Too many adoptable animals at the Amarillo-Panhandle Humane Society and Amarillo Animal Management & Welfare are being killed without having been given a chance.  The tools needed to help save more animals are not provided to those that can help, such as owner reclaims, potential adopters, and rescues.  This list provides ways that both Amarillo-Panhandle Humane Society and Amarillo Animal Management & Welfare can help to save more lives.  

1. Provide the EUTHANASIA list of animals as they are selected daily, or whenever they are even put up for consideration. This can be provided through several ways: Amarillo Rescue Tags group and other Facebook pages, E-mail distribution lists that rescues can request to join, other social networking sites, and more.  Right now, no list is provided, and the pictures of animals that are provided are done with only a few hours notice and do not have any details, such as gender, age, disposition, etc.  

2. Remove the restriction for fostering. Let the four animal limit stand if you wish, but exempt foster animals from this count.

3. Must be fostering for a 501c3 group, verifiable by a rescue that has them in their system as an official foster.

4. Address transport issues and holding facilities.

5. Possibly some fund holding accounts that people can donate to for the following: 1) TNR 2) Transport 3) Boarding fees (or possibly some tax break or other incentive for boarding facilities that assist with the shelter animals)

6. Low cost spay/neuter clinics and assistance/incentives to vets who participate in low cost spay/neuter programs.

7. Fines for not spaying/neutering your pet.

8. Breeding requires a permit.

9. Reclaiming an animal from the shelter requires that they be sterilized. This can be done with a donation or city funded coupon. 1) At a local shelter (Denton, Texas), the animals are adopted, then shuttled to the vet, and the adoptee is told to collect the dog at the vet clinic. No animal leaves the shelter program without having been sterilized. 2) Spay neuter mobile vehicles that can come and help the city with a variety of services.

10. Volunteer program. This can be done via a simple legal form signed by volunteers that can protect the city from any liability.  Right now, they DO NOT allow volunteers.  

11. Volunteer program coordinator as a shelter position, paid or not.

12. A daily spot in the local paper that publishes the new daily intakes. This can be submitted daily by the shelter using their intake tool or it can be sent in by the rescue coordinator---whomever will take on this responsibility.

13. Allow someone to have the shelter code and approval to run a Petfinder and rescuegroups.org program. These are simple and free and add TONS of views to the shelter animals at no cost to the shelter at all. You can also enter the animals into one program that you download onto a computer and it posts it to multiple sites like (and including) these simultaneously. Then it goes viral and the animals are viewed by many rescue sites. Most of these sites can add around 3000 extra views a week and Petfinder can add many more than even this alone. It may not sound like much, but added all together, it can be huge!

14. Create a Shelter or Humane Society program that allows seniors to adopt a senior dog for a greatly discounted rate. Seniors for Seniors.

15. The City tool needs to be replaced with new rescue friendly, integrated software.

16. Provide better intake images. Often we do not even get the face of a dog, and half the time we do, it's blurry. These images can save the animals' lives.

17. Remove the leash law for cats.

18. Create a TNR program for cats.

19. Train the staff on how to scan for microchips. Many of these animals are being found to be microchipped, but the owners are not being notified. Possibly upgrade microchip devices because there are some wonderful universal microchip readers on the market for shelters now.

20. Get intake images online in a timely manner. This is crucial to saving their lives.

21. Have the shelter employees trained in basic medicine. http://www.sheltermedicine.com/ is an exceptional training tool.

23. Set up adoption locations at the local Petsmart and Petco stores.  This will allow the animals to have better exposure and free up some space at the shelter itself.

24. Invest in a mobile adoption trailer. For example, on weekends, the trailer could drive to the parking lot of a Petco or Petsmart location and set up the animals to be seen. A lot of adoptions occur where people are out, about and shopping, and pet stores are ideal since many likely have a pet of their own to be shopping there, or, if it is their first pet, they may be advised on what to buy right inside the pet store they adopted the animal near. Bookstore locations are ideal for cat adoption events and programs. Convenience is key. And these are tried and true locations with a high adoption success rate, after all, clearly these people already go to buy pet foods and needs, so you have a wonderful market available to you at these locations.

25. Start a Ribbon campaign. For example, volunteers could make up ribbons and add them to large safety pins (much like high school kids mums they wear on their shirts) those ribbons would be red and another one green. The green could mean ready for adoption, the red could be put on the cages to signify that these dogs have been there more than XXX days and were urgent. This is a wonderful way for people visiting the shelter, they would often say "what is the red ribbon for" and choose to take a heavier look at that particular set of dogs. It is a great tool in helping get animals out that have been there the longest and keep them from being looked over and going kennel crazy.