. I believe the City of San Diego and the county are ‘no kill’ and they have to transfer dogs to different campuses to make sure they are not overloading a specific location. But that also means that they don’t have as many high-end resources as perhaps the Humane Society.”

The types of dogs that are at the side-by-side centers also caused Kennedy to pay close attention to whether she wanted a dog from the pound or the Humane Society.

“They are also dealing with two different populations of dogs,” Kennedy said. “For example, Pepper (Kennedy’s dog) was picked off the street by a dog catcher when she was three months old and taken to the pound. She didn’t have a prior history or issues. That just made more sense for her. Whereas at the Humane Society, at least at the Gaines Street campus, they have more resources to deal with dogs that may have a history of behavioral issues or serious health issues. Because they have more resources, they can be more freely allocated to those animals, that is often the kind of population that they offer.”

Kennedy has high hopes for the new contract and that the Humane Society will be able to provide more services for the animals held in the county.

“I’m hoping that (the contract) will be a good thing for (the animals) at the pound to provide more specialized care,” Kennedy said. “I think that when you walk into the Humane Society, or at least when I was looking at what dog I wanted, I walked into the Humane Society and when you read the disclaimer that a lot of their dogs at the Humane Society have behavioral issues, or health issues, or there is a special circumstance, I was thinking, ‘Do I want to deal with that? I am a college student and I have enough resources to care for an animal, but I don’t really have the resources to care for a special-needs animal.’ That changed the way I looked at the dogs who were presented at the Humane Society. If there could be more of a balance, even at a single campus between the dogs.”

Director of Communications of the San Diego Humane Society Elizabeth Pecsi spoke about what this new contract entails.

“We stepped up to the plate and said that we had an interest in the opportunity and we wanted to bid on it,” Pecsi said. “We were the organization that the county selected to take on the contract. What we will be able to provide to these cities is a much higher level of service because we are a non-profit. We go beyond just animal control: we do medical evaluations of animals that we bring in, we provide another level of medical services that typically a county will not do. We run programs for homeless people who have pets. We provide food for them, so they can keep their pets. This allows us to provide a different level of services than the county. They are getting more than animal control from us.”

Pecsi said that the public will have an easier time with their adoptions because of this transition.

“The City of San Diego voted to have us provide the animal services,” Pecsi said. “The county currently in (the Gaines Street) building will leave that building (June 30) and we will assume it. The public will benefit because they no longer have to worry about where they take their animals. We will have one database that has all the records of all of the animals whereas today, the county has a different database than we do.”

The Humane Society does not only focus on dogs. There is an array of animals that they care for and will only expand this care with the new contracts.

“We have different kinds of animals that are available for adoption,” Pecsi said. “We take all kinds of animals, not just animals with special needs. Right now we have five little puppies at the San Diego campus. We also have two dogs from Iran, one only has three legs. We have all kinds of animals that will come into our campuses. We have small pets such as guinea pigs, rabbits, snakes, and we don’t turn any animal away. What will change is today we handle about 20,000 companion pets and that will double by the time we get all of these contracts with the city. We will be increasing our staff, increasing our capacity, and we are ready.”

Junior Emily Patterson and her family adopted their dog, Sadie, from the Rancho Coastal Humane Society in Encinitas, one of the newly contracted areas, two years ago, and were very pleased with the services the Humane Society provided.

“It was amazing to take Sadie home, but it was also incredible to see how loved she was while she was at the Humane Society,” Patterson said. “The staff at Rancho Coastal really made sure she was taken care of for the seven months she was there, and the dedication they have to the animals in the shelter is really apparent. They made sure our family was a good fit for Sadie’s personality and made sure we were educated on her behavioral and medical issues. They also checked in with us after we brought her home to make sure she was adjusting well to our home.”

Currently, about 75 percent of the Humane Society’s money comes from various donors, as they are a non-profit organization. The money from the City of San Diego will help expand the Humane Society centers where the county will no longer be providing to ensure the animals are taken care of.