STATE OF THE ARK AUGUST - 2005 Humane Society of Adoptions Through June 30, 2005, the Humane Society has adopted Fairfax County out 148 animals into loving homes: • 136 cats • 7 dogs NEWSLETTER • 2 birds Dedicated to Rescuing, Housing and Adopting Homeless Animals • 2 horses • 1 rabbit A special thanks to all of our foster homes, home visit vol- unteers, socializers, outreach program volunteers and adop- tion placement volunteers. HELPING THE COMMUNITY up their animal. Beginning in 2004, we began to track Since inception, the HSFC has been there to help with the latter – those community members that we have abused and abandoned animals – whether we took the helped with pets that they did not want to give up. animals into our care or helped with vet bills for those who could not afford the care, but did not want to give PAGE 1 STATE OF THE ARK AUGUST - 2005 Through June 2005, we provided financial RECENT EVENTS assistance for 4 animals to receive the medical care they needed. This included a young service dog hit BIG CHANGES & NEW FACES!! by a car that was assigned to a severely epileptic man If you haven’t been to our administrative offices and a dog suffering from parvo. In addition, we lately, you need to take some time and stop by. fronted the pet deposit for a family relocating to an Warning….wear your sunglasses! apartment so that they could keep their pets. We have Through May 2005, the feral outreach program two new office trapped, neutered and released (TNR’d) and/or managers we’d helped medically 165 cats and kittens. love for you to meet and they have been Through June, we have responded to 2,821 phone revamping the calls and 3,331 e-mails. Examples of calls and emails offices for received include referrals of 62 low cost spay/neuters, weeks. “Stacey 72 humane education calls and emails, 116 requests Overman” for wildlife assistance and 9 requests for vet referrals. comes to us from the HUMANE SOCIETY JOINS FORCES TO National Wildlife Federation and has brought with END PET OVERPOPULATION. her many exciting and innovative new ideas. She lives The HSFC has always believed in working with with her husband, George, a pug named Lucy and a others to maximize our efforts to end animal Manx cat named Tabitha. suffering. We are a member of the Virginia Federation of Humane Societies, the American She shares the position with our own “Marlene Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Hammer”, who has been a volunteer with our Humane Society of the United States, Petfinders, organization for several years. Marlene is married to Metro Pets and Save a Pet. We are a registered our web master, Mike, and they have a rescued lab transfer agency with the Fairfax County Animal mix named Shadow. The Hammer Pet Hotel also has Shelter, as well as several other county operated daily visitors from Buford and Maxwell, their animal shelters. We work with and assist dozens of daughter’s 2 dogs. Marlene earned the dubious other animal rescue organizations, breed rescue award of Volunteer of the Year in 2003. She has been groups, animal welfare societies, as well as the an invaluable asset to our organization and we are veterinary community. Our Society has continued to thrilled she has taken on this new role. reach out to others to extend assistance for nearly 40 years. To our many partners, regardless of size, we are pleased to be a part of such efforts. Together we have They are a dynamic duo! Not only do they saved many lives. Together we shall save many more. deserve the Molly Maid award of the year (hence, the sunglasses), but they have totally reorganized our offices and daily procedures. They have “double” handedly brought us into the computerized world. This is our first job share experience but so far so PAGE 2 STATE OF THE ARK AUGUST - 2005 good. All aspects are working well. Please stop by to call if you have this unique talent). We have new meet them, give them a much-deserved pat on the gravel in the existing dog runs and our fences have back and wish them well in their new endeavor. been given a fresh coat of stain where needed. FARM UPDATES Pinch me…I must be dreaming! We are finally Two swimming pools are filled and the dogs are getting ready to start construction on our new dog living the carefree summer days by jumping in and kennel. We have all our permits, our general cooling off. Some dogs haven’t quite figured out what contractor is ready to start digging and the building these strange wide areas of water are, but they’re is on its way to us learning from the more experienced swimmers. They as we go to press. are also enjoying the toys and treats given to them by It may take awhile Brownie Troop 1376 headed by Tawnya Ramey. With to complete, but the proceeds made from selling Girl Scout cookies, we are so excited the troops went shopping for all kinds of goodies to that our dream is give to the animals…..and we’ve never seen so many finally going to be dogs smile to get them. a reality. We hope to have lots of ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICES WORKDAY pictures posted HSFC on the web site as Building the work progresses. Make sure to keep our site on Workday: All speed dial so you won’t miss a thing. This project will we can say is mean we can help more dogs than ever before. It will WOW! It was also enable us to have a place to hold our own dog hot, hot, hot, adoption open houses and a place for more but our volunteers to enjoy the animals. We will have a huge dedicated volunteer party to celebrate the grand opening event. volunteers Hopefully, this will take place in the fall before worked anyway. winter hits. But if it’s cold, we won’t care because The front we’ll have a nice warm kennel to hold our party in entrance looks fabulous. We can hold our heads high anyway! and don’t have to pretend we’re closed when the city comes to inspect properties. A huge thank you to the following sweaty, dusty and poison ivy covered In other areas of the farm, we have also been volunteers: Stacey Overman, George Mather, pretty busy. We have spread new blue stone gravel Marlene Hammer, Vicki Kirby, Deb Siluk, Gwynne around all our gates so the horses will have a dry Mason, Liz Early, Paul Hodges, Avanthi Gopallana, place to go while pacing to come in for dinner. They Lasantha Wedande, Allegra Woods, Paula Margus, always congregate at the gates! We have replaced our and Teri Cahow. (please let us know if we missed old septic tanks for new ones and will be adding an thanking anyone…it was hard to see through all the additional septic field for the new kennel. Our lawn weeds!) mower has been repaired and our two weed eaters are fixed and ready to whack away (we’re always looking for good experienced whackers, so give us a PAGE 3 STATE OF THE ARK AUGUST - 2005 CARING HANDS I hope you’ve been able to quench your thirst. We Caring Hands Animal Hospital 9th Annual Open have two new soda machines and our animals will House and Adoption Fair: What a wonderful day. benefit from the profits. So drink up and let us know There were so many people, lots of special events if you have a special request for your favorite flavors. and so many fun things to do. To top it off, we received a share of the The eagles have landed at the farm….. human proceeds collected eagles, that is. We were fortunate to be selected to throughout the day and help scouts from Troop 1533 earn their Eagle Scout had many applications status. They hammered, sawed and built some much to adopt some of the needed equipment for our animals. We now have cats and dog that some wonderful dog platforms. Best of all, they built attended and were shown a beautiful picnic table so we have a place to sit and that day. Our thanks to the have a picnic. It was a very busy day for over 25 ACAT program for scouts, but what a wonderful opportunity for us to giving up a regular adoption day at PetsMart to receive all the efforts of their hard work. A big attend and the following volunteers who made this THANKS to Sam Penny and Scout Troop 1533 for day such a success - Mitzi Miller, Cara Donato, thinking of our animals and us. Also THANKS to Melissa Klein, Christiane Brown and a special thanks Home Depot for donating all the supplies necessary to Cindy Burroughs for her leadership role at this to complete the projects. event. PETCO made our day with a donation of a very FARM WORK DAY generous check recently. They wanted us to know While it was officially cancelled due to rain, a they appreciated the work we do to help the animals few dedicated volunteers showed up to spread gravel in our community. We want them to know we thank dust in the dog runs, hang fans in the horse stalls to them and can sure use the donation! help keep them cool during the hot summer months, clean the dog “penthouse suites,” repair the fence line as needed, etc. A special thank you to those who A special thanks to Ingrid Reid and Kevin sported a day of rain, mud and other elements to Knappmiller for the beautiful photos they shared ensure the animals at the farm have nice cozy digs with us of the cats at the building.