Make Your Voice Heard

I've been attached to my computer the last few days, which I'm sure my family appreciated since I'm supposed to be on vacation with them. But this is important!

We've got a Save Toronto Animal Services Facebook page now, so go check that out!

We've also got a form letter that people can send to their local councillors. Feel free to copy it and use it as you like:
 

Dear                     ;

As a constituent of your ward, I am writing to you about the city’s Core Service Review. Specifically, I am concerned about the idea of privatizing Toronto Animal Services.

TAS is an important part of my city. Thanks to the work of TAS, the city has a good reputation for animal rescue, and Torontonians have a reliable resource for retrieving lost pets, adopting new pets, and reporting injured or dead animals. It’s important to me that injured or deceased animals are treated properly when they are picked up, especially as injured or deceased animals could be someone’s pet. We are an animal-loving city and this is a service in which we can take pride.

Animal shelters cannot be a profitable business when run properly. An adoption fee cannot equal the cost of housing, feeding, providing veterinary care, spaying/neutering, vaccinating and microchipping. If animal services is contracted out to a private business, the only way that business can turn a profit is to cut corners, raise euthanasia rates and neglect animal care. Montreal is currently experiencing this with the private pound ‘Berger-Blanc’, which has recently been exposed as a neglectful, cruel and inhumane shelter. With private shelters, there is also much less oversight and more chance for cruelty to continue unseen.

On the other hand, the city of Calgary is often held up as the gold standard in animal control. Calgary has kept their animal services public and has strongly enforced licensing for pets. This has allowed them to create a shelter system that is lauded throughout North America as humane and effective. It’s clear which system we should be trying to emulate.

I believe that Toronto Animal Services is an integral part of this city, and must be kept public. Privatizing animal services will result in cruelty, an increase of stray animals and a lack of resources for pet owners. Please do the humane thing and vote for care, not cruelty – vote to keep animal services public!

Thank you!

If you don't know the contact information for your local councillor, you can find them HERE.

And most importantly, we now have a petition! We got over 200 signatures in the first day but we need a lot more. You may have noticed my snazzy button on the side of the blog (just click and sign!), but here it is again:

Now mobilize! Let's keep TAS public! I'm trying to be optimistic here, is it working?

I really hope my faith in Toronto animal-lovers is not misplaced.

Degus

This is just a quick post - Montreal SPCA is dealing with a huge number of degus right now. Montreal has literally no resources for adopting out small animals, so these guys don't have much hope. I've been in contact with a volunteer there to figure out if we can bring some here.

The thing is, our shelter is FAR too full. We CANNOT bring any into the shelter. So we need adopters. OR we need foster homes who are willing to keep them until we find adopters. They can't go through the shelter, but if we can get them into foster homes until we find adopters, then they have a place.

Degus are social creatures that need to live in pairs or groups. They are all in groups of 2 or more, except for one single male.

Can anyone adopt or foster to adopt? Or do you know of anyone? I don't know if we can help these guys, but I'd like to try.

Frustration

It's been a while since I posted. That's partially because I've been out of town twice (and actually, I'm out of town now, sitting in an Internet cafe). It's partially because the foster situation has gotten so out of control I may have been reduced to punching a pillow. It's partially because our small animal room is full, and we've had to deal with a batch of literally starved hamsters, 6 guinea pigs arriving at once, and the fast-growing results of three litters of rabbits.

But I'm not going to write about any of that right now, not really. Because there's something much more important going on right now, the reason I'm sitting in an Internet cafe rather than ignoring the Internet while on vacation.

Toronto has been conducting a service review. And every service is at risk of being cut or at least severely reduced.
And Toronto Animal Services is one of those city services.

I'll be damned if I'm going to let them ruin TAS, especially when they've been improving so remarkably over the past few years. I don't know what's going to happen - if we'll be cut, if we're safe, what we're going to do if they try to cut. There are certainly things in the works and if you know anyone who would like to make some noise on TAS' behalf, let me know. I know I will be! Toronto City Council needs to hear from its citizens that TAS is important to them. They need to hear what happens when you contract out animal services (google 'Montreal Berger-Blanc' if you want nightmares). They need to know the myriad of services that TAS provides and why people care about them.

I cannot even describe how frustrated I am right now. Every time I feel like we're doing something spectacular, like we're really making a difference, this threat looms over our heads. If they ruin this wonderful, relatively-cheap-for-the-city-anyway service, I don't even know how to express my anger.
But there will be action and noise soon. For now, I want to share this:

These 7 baby rabbits were found living under someone's porch last month. If not for TAS South, they would probably be dead right now. Instead, they are safe in a foster home, getting spoiled and socialized, and they will find homes when the time comes - and they'll be spayed and neutered.

This is Chip. As you can see, he arrived at the shelter with a hole in his head, left behind when his owner went to Europe. TAS South took care of him and helped him back to health.

This is Chip a few weeks ago, in his new home, where is loved and spoiled. That is thanks to TAS South.

This is Scotia. He arrived with a group of hamsters, and they had been severely starved. You could feel every bone. They had been fighting for scraps of food, and all had injuries. They didn't all make it, but Scotia and two of his siblings are now available for adoption and at a healthy weight. That's thanks to TAS South.

This is my baby boy, Neville. He is alive because TAS South took the time to find him a foster home and let him grow up. I never talk about this because, let's face it, it's unpleasant. But in most cities, small animals are not lucky enough to get foster homes. In most cities, if a small animal gives birth in a shelter, the family is euthanized due to lack of space and adoptions. Toronto is not like that because TAS makes the effort. Neville is my boy because TAS took the time.

This is Frankie, a 10-year-old Jack Russell who was found as a stray. She found a home at our last adopt-a-thon, because staff and volunteers took the time to do community outreach, and put in their own time to organize community events.

That's not even mentioning how many dogs have been saved from high-kill areas and brought to Toronto through TAS. Or the many stray cats that find homes through our 4 shelters. Or the hundreds upon hundreds of animals that are spayed/neutered thanks to us.

Isn't this worth saving?

Every Day is Canada Day!

Sure, I said I'd post them 'tomorrow'...four days ago. And sure, Canada Day was actually almost a week ago. Shouldn't we celebrate our country every day?
Here are the Canada Day photos at last!

This is my absolute favourite, I think. Emily here is our new cockatiel, she is hand trained and super sweet, and co-operative enough to pose for this silly photo.

This was our original set-up, with Snickers posing charmingly in front. However, we decided it wasn't QUITE Canadian enough, so we upgraded...

CANADA! That's Squeak, our skinny pig. I know, a skinny pig! That's the first time we've got one since I started. I believe we sent him over to the Humane Society today.

We had lots of Canadiana (at least, we had lots of cheap Canadiana from a dollar store!). Here's Jenny the guinea pig with a hocky puck (she's sitting on the stick). Jenny was adopted over the weekend!

We also had this 'Canada' bucket and a 'Canada' pencil...because pencils and buckets are very traditional parts of this country. That's Sapphire (one of Ruby's older kids), who was fascinated by the bucket.

Chupa, who's usually a little shy, was one of the most co-operative bunnies. Of course, that was thanks to some apple slices. Ha, usually our bribery isn't so obvious in the photos!

Marigold, one of our babies, was adorable as usual. She's extremely good-natured, considering she was being given away in an underpass.

This isn't the best photo, but it's hilarious. We had this headband with sparkly Canadian flags sticking off it, and we put it on Marie Antoinette. I don't think she was too pleased, but amazingly she stood still for the photo.

And there we go! Happy (very belated) Canada Day!

Rabbits in the Spotlight

A few days ago, I emailed the reporter who did the story on the hamsters to thank him for everything. I attached a photo of our baby bunnies and added that we were now overwhelmed with rabbits. Well, not five minutes later, I got an email from his colleague Valerie Hauch - she wanted to do a story on them!

The article was posted in the GTA section of the the Toronto Star's website. It didn't make it into the print version, but it was great that Ms Hauch took the time to cover our little baby boom!
Even better, it was picked up by the free paper Metro:

Metro posted a shortened version of the article on the front page of their web site and printed it in on the second page of the daily paper. Hilariously, I was edited out of the short version and they spelled my name wrong on the website for the photo. Fame is fleeting, I guess!
The phone at the shelter was ringing off the hook the first day. It won't be the instant success the hamster situation was, because the rabbit litters are spaced out and many of them won't be ready to be spayed/neutered for months. But we should get some adoptions (and donations!) out of it.

Thanks to the Toronto Star for once again giving us a helping hand! We are very lucky to get so much attention for our small animals. It gives people a heads up that we actually have small animals for adoption.
It does have a downside though - as people realize we take small animals, they use us more as a dumping ground. This summer has been absolutely insane, and we just got another batch of hamsters the other day with a very sad story to tell.
And yes, if you read that article and wondered about that litter under the porch, they are yet more new arrivals! I have a lot of stories to write about this week.

It's been a while, but it's time for a holiday shoot this weekend - Canada Day photos tomorrow!