Help Operation Puerto Rico Endure
Operation H.O.P.E.
Second Chance Animal Services is honored to be selected as one of eleven shelters in the country by the Humane Society of the United States as part of their Humane Puerto Rico mentorship program. Funded by a grant from Maddie’s Fund, this program is meant to help shelters in Puerto Rico to save the lives of pets.
Puerto Rico has staggering statistics:
- An estimated 300,000 streets dogs
- An estimated 1 million stray cats
- 120 puppy mills on the island
- Euthanasia rates in shelters is as high as 95%.
Statistics provided by Humane Society of the United States
But there are solutions – spay/neuter, adoption, and education.
Second Chance is embarking on a mission – Operation H.O.P.E. (Help Operation Puerto Rico Endure).
What is our plan?
Establish a transport program to help get pets out of shelters to reduce euthanasia. It is estimated that 95% of pets are euthanized in shelters across the island. By developing this transport program, we will be able to reduce the shelter’s overwhelming population while other solutions such as spay/neuter take hold.
- Assist our sister shelter with establishing a high volume spay/neuter program to help prevent overpopulation. We plan to do this by:
- Send our highly trained staff to mentor their veterinarians in cutting edge techniques to perform safe high quality high volume spay/neuter.
- Assist them with locating medical equipment to help them establish a high quality clinic.
- Help them find funding to create a new medical suite to perform spay/neuter and low cost vaccines.
- Send volunteers and supplies to help with shelter improvements, enrichment for the pets in their shelter and help with upgrades to their shelter.
- Reduce disease through mentorship, providing disease prevention protocols and expansion of vaccine clinics.
- Provide enrichment to pets in the shelter through enrichment programs.
About Our Sister Shelter
The staff at our sister shelter has amazing dedication and desire to improve the lives of pets. At Second Chance, we want to help them to create a partnership that will be life changing. We look forward to hosting our sister shelter in early April for a visit to show them our facilities, protocols and advanced spay/neuter techniques so they can bring this information back to their shelter. This is a long-term partnership that we are excited about for the animals and the amazing dedicated staff at Villa Michelle. It is exciting to see the beginning of change in the culture through the establishment of community outreach programs that are helping to provide information on pet ownership and care, the importance of veterinary care, and the humane treatment of animals. We are grateful to HSUS for having chosen us as 1 of the 11 partners in this exciting program!