ROCKINGHAM — At the end of July, Richmond County Animal Advocates Director Allison Sweatt was trying to convey to the community how difficult it was becoming to take in dogs and cats on a limited budget.
Unfortunately, the situation hasn’t improved, and Sweatt is now forced to stop accepting animals until at least October.
“We have animals in foster care that need to be moved,” she said. “We have dogs that I’ve been charging on my credit card. I’m down to one dog in boarding and six dogs in foster care, one of which is at my job going through extreme behavior modification. He’s scared to be touched. Another one is having seizures. I have kittens in foster care. We have a cat situation that we attempted to help prior to all this. It’s a situation that’s gotten really out of hand. There’s like 35 kittens in this household.”
Sweatt admitted that her animal rescue group is trying to play catch-up, but at the moment must focus on helping the many animals its volunteer members already have before taking others.
“It’s gotten out of hand. Everything’s gotten out of hand,” said Sweatt. “I cannot reiterate that we don’t have any outlets. People will call me at 11 o’clock at night and say ‘I’ve gotta get rid of my dogs by tomorrow.’ I don’t have a facility. I can’t take them in like that. I’ve got to establish that we can’t be the dumping ground.”
Sweatt is finding it hard to understand why pet owners don’t get their animals immediately spayed or neutered. Especially when the county can do it for $32.
“I don’t know why people wouldn’t want to have their pets spayed or neutered. Why would you want to go through that? It’s $32 to get it done. It’s a dollar a day,” she said. “People have money to go out to eat and blow money on this and that, and here’s their dog in the backyard. Thirty two dollars, and your dog can end that problem. Work smarter, not harder.”
Sweatt said she wants to continue to help as many animals in Richmond County as possible but leaning on her own credit card is not the solution. She added that she can’t be there to fix everything if the problem persists, and she doesn’t expect her volunteers to be able to either.
The Richmond County Animal Advocates are still doing fundraisers including Caturdays, a fundraiser on the first Saturdays of the month at Mercantile on Broad where those interested can adopt kittens and cats. A carport raffle will take place on Sept. 5 at Mercantile with the drawing being the same day.
Tickets are $5 apiece or five for $20. A Yankee Candle catalog sale is still starting on Sept. 3 online, but pre-orders can be made now for anyone interested.
“I wanna try and get my fosters and my fosters’ fosters out so we can regroup and figure out what our goal is,” said Sweatt. “When I started this group, one of my goals was to stop so many unwanted litters, but this has been the worst year for cats and kittens.”
The group will be meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday at Henry’s Downtown Café to discuss what the next move or moves will be for the animal advocates, and Sweatt hopes by October the situation will have died down some.
“I think things will be a little better by then. I just had to put a date on it,” she said. “I get calls all the time from people asking me to pick up stray animals. We can’t. It’s illegal. That’s not what we do. I just think people are trying to take advantage of having their dogs keep having puppies, and someone else will take care of it, and it’s not cool. You took that cat and dog into your care. You fix it.
“I don’t want people to think that I’m being mean, but I feel like I have to be responsible. I want to help every animal that I come across, but realistically we have to be responsible and clean up the mess we made, so to speak. It was purely ‘We can’t leave these animals behind at the risk of being euthanized,’ and it just snowballed.”
Reach reporter Matt Harrelson at 910-817-2674 and follow him on Twitter @mattyharrelson.