Clear Lake Area Chamber Of Commerce: Clear Lake Connections Podcast Episode 47 | Pets, You Love Them And They Love You.

Press release from the Clear Lake Area Chamber Of Commerce:

January 10, 2022

This week on Clear Lake Connections Podcast presented by UTMB Health: Meet Carol Bertsche and Annie Lamont from Bay Area Pet Adoptions/SPCA. In this weeks episode, Carol and Annie discuss the work they do for our community through the adoption center, how their adoption process goes and about how rescuing is so special. They also talk about their current campaign to raise money for new kennels at their adoption center and their current work with Lighthouse Christian Ministries Senior Program to help them maintain their pets in their homes. If you are looking to get involved you can visit their website at https://www.bayareapetadoptions.org/

Bay Area Pet Adoptions got started in in 1967 as an SPCA of Galveston County. They still retain this name today. The are a 501c3 and run completely on donations. They do not receive any federal, state, county, or city funding of any kind. The generosity of their donors is what keeps them going. Everything is donation driven and currently they need donations of money that can be utilized for healthcare, medical supplies and needs of special animals. People donate food, they have a community food bank, and they share this with the area.

They have been seeing a lot of animals lately. With Covid, people found themselves not being able to take care of their animals any longer, they didn’t have an income, or they had to move. With this, a lot of animals were dropped off.  Then, adoptions went up a little bit because people found themselves at home a lot more, so they came in and adopted an animal but now with things back open, people going back to work and virus rate down, they are seeing a lack of adoptions once again.

There are these wonderful animals who are waiting for the right fit and the right home. People undervalue how smart and how connected these animals are. When you adopt a pet, there’s this connection with the animal. The connection is really where the joy comes out in what they do.

What they like to do is have people go online and look at the available animals that they have and decide who they are interested in. Then they bring the animals to them so then the animals are not caged. Staff is then there to talk about the animal and tell the potential adopter about their personality. This makes it more likely for them to get that connection. They also do meet and greets with people who have existing pets. With this, they will be able to see if there are behavioral issues or if they will get along.

They have found a great way to do this because of Covid but they are thinking of staying with the appointment only system. They are currently having a major Capital campaign going on where they are having construction started for new kennels. It is going to cost about 300,000 dollars to renew their kennels. They received generous donation from a single donor of 150,000 so they were able to immediately start their rebuild.

With their expansion, they want to be able to provide even more to the community. They had started doing an outreach into Bacliff by partnering with Lighthouse Christian Ministries Senior Program and attempting to deliver food to those individuals to help them maintain their pets in their homes.

They are always looking for volunteers and you can visit them on their website at https://www.bayareapetadoptions.org/ or 3000 Ave. R in San Leon.

This press release was produced by the Clear Lake Area Chamber Of Commerce. The views expressed here are the author’s own.