Lazar cancels ANOTHER Volunteer Orientation and oh, by the way, what is she doing with all of the dogs? One of the key elements to saving lives at any shelter is a robust volunteer program. Volunteers walk dogs, socialize cats and dogs, bathe and groom animals, provide transport, work at adoption events, fundraise and so on. So you have to wonder why Director Lazar has done everything in her power to sabotage the volunteer program at GCAC. Since taking over in August 2013, she has cancelled scheduled orientations repeatedly; in fact, she most recently canceled back-to-back monthly orientations scheduled for November and December. These were orientations where dozens of people had signed up weeks in advance, filled out volunteer applications online and had been looking forward to becoming an approved volunteer in order to help the animals. These are people from the community who cleared their busy schedules to attend. Director Lazar’s seems to place a rather low value on volunteers. On one occasion, she unexpectedly declared that there would be a volunteer orientation the very next day and the volunteer coordinators had to scramble to find and contact people to attend at the last minute. There is only one explanation for this kind of purposeful disruption of the volunteer program: To discourage people from volunteering. Why? Because volunteers are eyes and ears in the shelter. When they see something that appears to be wrong, they ask questions. Recently, volunteers have reported a great decline in the number of dogs available for adoption. For most of this week, only ONE dog was in the adoption ward. This is a facility that takes in an average of 40 dogs per week. Where are these dogs? Volunteers have been openly critical of the lack of dogs in the adoption ward and the longer than required stray hold time. When dogs are in stray hold, they are not allowed to be walked or socialized by volunteers; this greatly reduces their chances for adoption. Perhaps the Director doesn’t see a need for more volunteers if she has no intention of making more dogs available for adoption on a regular basis. While we could speculate all day about why Director Lazar does not want volunteers and why a great number of animals are never getting a chance at adoption, our goal here is to let the public and Board of Commissioners know that we have not gone away and we are not complacent. Please contact the following Commissioners: Tell them this mismanagement is unacceptable and that we expect them to put a Compassionate Director in place as soon as the new Board takes over in January. A Compassionate Director encourages new volunteers and utilizes every resource to improve conditions and outcomes for animals. A Compassionate Director gives every animal a chance at adoption and promotes them to the public; she doesn’t hide them away in a locked ward where no one can see them or leave them longer than required in stray hold so they cannot be released for adoption. Please contact each of the following Commissioners and let them know that we expect to see dramatic change at GCAC starting in January. Brenda Clack [email protected] Jamie Curtis [email protected] John Northrup [email protected] Mark Young [email protected] Tony Brown [email protected] Ted Henry [email protected] Pegge Adams [email protected]
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 14:08:19 +0000
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