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This Year's Project: Dog Play Yard Play and Shade Structure
About Our Organization
Over the last 22 years, the Beatrice Humane Society has made a huge impact on the animals of Beatrice and beyond. Along the way, we have grown and become the leading No-Time Limit Shelter in Nebraska with a save rate of 97.9% meaning we only euthanize 2.1% of all animals entering our shelter. Our mission is to ensure that every animal has the best chance at a long, healthy, happy life. Last year, we had over 1,400 animals enter our shelter, and amazing 2,004 adoptions!!!
Current Project: Dog Play Yard Play and Shade Structure
The Beatrice Humane Society is handing the reigns of Big Give Gage to the dogs this year!
Last year over 500 dogs walked through our front doors needing safety, food, shelter and love. We are committed to providing the best stay for each animal entering our shelter whether its an overnight stay for a stray being reunited with their family or a complex medical or behavior case that stays with us for weeks or months. This year’s project will benefit all shelter dogs by renovating our dog play yards to provide a play structure and shade as they enjoy the five and a half acres of play area with employees, volunteers and other dogs.
We are fundraising to purchase three XL Hammie’s Tunnel Houses at $3590 each for each of our three large grass play yards, for a total cost of $10,770. We have already received one grant to contribute $2500 to this project. Our fundraising goal for Big Give Gage is $9000 so we can purchase three play and shade structures and provide landscaping rock under the structure to discourage weed and grass growth so our dogs can make the best use out of these tunnels!
We are committed to providing the best shelter experience for every dog that enters our shelter, that can mean special accommodations, extra snuggle time, special diets, and even rules for visitors if they benefit our dogs. Back at the start of COVID we closed our dog kennels to the public as a public health decision, but we found that our dogs LOVED it! They slept more, they rested better, they settled more and they even started playing in their kennels with toys we regularly leave with them. Most importantly, they weren’t spending 6 hours every day stressed by visitors, barking, cowering, or any of the other mix of behaviors they previously offered while we were open. We adjusted our adoption process to allow our potential adopters adequate time and individualized staff attention to meet the dogs outside of their kennels. We use our indoor space during inclement weather, but we prefer using our 5.5 acres of outdoor play yards so adopters can really get to know the dogs and their personalities. Having a comfortable enriched outdoor space where they can get to know the personality of the dogs is an important part of completing an adoption. Adding play/shade structures to our yards will give the dogs something to play on and under while they spend time outside of their kennels, with volunteers and most importantly with potential adopters.
Currently our outdoor space is 100% exposed to the elements. As a shelter we know that this isn't ideal, but we have created management plans to minimize the effects on the dogs. During temperature extremes or severe weather, we limit the dogs time outside, and in the heat of the summer we use kiddie swimming pools that are refilled with cool water daily! We have also attempted to provide extra shade and wind blocks with tarps on the fences, but the longevity of those in the Nebraska wind is understandably short. The Hammie's Tunnel House is concrete based and heavy enough to not be affected by Nebraska winds, rain or even tornados and should provide many years of shade and fun!
Your donation will help us continue to provide the highest level of care to the animals entrusted to us as we strive to be the best no-time limit shelter in Nebraska.
What is a No-Kill Shelter
Project Details
What does it mean to be No-Kill? It means our top priority is to provide exceptional medical and behavioral care for every animal entering our shelter so they can recover, thrive and live their best lives. We know that sometimes just keeping them alive isn't the humane thing to do but we will always exhaust other options such as training or rescues better suited to their individual needs, before considering euthanasia. In a small number of animals with severe medical and behavioral problems, euthanasia is the safest and most humane option. We know that it is not only our responsibility to provide humane care to the animals entrusted to us, but it is also our responsibility to our community to only place healthy, happy and sane animals up for adoption. We take that responsibility very seriously but still manage to save 98.2% of all animals entering our shelter.
Both PetSmart locations in Lincoln house our animals throughout the year and help us expedite our adoptions with their employees assisting in the adoption process. We also bring dogs and puppies to their stores for adoption events throughout the year. In 2021, this partnership resulted in an amazing 581 cat and kitten adoptions, 14 dog and puppy adoptions and 7 small critter adoptions. These adoptions along with the 614 adoptions we did out of our shelter in Beatrice allow us to be an open admission animal shelter for Gage County and know that as soon as our animals have overcome whatever health challenges they arrive with, we will have adopters waiting to welcome them home. This focus on adoptions has also allowed us an amazing opportunity to save even more lives as there are times throughout the year where we have more adopters wanting to adopt than we have pets waiting to be adopted. We take this opportunity to save lives and bring animals at risk of euthanasia at other shelters into our no-kill shelter. From kittens diagnosed with fungal skin infections, to dogs and puppies born into communities with small shelters and inadequate space, we are here to welcome them into our family.
We know that we can't do this alone. It takes a community of supporters to keep this lifesaving program moving forward, from our employees, fosters, and volunteers on the ground, to the PetSmart employees and organization, to the adopters and our donors, this can't happen without YOU!!! Thank you for helping us continue to be the best No-Kill Shelter in the state of Nebraska.
To become more involved through fostering or volunteering (Yes! You can live outside of Beatrice!) check out our website here: Beatrice Humane Society : Get Involved
Providing Care For Animals In Our Community, And The People Who Love Them
Raised $5,730.00 Towards the Goal of $10,000.00
Project Wrap Up
We have continued to make progress towards opening our Low Cost Spay and Neuter Clinic, though due to some location challenges, we still don't have a finalized timeline for completion. Stay tuned though because we can't wait to be able to better serve the animals of Beatrice and Gage County and the families who love them.
Project Details
The Beatrice Humane Society has been advocating for the animals of Beatrice, Gage County and beyond for over twenty years. This means sheltering lost and injured animals and providing our community with altered, vaccinated and microchipped adoptable animals. We have acted as a resource to help get animals back home when lost, and keep animals in their homes through our emergency pet food bank, and find animals new homes when circumstances change but we know there is always more work to do. The communities we serve have been in need of low cost spay and neuter options for owned animals as well as feral, outdoor cats for many years.
We have heard the call and in 2022 we will be opening a low cost spay and neuter clinic!
While there are still many questions we are working out, such as "Who will be or veterinarian?"" Where will the new clinic be?" "How will we set up appointments?" We are working out the details just as quickly as we can, but we do know this: we are committed to this project, we know its needed and we are going to make it a reality for our shelter and our community.
We have already hit the ground running, we have already purchased two anesthetic machines, kennels and surgical tables, autoclaves and some surgical instruments, but there are still more large items we need to purchase. This clinic will be an invaluable resource for our community in helping correct feral cat problems, helping low income residents afford preventative care and providing additional surgeries for our shelter animals so that we can save even more at risk lives locally, regionally and beyond.
We will continue to create new programs and opportunities to improve the lives of the animals in our communities and the people that love them. But to do that we need your support.
We are committed to creating new programs and opportunities to improve the lives of the animals in our communities and the people that love them. To do that we need your support, please click the donate button now to help us get this clinic started!
$50 covers the cost of one neuter pack. This pack contains all the surgical equipment needed for a neuter procedure, these will be reused for many years to come.
$75 covers the cost of one spay or neuter for a shelter animal.
$100 covers the cost of one tray of vaccines.
$200 covers the cost of one spay pack. This pack contains all the equipment needed for a spay procedure.
$500 will allow us to purchase an ultrasonic cleaner to keep the surgical instruments in good condition for years to come.
$2,500 will allow us to purchase a lift/mobile table to move animals from the prep room into the surgery suite and then back into recovery.
Animal Care
Raised $7,300.00 Towards the Goal of $10,000.00
Project Wrap Up
Each and everyday we continue to focus on providing the best care for the animals entrusted to us. In 2020, this fundraiser allowed us to expand our ringworm treatment room to save more at risk cats and kittens in Nebraska.
Project Details
By March, it was apparent that 2020 was going to be a year like no other, that our lives were going to change and most of it was out of our control. Here at BHS, we regularly have to deal with situations that are out of our control and handle them in the best way possible. We have been riding the COVID wave as it has changed the way we interact with our animals, interact with the community and probably most importantly how our community needs us. We quickly realized we needed to shift our focus from intakes and adoptions to pet retention and community support. We focused on keeping each individual animal in its original home by increasing the use of our ever-growing pet food bank, by helping owners find resources for veterinary care and by providing owners with resources to access pet friendly housing. Almost instantaneously we saw a decrease in the number of local intakes, strays got reunited, owner surrenders decreased and mane of the animals needing rehomed were able to be rehomed safely outside of the shelter. It allowed us to fall back and take a safety net approach, where we were here primarily for the sick and injured animals in our community or those without any other options. This decrease in local intakes left us with very few animals in shelter available for adoption.
As COVID shut down progressed across the Midwest, animal shelters were profoundly impacted with some euthanizing healthy, adoptable animals so they could shut down. We asked ourselves, how can we sit by and watch healthy adoptable animals be euthanized when we can help. So we helped. We worked with small and large municipal shelters in Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma and Texas to save as many lives as we could. As of October 15th, we have saved over 360 lives from certain death situations locally and regionally. Our community has stepped up in a big way to help save animals through adoption. We continue to help all the animals we can while still making sure we are here as the safety net for our own community.
Through our transition into being primarily a safety net for our community we have come across a greater number of animals in severe need, whether medical or behavioral, these animals wouldn’t be given a fighting chance in most shelters and euthanasia would occur. But they didn’t end up in another shelter. They made it to us, to safety, to people who care and above all else, want to help. We give them medications, special food, extra care, and most importantly, time. There is no expiration date here at our shelter, if an animal recovers in 4 days, we will place them up for adoption then, if an animal takes 3 months, we will place them up for adoption after 3 months. We give them the time and the care they need to recover and if no recovery is possibly we give them the love and warmth while they exchange their earthly body for a less broken one. We will be there fighting to help them get their happily ever after- that is our promise to every dog, cat, rabbit, guinea pig, turtle, or other animals that joins our BHS family. Will you help us continue to fulfill that promise with a donation today?
Animal Care
Raised $5,508.00 Towards the Goal of $14,500.00
Project Wrap Up
These donations in 2019 allowed us to start expanding our paid staff for our animal care positions and making sure we were capable of providing consistent and reliable care for all of the animals we saw in 2019 including 1,120 animals entering our shelter and 913 adoptions.
Project Details
Our animal care costs are our greatest expense, and when it comes down to it not a place that we can cut costs as a No-Kill Shelter! We provide all care for an animal entering our shelter including food, medical care, emergency care, spays/neuters, dentals if necessary and more. We make a commitment to each animal to get them ready for adoption and then find them their perfect forever home. Each pet has as long as they need to find their forever home as we do not euthanize for time or space.
$30 covers the staff time and gas to make one trip to transport animals and supplies between our adoption centers
$50 covers the medical intake costs for one cat or dog $100 covers one emergency exam on an animal in our care
$200 covers the cost of one dental procedure
$300 covers one month of litter for cats in our care
$500 covers the cost of feeding and caring for one mother cat and her 6 newborn kittens until they can be weaned and adopted out to furever homes