HSUS spends $24 million on fundraising here, $450,000 on a useless law there, all while appealing to donors on behalf of puppies and kittens in need.
But when a shelter in Montana became overfilled with actual puppies and kittens in need HSUS could only spare $10,000 in cash and another $10,000 in volunteer work:
The Humane Society is sometimes criticized for helping to shut down shelters, rather than giving them money for improvements, but [HSUS staffer Dave] Pauli said the HSUS did all it reasonably could for the Eastern Montana Humane Society.
All it reasonably could. Has anyone at HSUS taken a look at their checkbook lately? They have an annual operating budget of $100 million.
Pauli said the HSUS got more involved than usual in the Baker shelter because it was the only one between Miles City and the Dakotas.
“We really wanted to see a functional humane society in Eastern Montana,” he said.
And by “really”, apparently HSUS meant “so long as it doesn’t take a penny more than $10,000 out of our account”. The shelter is now closed. Rather than investing in fixing up the shelter so it could remain open, HSUS helped sheriff’s deputies remove the 103 pets to the county fairgrounds. The animals were then dispersed to other shelters in the region.
The inspection that led to the shutdown was performed a month prior by the state director for HSUS in MT as well as a vet:
Conditions “were found to be unacceptable,” [attorney Rich Batterman] said, and the shelter was given time to deal with the deficiencies.
“They were not successful,” he said, and his office obtained search warrants, which were served on Monday.
Lisa Crow, the person in charge of the shelter, tells her side of the story:
“The population of animals became pretty overwhelming,” she said. “We couldn’t become totally sanitized. We did the best we could with what we had.”
After the inspection a month ago, Crow said, she was under the impression that Wendy Hergenraeder, the state director for the Humane Society, would get back to her with suggestions for improving the shelter.
“I never heard from her until they raided my property yesterday,” she said.
Her tale gets worse:
Crow said she agreed to give the county custody of the animals after she was told that no animal-cruelty charges would be filed if she did so. Later Monday, she said, she was asked to sign another document, agreeing that she wouldn’t have any contact with animals for two years.
She said she refused to sign that because she thought the animals were being seized in order to give her time to make improvements at the shelter.
Wow. If her version of events is accurate, this is some first class HSUS strong arming of the little guy. (Of course, we’ve heard similar stories in the past.)
Without the shelter, Crow said, Fallon County has no other resources for dealing with stray and abandoned pets. In the past, she said, city police officers routinely shot stray dogs and cats and tossed them in the garbage.
“We had animals being shot in the head every day because there’s no place for them,” she said.
Sorry but HSUS did all they reasonably could to help. You’ll just have to go back to the shoot-em-in-the-head-and-toss-em-in-the-garbage system of “sheltering”.