Move to ACT Indianapolis Animal Welfare Rescue Rally Resource Directory is now available here.

Have you ever tried to find a "help" number for an animal in need in the Indianapolis area when someone is seeking your assistance for one? The number scramble search begins, right? Are there really only those few organizations out there? They can sure find you when seeking money to "help the animals." But what if you (or someone asking you) are searching to relinquish or find assistance for an animal in need now – and not searching for an organization to give a donation? Hello!? "We are not a rescue." "You will need to call for an appointment." " We're full." "You'll have to take the animal to Animal Control."

Are there other resources or options available? Or maybe someone is looking to adopt an animal? What to do? What to say? Where to go?

With this Rescue Rally Directory, we hope to provide a more complete picture of the options available for animals in need in the Indianapolis area. It includes resources for low-cost vaccines and spay/neuter services, feral cat care, pet food pantries, adoption assistance and transport, training, lost & found, poison control, emergency care, exotic animal and wildlife rescue. Most especially the Directory provides guidance for someone wanting to relinquish an animal other than the standard instruction to take the animal to Animal Care and Control.

Read more here.

Indianapolis Animal Care and Control abandoned

What can you do to help Animal Control and save more lives today? 1-2-3... Oxygen please!

"We need to get intake down. It would be nice to get to the day when the animals we're dealing with are the ones that need to be here, brought in by the officers due to negligence and cruelty, not those that people are dumping on the shelter."

~Darcie Kurtz, Kennel Operations Mgr., October 14, 2010

Changing the landscape of animal welfare does not require a 10 year plan and it does not require $1M. It requires integrity and honesty with ourselves and others; not tomorrow, but now. Whether you're addressing a person wanting to relinquish an animal as a representative of a rescue group, a humane society, veterinarian's office or an individual, speak the truth. The truth sets free the opportunity for a favorable outcome.

1. Omit from your repertoire of suggestions, "You can take your animal to Animal Control." Use the tools in the Directory to steer that person to alternatives they can pursue for the animal. Does it take a little time? Yes. Can it make a difference? Yes. When can you start? Now. The public does not want to kill animals. The staff at IACC does not want to kill animals. But that is the reality of what happens there.
2. Remove from those, "Surrender a Pet" web pages the instruction for someone wanting to relinquish an animal to contact Animal Control. Why would a humane or rescue organization want to send an adoptable animal to an agency that is underfunded, understaffed and rampant with disease? This does little more than contribute to the "dumping" of animals to people at an agency that does not have the resources or capacity to care for them. It is a near death sentence; it is inhumane, unnecessary and irresponsible. So why is it done? Because we are not thinking? Is it because it has always been so? Or maybe it is because (to use a recently coined phrase by the Mayor) "...it's the paradigm we inherited."
3. Use accurate and honest language in conversation. What does it cost to put on our adult conversation pants? Obscuring the true meaning of what happens to adoptable animals when they are killed for space to make room for others with the euphemism "euthanasia" is not only an indignity to that animal, it is a lie. It perpetuates and enables relinquishment. Lying about the killing of an animal for space makes a relinquishment more tolerable and dismisses the person considering the relinquishment from being a part of the helping equation.

Are we really so conflicted that we can't see the forest for the trees?

Summary

1. Avoid the response, "You can take the animal to Animal Care and Control."
2. Remove website instruction directing people to take their animal to Animal Control.
3. Be honest and use accurate vocabulary. Deceiving the public with the euphemism "euthanasia" contributes to and enables relinquishment.

acting together... creating results
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"Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest!" ~ Mark Twain