We at Houlton Humane Society first want to take this opportunity to thank the Chamber for including us in their newsletter. We are hoping this letter gives us the chance to explain some of our concerns and issues right now, as well as gives you the chance to get to know the actual Houlton Humane Society.
As you may all know, Houlton Humane Society is your town’s contracted animal shelter. This means that the town you live in pays us a yearly fee to take in all the town’s stray and abandoned animals. We cannot and do not turn any town animals away per this contract.
In a year, HHS takes in an average of 250-300 stray, abandoned or state-seized animals from the 15 towns we service. Of these 300 animals, almost half come from the town of Houlton. And 85 percent of them are not vetted, which means they have no vaccines and are not spayed/neutered. We perform, with our vet, these procedures to the animals before they are adopted out. If they are too young to be altered, we do vaccines and the new adopters are required to do the spaying/neutering.
On average, with the cost of food and care, plus vetting, we spend $50-$100 per animal to get them ready for the adoption room. We only charge a $75 adoption fee, so most of the time, we are losing money. With state seized animals from our contracted towns, the dollar amount with these can triple, sometimes quadruple the amount above. We do not get any state funding for these seizes. Not one dollar. In the last 12 months, the state has seized 12 animals from Houlton, all of which came to HHS. We still have, after five months, one in our care. This case alone costs us over $1,000. We as a group do not turn away these animals, no matter the amount we will have to spend. We know they need our care and us and we take them in, no questions asked.
Well, with all of the above and so much more, we are finding ourselves unsure of how we will pay our bills. Town contract money only covers less than half of our budget. The remaining amount we have to pay through donations and fundraisers. We get absolutely no outside help from the state or from any other national animal rights group. We struggle day in and day out, trying to find ways to cut bills. We have cut back employee hours. We turn off lights when we are not in the room. We have plastic on our windows and the thermostat is at 60 degrees. But even with all of this, we cannot make ends meet. We lost our chimney this winter due to the ice. We have had a lot of unexpected vet bills, from the sick animals we do not turn away. Oil has been extremely hard on us. And donations are slow because everyone is asking for help. We have a mortgage to pay, lights to keep on, a staff to keep employed and several other bills to pay and not the funding to do it. We are not sure what else we can do.
We are asking for your help, for the help of the public. We need monetary donations badly right now. We need supply donations, such as bleach, paper towels, litter and food. We need people like yourselves to come to our events, share them on Facebook, tell your friends who we are and what we really do. We invite all of you to come to the humane society, take a tour and ask questions. Our doors are always open and we are always here to answer any concerns or misconceptions people may have. Houlton Humane Society is here for the animals, the animals in your town. But in order for us to keep standing up and helping these animals, we need your help. Thank you for taking the time to read about us.
Heather Miller is the executive director of the Houlton Humane Society.
