A Few Words From Our Director, Kelly Sears
February 8, 2021
A few words from our director, Kelly Sears. Her cute dog friend is Ancho who found his forever home!
“Did 2020 Count? For us here at LC4, we definitely believe that it did.
With one month under our belt in 2021, I want to take some time to reflect on everything we accomplished in 2020 here at LC4.
We began the year by moving all surgeries in house, which cut down our length of stay by nearly 9 days. We then put our unused dental machine to use, allowing many dogs to go to their new families and rescue groups with clean, healthy teeth.
After the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we launched the LC4 foster program. I can’t begin to tell you how successful this program has become! To our pleasant surprise, many families became foster failures, which is so amazing! The success of the COVID-19 foster program paved the way for us to roll out our new foster-to-adopt program, which allow families to determine if a dog will be a good fit for their family before making that final decision to adopt. We are now in the process of hiring a foster/adoption coordinator to manage our growing foster care program.
We started treating heartworm positive dogs in 2020, completed multiple orthopedic surgeries, and undertook numerous dental procedures. Pregnant moms found soft places to land and had their babies birthed in our experienced foster homes. Tiny puppies were cared for by caring surrogate human moms who religiously bottled-fed them around the clock.
Also new in 2020 was our low-cost vaccine clinic, and through that clinic, we are proudly protecting hundreds of our community’s dogs from parvovirus and other communicable diseases. LC4 also has given many dogs another way home through low-cost microchipping.
We worked with 24 different transfer partners in 2020, transferring out a total of 397 dogs.
The entire LC4 staff took the training course to become certified in Fear Free Sheltering methods that is endorsed by Dr. Marty Becker, DVM.
The generosity shown by our community was nothing short of amazing during this unprecedented global pandemic with the enrichment provided for our dogs, donated funds to help purchase our new x-ray machine, and the overwhelming amount of presents donated to our homeless dogs during the Christmas holidays.
We achieved great outcomes for our dogs in 2020. Euthanasia dropped 4.43 percent and we increased our live outcomes by 7.42 percent. Adoptions jumped by 2.47 percent and dogs returned to their owners shot up 4.76 percent. What is remarkable is that we were able to accomplish this by moving to an appointment-only shelter, with the exception of stray intakes and owner reclaims.
The entire staff here at LC4 is extremely proud of our accomplishments in 2020, particularly in the face of a global pandemic. Most importantly, we are so very grateful to the community for their generous support. We believe we can only be successful when working with our community as a team to save as many lives as possible!
We are enthusiastically looking forward to 2021 and all that it will bring!”
