Philadelphia, Pa – Things that differentiate SPCA from other Animal Welfare organizations is that we do have the Humane law-enforcement officers and they operate throughout the state of Pennsylvania.
“We get a lot of really hard dogs that come into our shelter because they’ve been through some dramatic and neglect situation, so the dogs may need to learn to trust people again they may have health problems, and things like that so we are dedicated here to providing the care, providing the behavioral need and letting the dog grow and evolve into a dog that can adopted out and successfully live in a home,” says Eva Pasquarello, Event and Outreach director.
Pasquarello continues, “so I’ll show you the most recent picture of Rocket this is the same dog so I’ll hold the before and after really quickly. As you can see they don’t look like the same dog but they are. In this one as you can see her weight is up, she’s got a Pity smile on her face and she was actually adopted out into a loving family she has a cat sister who lives with her now and she loves her new home that’s kind of the full circle, we do here from an investigation thinking place all the way to animal being adopted out.”
More especially in Eva’s role in the transformation is obviously at the end, so as the event and outreach coordinator she staff events and prepare animals for going off site to get adopted. They have recognized that not everybody who wants to adopt an animal can make it to out to the shelter so they have various organizations and pet stores that they are partnered with throughout Philadelphia to kind of spread out and safe more lives and get this dog the attention and get people aware that they are available and of course in the organization they always say ADOPT DON’T SHOP! and that is something that’s really important to the PSPCA.
Officer Smith, is a police officer as an animal cop and has been working with the PSPCA for 15 years, but for 9 years he has been a officer. Before being an officer, he worked in the kennels and as driver and assisting other officers, that had the experience of being an officer and with animal handling. He was offer the job, well to get the job back then you just had to have animal handling, now you need a criminal justice and law degree and you need a military and law enforcement experience.
Officer Smith, “how it works is that most of the calls comes in through the dispatch, that’s the first dispatch you walk in through and the calls comes in from there when someone comes in and makes a complaint.”
“That call is then determined what level of Cruelty it is, if its Low, Normal, or High. High meaning, animal fighting in progress, an animal dying in the backyard, someone beating an animal and something like that. Low can be as low as an animal outside with no dog house, or no water out there. That can easily change, during the course of the weather, if its real real cold outside, where there is possible a dog can freeze, continues Officer Smith.
“A dog not having a shelter becomes a high call and the same thing with heat.”
There is a total of 6 officers that covers Philadelphia, Philadelphia is divided into zip codes, and each officer has a zip code. If an officer falls sick an officer can take up to 2 zip codes but sometimes if there are 3 officers out that one officer takes up 4 zones, and sometimes there is one officer for the whole city of Philadelphia.
“A lot of people think that PSPCA Stands for Philadelphia Society Prevention of Cruelty of animals, but its not, it stands for “Pennsylvania Society Prevention of Cruelty of Animals,” says Officer Smith.
Our Law states that You must provide food, water, shelter and necessary veterinary care for that animal, whether it belongs to you or not if you have duty to care for that animal, you still have to provide for it.
“Once we bring in an animal, once we seized an animal we go out and investigate and our job is pretty much stops right there.”
“Kennel work, veterinarian, staff, hire management, makes sure the animals are comfortable, gets the veterinarian care that it receives and then once we go to court and solve the case and the the best disposition on whether this animal is suitable to go on to another home or you have to make a hard decision.”
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