One volunteer takes a look at what motivates her and others to rescue abandoned pets while examining the causes of pet overpopulation and abandonment. Her research includes interviews with animal welfare professionals and fellow rescuers, including author-songwriter-politician, Kinky Friedman. Finally, she questions whether the 50 dogs she has fostered in her home over 18 months is really helping the problem at all.

Sponsored by SWAMP
Saturday, April 8th
3 p.m.
$5 at the door (All proceeds benefit SNAP)
Rice Cinema, corner of University Blvd. and Stockton Street (this is a new location, as of April 7th)

You can find more information, as well as the director's statement, here.

This is an EXCELLENT film. I saw it when they showed it at Rice last fall. After I saw it, I sent Stacy Schoolfield more accurate euthansia statistics for the Houston area. The number quoted on the website is the euthansia number from BARC alone which is extremely low. For the year 2004, the euthansia rate for the Houston area is around 80,000 animals. This data was gathered from the numbers received for all the major shelters (HSPCA, Houston Humane, CAP, BARC, and Harris County Animal Control). Animal shelters are reluctant to give out their euthansia numbers because a high number is negative press which translates to reduced donations. States like Michigan (http://www.michigan.gov/documents/MDA_2003_Shelter_Survey_Results_114511_7.pdf) and Virginia (http://www.virginia.gov/vdacs_ar/cgi-bin/Vdacs_search.cgi), require that all animal shelters report their euthansia numbers in a standard way. Thus, the playing feild is level and no organization can 'spin' its way out of a high euthansia rate. We need to be honest in addressing this problem.