March 2006
The real purpose for our visit came around after some great learning experiences in San Diego.
In LA, we were attending the Humane Society’s annual animal welfare conference. I was there with representatives from RSPCA’s across Australia.
Over three days we attended around 15 different presentations covering:
- adoptions
- veterinary care in a shelter environment
- disease management
- marketing and fund raising
- animal shelter design
- transport best practices for injured wildlife
- fostering and volunteer support
- helping fearful dogs become adoptable
- the cat pyramid
- shelter leadership: Next Gen
- defining no kill
- TNR
- use your data
- shelter software, what’s next?
The conference was a wonderful experience and I was able to make some lasting contacts that wold help me shape the future of our shelter.
I left the conference feeling buoyed and ready to really get into my new role.
We let our hair down for a night after the conference and visited the happiest place on earth: Disneyland. Although that might wasn’t happy for me. I spoke to my wife, she was fostering some kittens at home and their mum had escaped. She now had six neonatal kittens to hand feed every two hours on her own. She had also just had a miscarriage as well.
That night I felt alone and helpless, not being able to help my darling wife with the complexities at home.
February 2020 update
We adopted one of the cats from the litter described above, we called him midnight. He died on 10 February 2020, after a wonderful life living with us and our seven cats. He developed cancer, we operated and removed it once, but then allowed him to live his life out without any pain or discomfort.
Midnight aged six weeks
Midnight, the week before he died. notice the large cancer on his side. He’s with Harry, his nine month old brother!