Tuesday, August 18, 2009
News Profile: Philip Smith, animal shelter manager
Posted by Asher Smith on Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 4:58 PM
Philip Smith, shelter manager of Paws Atlanta, talks about running Atlanta's largest no-kill animal shelter and what it takes to turn abused and mistreated animals back into man's best friends.
How did you get started with Paws?
I was actually out of work at the time. I had previously been working with a company that did parking lot cleaning. So I just asked for a job with paws and got one. That was four and a half years ago. I did have some background working with animals; before that I had done some wildlife rescue, where you mainly deal with squirrels, racoons and the like — which were mostly what you'd find at parking lots
Describe the typical day as shelter manager of Paws:
The typical day, for me, is madness. It basically depends which of many hats I'm wearing on a given day or at a given moment — depending on when you catch me I may be doing maintenance work, building things, adoption, or customer service. If something's broken here, I'm the guy that fixes it.
How do most animals find their way to Paws?
We get most of them through animal control; for the most part, we try to get our animals from kill facilities. These places end up with a lot of injured animals, and unless we can bring them in they're just sitting there waiting for their time to be killed. We try to do what we can to give them the life they deserve. All together, that probably makes up about 75 percent of our animals. Others are dire cases, dogs like that one that we found when it was hit by the lawn mower. And about 20 percent are animals that people surrender to us. Generally we try to help as many people as we can — but there are a lot of folks who try to use us to hot potato their problems to us. We do try to help them as best we can, but unfortunately there are limits to how many animals we can take in. Which is why we won't take in litters of kittens whose owner hasn't had their mother spayed — we know that their owners will just be back here a year later with the same problem. — and why we spay or neuter all the cats we find.
What condition are most animals in when they first arrive at Paws?
We get a lot of abused animals. 99 percent of them are scared out of their minds, and it takes a lot to get them to where they can trust humans again. To give an example, just the other day, we got a puppy that someone just dropped inside our gate, and didn't discover it until it we were mowing the lawn over there. That was luck — if we weren't mowing the lawn that day, he would have died there. So we brought him in and are taking care of him, though he's still very frightened.
What does the process of socializing animals entail?
Most of the socialization is done by our volunteers. Socializing dogs really just amounts to sitting in a cage with them, playing with them, walking with them, just getting them used to being around, and in some cases learning to trust, people again. The truth is, shelters are the most stressful places there are for animals: they're noisy, they're chaotic, people keep coming and going, and the animals aren't not on any real routine. We really depend on our volunteers to help; that's why we keep a book where they can record any curious behaviors they see in the dogs., so that we can keep track of what we have to work with. Though we have a trained staff that deals with the more agressive dogs.
Is it a challenge to keep the shelter financially viable?
Yes. We qualify as a four star charity with Charity Navigator, who evaluates non-profits based on their financial health, but it's still very difficult to keep the shelter financially stable. No one wants to admit it, but there are definite trends in philanthropy. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's true. A few years ago, animals were in. Now, they're not so trendy. And we've had to adjust — we've had to scale back what we take in, in terms of animals, as well as cutting down some on staff.
Has the recession had an impact on how many people are looking to adopt animals or how many donations the shelter receives?
Donations from individuals have been holding steady, but corporate donations are falling dramatically. Not as many sponsors are willing to come to the table nowadays. Adoptions have declined a little bit. Last month was especially bad; we were essentially forced into a holding pattern, and couldn't take in many new animals. But lately we've also been managing to get some older dogs adopted, who we've had for a while.
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