We do not get FREE Veterinary Care or No Room at the Inn

A call came in today. I have a ferret, she is three years old, she is weak, and lost weight. I want to give her to you because I have three other ferrets and cannot afford to take her to the vet.

I told her that right now we cannot take in more ferrets, we have 7 coming in over the next 48 hours. There is no room at the inn, again.

Last years veterinary and medical expenses (medical is Lupron, syringes, distemper, Pepcid, any over the counter items we use for the ferrets) ran the shelter $22,523.96. Food averages $150 per week (7800 per year), litter $20 (1040 per year), and 25 loads of laundry a week (1300 give or take), a gallon of bleach or so for disinfecting, laundry soap, softener, paper towels, you get the idea, (figure about 1200.00 the year) and all those things like replacement hammocks, bedding and such. So, let's just say it takes about $33,000 a year to keep the shelter going (I do allot of juggling to make this work, and will have to find a job to help supplement the shelter, been having problem because I am missing that hamstring muscle and latisimus muscle, LOL!). And donations have dropped off since the opportunity of a new building presented itself. Every room in my home has the shelter in it. Either animals, or something for them. The dining room is the quarantine room, there are two rooms in the up stairs with shelter kids in them, there is a cage in the hall, the office is now storage. The closets have ferret bedding, food, litter in them, so when I say there is no room at the inn, I mean that there is no room. There is no more room to put up one more cage.

Most people think that the shelter gets lots of funding. Government funding, State funding, large grants. No, no and no. The shelter gets by on donations from individuals who choose to help us, and when there is no donations coming in, well, the mortgage is late, again. That simple. To get a better understanding of how difficult it is to do fundraising the following is a little bit of what happens.

We do apply for grants, but again we fall into that cycle, of you need to be in a public building. Actually this year we got our first grant. $300.00 from the Kenneth Scott Foundation and the Ohio Veterinary Association for the purpose of attending the Veterinary Conference in Columbus. Where I learned a great deal.

We get nothing free, unless it is donated, and that is something that is very hard to achieve at time. For example, our Blessing of the Cars, Summit Racing was generous enough to donate the goodie bags, and stickers to go in the goodie bags, along with the cards to put on the cars. They also donated a really awesome desk lamp. All of the items we have at the moment are items purchased by serious bargain hunting.

Warpath Restoration is sponsoring a trophy, Be a Sweetie Candy Warehouse is a Silver Sponsor ($75 gets you on our website and an ad!) There is a garage door company that said they would sponsor a trophy, but we haven't gotten anything from them yet.

There were 250 letters with information on the Blessing of the Cars mailed out, explaining what are trying to do, giving the stats on web hits from our server (8500 unique hits per week on average).

We were asking for sponsorship, or donations of small little items for the goodie bags, little items to raffle off.

I asked Sarah, a wonderful volunteer that some how the shelter was blessed with (and her Mom too!) to call on about 100 of them to follow up. She did. What she found out was I wasn't over exaggerating the reaction I get when it comes down to ferret shelter. (She is going to write up her experience so I can post it to the Director's Corner).

Time and again she was told dog, yeah we'd help, even cat, but ferret, no way. Even the local Chevrolet Dealership in the neighborhood, who I used to go to for misc. parts for the mini van. Don's Brooklyn, the office manager was nice, but the General Manager was rude, a real you know. Just means when we do buy another van for the shelter, it won't be from them, or a Chevrolet, and I do so love our 91 Chevy Lumina APV. Oh and people were very rude to her, but she kept her cool and was always polite.

So now that you understand the difficulties in what we do, hopefully you understand that when you are told, you are not being blown off, there is no room.

When the shelter has and is able, we give back to the community, I believe that you must give to get, if you are told we cannot help, it isn't because we do not want to help, it is because we cannot, we have to focus on the animals here in the shelter first.