Art Lawler
The Athens Review
Athens —
Delilah, still looking for her ideal Sampson, rested comfortably inside one of the air-conditioned buildings at the Humane Society of Henderson County Friday afternoon.
She’s an Australian Shepherd of sorts, offering moral support, and puppy love from her padded perch near the door to Shelter Advisor and Cruelty Investigaror Norma Lambert.
For the first time ever, the Humane Society of Henderson County is going to team up with the Humane Society of Cedar Creek Lake to produce a large casino party at the Cain Center on Friday, Oct. 22.
That’s a while away, but it will require a lot of planning between now and then. Organizers want to get the word out now. They need a large fundraiser to step up their services even more than they are now.
Tickets will go on sell soon for $45, or two for $80.
While you’re helping to take care of Delilah, you will be dancing with a live band in the background, playing the tables and trying for the top gift prize at the end of the night.
An outside company will provide the roulette wheels, blackjack tables, all forms of card games like Texas Hold ‘Em, and all the dealers who know how to do the cards right, a band, a dance floor and all the things you’d expect inside a casino.
This one will be called, Evening Out for Paws & Claws.
Don’t worry Sheriff, nobody’s going to be making any money off this, via gambling. The money taken for tickets will go to the shelters. Henderson County needs a new van, so it can transport more animals to other shelters in hopes of getting more of them adopted out.
The Cedar Creek shelter is in need of a new building for its animal services.
The sad truth is, that out of every 10 dogs that come to the shelters, staff is lucky to save four of them. The rest are euthanized.
That doesn’t indicate that staff and volunteers don’t make every attempt to save them. They recently met a family from Chicago in Memphis, Tenn., so they could pick up a pet dog and bring it to the shelter in Athens.
“Everybody thinks we’re nutty, and this just proves it,” Lambert said. She said she’s driven as far as Clovis, N.M. to pick up an animal.
The volunteers at the shelter have been using their own vehicles to make the adoptions happen. The van would help them deal with adoptions in a more comfortable environment, and to get to more places for potential adoptions.
The reasons for the overpopulation of animals are many. Hoarders, hoping to protect strays, are also becoming more of a problem in the county.
Lambert says that unfortunately many well-meaning persons get in over their heads. Some suffer emotional and mental problems and have to keep adding to their numbers.
Then too, people abandon their animals, and some run away. If they’re lucky, they wind up at a Humane Society shelter where they may, or may not, be adopted. Since they aren’t neutered or spayed, the problem just multiplies.
All a person has to do is spend 10 minutes with Delilah, and there’s no way that person will allow this dog to perish. She’s sweet, friendly, and looks at you with eyes that make you want to cry.
She doesn’t care how long you wear your hair, the way the first Delilah did with Sampson, so she’s much lower-maintenance. She just wants to go home, and love somebody unconditionally.
She’s also the kind of dog a lot of folks will turn their back on. Avoid eye contact, and you might get out the shelter without filling out adoption papers.
At the very least, you’ll want to make sure Delilah is well fed and cared for, and eventually adopted out. Thus, the fundraiser will be staged, not just for Delila, but for all of the more than 5,000 to 7,000 dogs and cats a year that the Henderson County Shelter deals with.
The never-ending battle is to have all animals spayed or neutered. A group called Friends of the Animals in the Cedar Creek Lake-area, had neutered and spayed hundreds of pets, but the pets just keep coming.
At the shelters, no animal is adopted out without first having his or her shots, and being spayed or neutered.
Lambert said the last thing they want to do is euthanize an animal. But they can only handle so many. The others have to be destroyed. The alternative is to turn them lose to die on the streets or in the wilds. City governments can’t put up with that for health reasons. Untreated animals can carry diseases into a community.
Meanwhile, Delilah has her friends. One is Red, a 2-year-old labbish-looking male with abandonment issues. He’s been adopted out once, but he kept running away, until Lambert found him waiting for her on a road.
Red’s back with Delilah, and their good friend, Mia, now. Mia looks almost 100-percent chihuahua. Unlike most of these dogs, Mia seldom barks, and is very polite.
On this day, they’re just hanging together waiting for the right home and the right family to adopt. You might just measure up.
To make sure these animals keep hanging out, it’s not too early to be getting ready for the Evening Out with Paws ‘n’ Claws in October.
Meanwhile, if you’d like, you could stop by for a visit with Delilah, Red and Mia in Athens. There are more to meet at the Cedar Creek Shelter in Tool.
If the animals are too busy to give you an audience immediately, just look for Lambert. She’s nearly always there to fill you in on the histories of these pets.
