ISSUE: Appreciating animal shelters

OUR VIEW: Orangeburg SPCA on the verge of milestone 

In 1996, The Humane Society of the United States launched National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week. The designation was designed to acknowledge and promote the invaluable role shelters play in communities, and to increase public awareness of animal welfare issues and shelter services.

During National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week, the first full week each November, the HSUS promotes and celebrates animal shelters across the country through media and public outreach.

In Orangeburg County in November 2009, the observance has special meaning. The Maude Schiffley Chapter of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is on the verge of a milestone.

Through an agreement with Orangeburg County, the chapter soon will be opening its new shelter on Ruf Road. Renovations are in progress, with completion expected this month.

Previously, the SPCA shared the facility with Orangeburg County Animal Control. As much as longtime cooperation between the county and the SPCA still can be recognized as innovative among counties, the missions of animal control and the SPCA are not exactly in sync.

With the county now operating a new animal control facility on Ellis Avenue, the SPCA will get the Ruf Road facility all to itself. That will allow the organization to expand its adoption efforts and save more dogs and cats in a large, rural county where stray and abandoned animals are a real problem.

For now, the SPCA is operating out of the county’s new facility on a Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. schedule. Saturday adoptions have been suspended until the new shelter opens, although adoptions continue on Saturdays at PetSense near Prince of Orange Mall.

The new facility will be in keeping with the SPCA mission of uniting pets with new owners. The renovation will include the addition of an area where people can interact with animals considered for adoption. The office and lobby areas are being expanded as well.

The shelter renovation also is to include two catteries. A present, cats are housed in cages. The intake and medical room at the Ruf Road site also is being expanded.

It all costs money — money the SPCA is raising through community efforts. It’s an ongoing process in need of support.

Shelter Appreciation Week is an ideal time to put the SPCA and the work it does in the forefront of public consciousness.

You can help the cause, directly by working with the organization in its adoption efforts or indirectly by contributing to fund the new shelter and the SPCA’s work. It will be money well spent.

For more information, contact the SPCA at 803-536-3918 or visit www.orangeburgspca.org.

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