01/03/2025
❗URGENT❗
📣We have a call to action for our Facebook friends! We need the community to work with us by taking steps to keep animals out of the shelter while we renovate one of our intake rooms. 💡That means 1️⃣ of our dedicated intake rooms for strays and protective custody holds will be unavailable for 3️⃣ weeks. We will be removing the existing kennels on January 9th. That room and the rest of the shelter are currently full. While this process is critical to maintaining a facility with up-to-date kennels and accommodations, it puts a temporary crimp in our intake flow. This also allows us an opportunity to educate our citizens on research that shows keeping animals out of the shelter is best for healthy and safe stray animals. You can use the four "effs": Follow them home, Find their home through social media, Phone the non-emergency line, Foster them if it is safe to do so.
🤝We need your help during this time by:
🐶Volunteering to be a temporary foster of an adult dog during the 3-week renovation.
🐶Keeping stray animals in the area they are found. 7️⃣0️⃣% of stray dogs are often within a mile of home and 4️⃣2️⃣% are found within a city block.
🐶If you follow them they will usually run home and are more likely to be found than at the shelter.
🐶Do not pick up stray animals. Call our non-emergency line at 405-321-1444 and ask to report a stray animal.
🐶Only pick up a stray animal if you can keep them safe with you at your home.
🐶Shelters should serve as triage spaces for sick, injured, and dangerous animals.
🐶Healthy strays are much more likely to find their homes from where they were found.
🙌One of the great things about serving the city of Norman is the eagerness and enthusiasm of our citizens to be informed and to grow when new information is presented. These standards that are researched and measured may challenge what you have been taught about taking animals to the shelter in the past but we are positive that as a community, they will be embraced and shared so others can help make Norman Animal Welfare one of the best shelters in the country.
If you would like to read more about methods and data associated with keeping healthy and safe strays out of shelters you can follow this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1npPWdRA8BW0DVVsCqbJ7FPDl-mJFsvuL2A0gpIJ3lIk/mobilebasic
