Profile: Philip Smith, animal shelter manager
August 18, 2009 at 12:58 pm by Asher Smith in Profile
As manager of PAWS Atlanta, one of the city’s largest no-kill animal shelters, Philip Smith knows how much work it takes to turn abused and abandoned animals back into man’s best friends.
How do most animals find their way to PAWS?
For the most part, we try to get our animals from kill facilities. These places end up with a lot of injured animals, and unless we can bring them in, they’re just sitting there waiting for their time to be killed. We try to do what we can to give them the life they deserve. All together, that probably makes up 75 percent of our animals. Others are dire cases, like the dog we found that was hit by a lawn mower. And about 20 percent are animals that people surrender to us.
We try to help as many people as we can — but unfortunately there are limits to how many animals we can take in, which is why we won’t take in litters of kittens whose owner hasn’t had their mother spayed. We know that the owner will be back here a year later with the same problem.
What condition are most animals in when they first arrive at PAWS?
We get a lot of abused animals. Ninety-nine percent of them are scared out of their minds, and it takes a lot to get them to where they can trust humans again.
What does the process of socializing animals entail?
Most of the socialization is done by our volunteers. Socializing dogs really just amounts to sitting in a cage with them, playing with them, walking with them, just getting them used to being able to trust people. The truth is, shelters are the most stressful places there are for animals. They’re noisy. They’re chaotic. And the animals aren’t on any real routine. We really depend on our volunteers to help, though we have a trained staff that deals with the more aggressive dogs.
Is it a challenge to keep the shelter financially viable?
Yes. We qualify as a four-star charity with Charity Navigator, who evaluates nonprofits based on their financial health, but it’s still very difficult to keep the shelter financially stable. No one wants to admit it, but there are definite trends in philanthropy. We’ve had to adjust. We’ve had to scale back what we take in, in terms of animals, as well as cutting down some on staff.
Has the recession had an impact on how many people are looking to adopt animals or how many donations the shelter receives?
Donations from individuals have been holding steady, but corporate donations are falling dramatically. Not as many sponsors are willing to come to the table nowadays. Adoptions have declined a little bit. Last month was especially bad; we were essentially forced into a holding pattern and couldn’t take in many new animals.
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
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