Petsmart is having a four-day only, online sale this weekend! Click the link below to go directly to the sale. Starting today, you can buy things for your furry loved ones at discounted prices, and support the Aiken SPCA at the same time. Hurry! The sale ends Monday!

Shop the PetSmart Dollar Day Sale at PetSmart.com! Offer Valid 2/16 – 2/20.

Here’s what else we have going on.

New Aiken SPCA Shelter

In May, 2011, we broke ground for a new shelter which is being built near the Aiken Dog Park. Construction is well under way, and as you can see from the photo at right, the new facility is coming together very nicely. If you’re interested in donating to the shelter project, many naming opportunities still exist.

New Fundraising Page

To raise even more funds for the new shelter, we’ve created a fundraising page that will not only allow you to donate to the project, but easily share information about the project through social media. The more of us who get the word out and contribute, the more quickly the new shelter will be completed, and the better care we’ll be able to give the animals of the CSRA. Please take a moment to check out our Aiken SPCA shelter fundraising page. We are grateful for all donations of any amount. Thank you!

Aiken SPCA T-shirts

We’ve also been working on other new ways to raise money for the Aiken SPCA. If you look at the sidebar on the right, you’ll see a link to buy Aiken SPCA T-shirts. We’ve partnered with Petsontees.com in an effort to not only raise money, but give you the opportunity to show off your support for the Aiken SPCA.

By clicking the link, you’ll be taken directly to our store where you can choose from ten designs that you can then buy on T-shirts, tank tops, sweatshirts, and reusable canvas bags. Wear a T-shirt around town that lets people know you support the Aiken SPCA, and encourages others to do the same. Use a canvas bag at the grocery store to show your support, and help the environment.

The clothing and bags come in all kinds of colors, and a small percentage of every purchase goes directly to the Aiken SPCA, so you get a great product, and we’re able to continue caring for animals in need. Everyone wins!

Aiken SPCA on Pinterest

Are you on Pinterest? We are! The site seems to be all the rage right now. It’s great for sharing photos of foods you like, or DIY ideas for the home. We’ve taken it a step further. Visit our Pinterest profile, and you’ll find boards showing some of the pets we have available for adoption. Please follow us and repin our pins to get the word out about animals in need of forever homes!

We went even further with Pinterest, and have created a Wish List board. The board shows items we need to keep the shelter running, such as laundry detergent, hoses, towels, and most importantly, dog and cat food. But here’s the kicker. We’ve partnered with Amazon.com and Petsmart.com to not only make donating items easier for you, but to raise money for the shelter! Here’s how it works:

• You click on one of our Wish List pins
• You’re taken to the product page on either Amazon.com or Petsmart.com, where you can immediately purchase the item (or a few, if you want to donate more than one)
• Enter the Aiken SPCA address as the shipping address, and it will be sent directly to us
• We make a small commission on the sale
• You get a receipt for your tax-deductible contribution
• The animals at the shelter are cared for!

No need to leave the house, drive to the store, buy items for the shelter, load them into your car, and bring them to the shelter. You may have to pay shipping (depending on how much you spend, or whether you have an Amazon Prime membership), but we think it’s a pretty good exchange for the time it will save you, and the gas you’d use to buy and donate things in person.

Even if you’re unable to donate any items yourself right now, we would be very grateful if you’d follow the Aiken SPCA on Pinterest (you’ll also see a link to our profile in the sidebar at right), and repin our pins to get the word out, help encourage adoptions, and make donating items on our Wish List easy for anyone who wants to do so. Thank you!

Aiken SPCA on Facebook

Have you liked the Aiken SPCA on Facebook? Like our page, and you can stay up to date on adoptions, the new shelter project, and other news like lost pets and fostering opportunities. We appreciate all of our page fans! Every time you share a story from our page, you help get the word out about animals in need. You can also follow the Aiken SPCA on Twitter to stay informed.

In addition, take a quick look at the top of this post. You’ll see social sharing buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Pinterest. Those buttons are on every page of the Aiken SPCA site. As you navigate around the site, anytime you see something you like, feel free to share it with your social network. It helps bring more people to the site who can learn about what we do, and then get involved, if they wish. Thanks for sharing!

If you have any questions about donating money or items, buying SPCA merchandise, or anything else on the site, please feel free to contact us and we’ll be happy to help. As always, thank you all for your continued and dedicated support. We couldn’t do it without you!

One of the things that supporters and Aiken SPCA volunteers like best is that animals up for adoption in our shelter are there until they are adopted. Not all shelters are able to do this, but most are trying more creative things to truly rescue more animals, not just house them for a few days.

In our community, animal control departments have made big attempts at improvement in a variety of areas over the past several years. Aiken County and both the cities of Aiken and North Augusta have voucher programs for spay and neuter services for their pet-owning residents who can’t afford the procedure.

Each agency has looked at implementing ordinances that help to encourage responsible pet ownershipszx. Additionally, each agency promotes adoptions of their unclaimed strays and works with animal welfare organizations to try and transfer any they don’t adopt themselves.

At the current Aiken SPCA shelter, we typically have about 75 to 100 dogs and puppies up for adoption, and another 25 to 40 cats and kittens waiting for their new homes each day. Another significant number are in foster homes or in holding on our property, waiting for their turn at adoption.

The average stay for dogs and cats in the Adoption Center is around one month. This is on top of the five to ten days animals are held as strays to give their owners a chance to come in and reclaim them.

Cute kittens and small breed dogs are often adopted as fast as we can get them up to date on their shots and altered in our clinic. But many others have to have more patience while we work hard to find just the right home for them. In some cases, it may take more than a year for the right person to call their name.

Why do some take so long to find a home? A variety of reasons.

One common reason is a behavioral issue. Extremely shy dogs or ones that bark aggressively in the kennels often get overlooked. Competition is tough, with so many in our shelter at any one time, and dozens more at other area shelters and in foster homes, so dogs may get passed over for ones with better dispositions. Others get overlooked because there are several other animals that look just like them.

Shelters typically have many black lab mixes, medium-sized brown dogs of unknown breed, and lots of pit bull mixes. The same can be said for black cats and tabby cats. When a Persian or Siamese comes in, or even a big, fluffy all-white cat, we know it won’t be at the shelter long at all.

Why is it important to move the adoptions of all animals through quickly? The answer is simple: To save as many as possible.

We’d love to see a day in our local shelters where the demand for dogs and cats is greater than the supply coming in, but we are not there yet. Adoptions help free up space so other strays can get their chance at a better future.

What do we do to find the less in-demand animals new homes? If they are very shy, we work with them to build confidence, often with a great foster home. If they are hard to walk on a leash, our volunteers work to correct that behavior. We also use the information gathered from our dedicated dog walkers to share things about the dogs with potential adopters to help them stand out from the crowd.

We have also developed a long-term resident adoption program. Any dog or cat that has been with the shelter for six months or more has only a $25 adoption fee, one-third the normal fee. Recently, we even had a donor sponsor the adoption fee for several of our long-term residents, so they now have no adoption fee at all. To learn more about the dogs in this program, call the Aiken SPCA at 648-6863. You can also check out our pet adoptions page for more information, or to fill out an adoption form.

On a Sunday morning some years back, I was driving down Dibble Road here in Aiken. Rounding a curve I saw a large brown animal lying in the road. I pulled my car over and approached realizing it was a large dog. My first thought was that he had been hit by a car and was either dead or gravely injured. Checking him over, I saw that he was awake and did not appear injured, although he would not lift his head. As I patted and stroked him, he watched me with a look I can only describe as resignation.

Trying everything I could think of to coax him to get into my car (including my daughter’s cookies), I was unsuccessful at getting him to sit up, let alone stand. Hoping, praying another car would come along to help me lift him into my car, I soon realized I was going to have to go it alone.

The brown dog had a large head, a very large head. A large head with what I assumed were large teeth. My mantra of “don’t bite me, please don’t bite me …” was ongoing as I hoisted him up into my arms. Believing such a large dog would weigh well over 80 pounds, I was shocked that I could lift him with relative ease. Handling him with as much care as I could his head ended up flopping onto my shoulder—right next to my face and neck.

“Please, please do not bite me!” I laid him onto an old blanket without incident and heard a quiet “thump, thump” of his tail.

Since I could not get him to the vet until Monday morning I brought him home. Assessing him closely it was easy to determine he was simply a living tragedy. Hairless on much of his back and tail, the open sores covering his body were the least of his problems. A thick brown leather collar was deeply embedded in his neck, with about a foot of worn rope attached. His large frame was simply skin covering bones. His nails were nothing but worn, cracked nubs and the pads of his feet were raw and worn.

Dr. John Hurd at Silverbluff Animal Hospital blessedly did not hesitate to work on this “tough case.” Through all the poking and prodding, the ugly, brown dog’s solemn brown eyes just watched and accepted.

At the end of the day the call came—the brown dog was severely malnourished, had advanced heart worm, was anemic, had various infections of the skin, teeth and eyes, and required surgery to remove the embedded collar. When asked “What do you want us to do?” I could only imagine the life this poor animal had suffered. “Save him if you can,” was my response.

Having two large dogs at home already I casually mentioned the ugly, sick, brown dog to my mom. Mom would take all the unwanted animals in the world if she could, so I figured she was my best bet. Mom made him her mission. “Tell your dad about the dog. Tell him he is ugly … really, really ugly.” (no lie there!)

After a long recovery that included two treatment courses for heartworm and lots of love and good food, the brown dog is not so ugly any more. He is big, healthy and strong, a proud protector, and happy family member. He is my dad’s constant companion.

“How lucky we are,” my dad said.

“I remember,” said the eyes of the brown dog.

Not many ugly brown dogs have a happy ending. Housed in solitude, tied to a tree or fence—that is just existing, not living. Animals we choose to bring into our lives are our responsibility. They require more than a strong rope to keep them tethered. If you know of a brown dog that went missing a few years ago, he won’t be coming back. My guess is he is pretty happy now.

If you want to experience the joy of adopting a dog or cat that will give you unconditional love, visit the Aiken SPCA or other animal rescue organizations in our area. You’ll save a life and make yours even better.

In the photo: My mom, dad, and Aaron, an ugly dog no more!

As we say goodbye to another year, I can’t help but look back at last month and how wonderful it was for animals in our community, both the ones temporarily in shelters and in loving families.

A couple of weeks ago, thanks to generous contributions from our supporters throughout the CSRA, we had two days where all adult animals had their adoption fees sponsored. The result was more than 40 pet adoptions in two days, including some dogs that had been overlooked so many times before.

Writing their names on the adoption board, posting their adoption photos on our Facebook page and giving them a final pet goodbye was an unbelievably positive experience for our dedicated staff and volunteers who participated there in person and cheered us on over the World Wide Web.

The adoptions were not only fun to see, but they allowed us to bring in another 40 animals that need homes, too. We brought in a variety of puppies, dogs and cats that were strays in the City of Aiken, and we were also happy that we could go next door and transfer in a total of 23 dogs and puppies from the Aiken County shelter.

Adoptions are rewarding and fun, but they are a small part of the animal welfare world. Knowing this, we were excited to apply for and receive a grant from the ASPCA to provide free rabies shots and other vaccinations for pets that otherwise may not have seen a veterinarian this year. We were awarded sufficient funding to vaccinate more than 450 animals just in time for Christmas.

We had a large number of staff members, volunteers and medical staff on hand not knowing how many people would participate right before the holiday. The turnout that morning was something that none of us who were there will ever forget. Cars were lined up well before the clinic began; some were there two hours ahead of time. We had to start early, as even with lining up cars three across our long parking lot, we couldn’t fit them all.

It took us less than two hours to care for all of these animals brought in by their very appreciative owners. The economy has been tough on a lot of these people who shared their heart-wrenching stories with all of us who were there to help. Some had lost their jobs and thought that there was no way their pets would get their shots this year. Many waited nearly an hour for the chance to make sure their pets would stay healthy another year.

The clinic was also a good opportunity to educate pet owners on a variety of topics, including the need to try and budget for annual veterinary visits in the future. We handed out educational information, surveyed each pet owner and distributed the contact information for every veterinarian in the CSRA and emphasized our clinic was no replacement for having a veterinarian for their pets for annual checkups and for if their pets get sick or injured in the future.

With lots of adoptions out of our shelter with our first ever Home Free for the Holidays promotion, lots of transfers back into the shelter, and our first-ever free vaccination clinic that helped more than 450 pets already living in the community, we wanted to make one final push on the prevention side of animal welfare, with a spay/neuter special like we’ve never done before.

Thanks to the generosity and commitment to the cause of just a handful of people, we were able to sign up 50 cats and 150 dogs for free spay or neuter surgery, including a rabies shot and a microchip. We put the word out to the public on Tuesday and by Friday, every single slot had been taken!

Many of these unaltered pets were living in homes with other unaltered pets, making them much more likely to bring into the world litters of puppies and kittens that we don’t have room for right now. We are so thankful for the support from the community in 2011 and wanted to pay it forward with a huge push at the end of the year, getting more pets out of shelters, helping animals already in homes, and preventing more unplanned ones in 2012.

As always, the Aiken SPCA thanks you for your continued support.