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A helping hand for hard-luck pets

By Erin Golden / The Bulletin

Published: July 28. 2008 4:00AM PST

PRINEVILLE —

After surviving 30 days locked in a travel trailer without food or water, the black cat called John was in bad shape.

Skinny, severely dehydrated and homeless, John was the kind of animal that usually ends up in a local shelter and then is put to sleep because of poor health and overcrowding.

But when police picked up the cat from the trailer in rural Crook County, they had another option — taking him to Prineville’s Homeless Animal Rehabilitation and Treatment Center, a nonprofit clinic that provides care for sick and injured animals with nowhere else to go.

The center, which opened this spring, is an offshoot of the Spay Neuter Investment Project, an organization that runs a low-cost spay and neuter clinic next door. It’s a unique operation, with seven glass-walled rooms and high-tech cleaning systems modeled after hospital isolation units.

And in Crook County, which has seen its animal and human populations grow considerably in recent years, the HART Center is an important resource for the Humane Society of the Ochocos — the only no-kill shelter in the area.

“It’s fabulous — I don’t know of anything similar,” said Lori Durant, the shelter’s manager. “There are shelters that might have a veterinary clinic on site that supports spay and neuter programs and health issues, but it’s not like removing animals from shelter, treating them, getting them better … part of the no-kill philosophy is that you do not kill animals with a treatable illness, and having the HART Center has been instrumental in achieving no-kill status in that regard, in giving these guys a second chance.”

For years, giving animals like John the cat a second chance has been the mission of Leslie Lynch, a retired physician who started SNIP four years ago. In the beginning, Lynch said she tried to take on what she saw as the biggest problem — the overpopulation of cats, dogs and other pets. She hired a veterinarian and a technician — the organization’s only two paid staffers — and gathered a small but dedicated group of volunteers.

But as the team saw more and more animals, they started doing more than just spay and neuter procedures. From feral kittens with respiratory problems, cats in need of surgery after illness or being hit by a car, and dogs with serious health problems from neglect and abuse, SNIP broadened its focus to include caring for animals too sick to stay in the local shelter.

“You don’t really know what you need until you need it,” she said. “There’s not really much in the way of blueprints for how to get to no-kill successfully. But we just kind of learned as we went. We need to be able to take care of the sick, and we need to be able to take care of the ferals ... it seems similar in retrospect, but to look at what you’re going to need in advance when you start a spay-neuter clinic, you just don’t appreciate what’s coming until you face the problems.”

The clinic, which is based in a small white house in downtown Prineville, is funded by donations and grants. Though some animals come directly from law enforcement officials, most are sent from the Humane Society. The clinic does not generally accept animals from private owners.

Once they’ve arrived at the HART Center, the animals are examined by a veterinarian and placed in rooms, sometimes with other animals and sometimes alone. Though the equipment is state of the art — with the push of a button, the rooms can be cleaned and disinfected without anyone needing to step inside — Lynch said the center’s model is simple: put sick animals in a clean, isolated place so they’ll get better quickly and won’t contaminate others.

So far, the center has been home to dozens of animals, and nearly all of them have been treated and returned to the Humane Society, where many have been adopted.

The successes, however, haven’t been easy. Though many volunteers help run the SNIP clinic, the new center is almost exclusively the responsibility of Lynch and her husband, Greg, an attorney and Humane Society board member. Leslie Lynch is usually already on site by 6 a.m. and stays well into the evening, checking on the animals, completing paperwork and making sure everything is running smoothly.

The hard work, said Kathleen Curtis, SNIP’s development coordinator, is simply what it takes to run a successful no-kill shelter.

“No kill means you don’t kill for capacity, space or convenience, or because it’s hard work or a pain to get the job done,” she said. “It’s harder work, a lot larger of a commitment when you don’t decrease your numbers because it’s Friday.”

Despite the considerable effort required to save the community’s neediest animals, Lynch said she has no plans to slow down. In fact, the SNIP organization is getting bigger, remodeling another building that will soon house a donated X-ray machine. It’s the success stories — like John, the abandoned cat who is now well on the road to recovery — that keep Lynch and her organization going.

“You do what you can when you can,” she said, holding up a tiny feral kitten. “Look at that face — can you imagine doing anything else?”

Erin Golden can be reached at 541-408-2836 or at egolden@bendbulletin.com.

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