Week of 7/5/10 Humane Happenings

The Fourth of July week-end has come and gone, together with its traditional festivities and fireworks. Throughout the long week-end, both Caballo and Elephant Butte Lakes were packed with vacationers. During the week-end and for several days afterwards, the Sierra County Humane Society and Desert Haven Animal Refuge received phone calls from owners of dogs who had disappeared during the week-end series of fireworks events. As of the writing of this article, many of the lost dogs were still unaccounted for. Many dogs and cats are terrified by fireworks and they try to run away from them. Those who get lost often cannot find their way back home on their own. Many never find their way home and ultimately die. The ones who end-up at the TorC City Shelter on Date Street and who have identification tags or chips can be reunited with their families within a few days. Unfortunately, the great majority of lost dogs and cats do not have proper identification and are never heard from again. If you share your life with a companion animal, please insure that your little dependent has a collar and current identification tags. Without that information, your little one, even if found, is doomed to become another statistic.

Paws & Claws Thrift Shoppe and the Sierra County Humane Society are not affiliated in any way with Sierra Animal Shelter, a for-profit business that is funded by your tax dollars. Consequently, we must generate, through private and business donations and especially through the hard work of our thrift shop volunteers, all the funds needed to operate the Society’s community oriented programs as well as Desert Haven Animal Refuge. At this time, P&C Thrift Shoppe is currently feeling a severe volunteer shortage. Several dependable long-time helpers are now on their summer vacation. We need extra help to replace them until the end of summer.

Do you believe in what we do for the animals of Sierra County and wish to help us in some way? Are you able to give at least two hours a week at P&C Thrift Shoppe during business hours, which is from Wed through Sat? You may prefer doing office work at Desert Haven on Tuesday mornings. Perhaps you enjoy working directly with animals and want to help care for them at the sanctuary? Your time is valuable and we can use it. To quote John Muir “The time that you spend here will not take away from your life. On the contrary, it will enrich it”.

Contact us at 894-2778 or 894-2639. Check us out at www.DesertHavenAnimalRefuge.com, www.DesertHavenAnimalRefuge.blogspot.com.
Become a fan of DHAR at www.Facebook/com/deserthaven.