Election Day is less than a week away! Find out where Dallas’ candidates stand on pet issues.

Election Day is less than a week away! Thirty-eight candidates will be vying for open seats on the Dallas City Council, so the Dallas Companion Animal Project sent questionnaires to all of them to find out where they stood on issues of concern to pet owners.

While national statewide elections get much more media coverage than local elections, it’s what happens every day here, in Dallas, that most effects you and your pets, and why the upcoming city council elections are so important. The roads you travel every day, the arts, the parks, and the entertainment, as well as the weeds, the trash, and the zoning – all the every day things that make up your life, and that includes pets, are greatly influenced by your local elected officials. And YOU have the power to decide who represents you on the Dallas City Council.

Do you want a bigger budget for animal services? More animal control officers? Programs to reduce the overwhelming number of lost and stray animals on our streets? Stronger pet protection ordinances? More progressive animal sheltering programs? All that and much more is influenced by the people you elect to represent you on a local level.  It’s up to each and every one of us to vote, and to be certain the representatives we elect understand that pets are part of the family; that animal issues are paramount to quality of life; and that issues that affect animals affect people, too.  So we’ve prepared a handy guide where you can read – in the candidates own words – their responses to the following questions:

• Question #1.  Do you own pets?  If so, what kind, how many and where did you get them?

• Question #2.  What are your views on spay/neuter programs?

• Question #3.  Do you feel that feral/community cats are a necessary focus for animal welfare in the city of Dallas?

• Question #4.  The City of Dallas has committed to the city shelter reaching live release rates of 90% of healthy, adoptable treatable animals through the Dallas Companion Animal Project.  Do you support this program?

• Question #5.  What issues pertaining to animals in Dallas are important to you?

• Question #6.  How do you feel about breed specific laws/ordinances?

• Question #7.  What are some of the ways you could see leveraging community partnerships with animal welfare resources to improve the conditions for citizens and animals in Dallas?

• Question #8.  Animal related calls, primarily via 311,  rank #3 in the top 10 service requests citywide. DAS is staffed at only 1 Animal Services Officer per 78,125 residents but is compared to DPD and other first responding agencies.  What are your thoughts on how service delivery could be improved?

• Question #9.  What sort of new or existing technology or resources do you see being utilized in enhancing service delivery and information on city services?

• Question #10.  Currently, Dallas Animal Services is getting ready to launch some offsite placement partnerships, while DAS has recently brought additional private funding to the city – base funding for these projects are essential – would you vote to support this funding?

See the results of the DCAP 2013 Candidates Survey!

Early voting is already underway, with Election Day set for Saturday, May 11th.  For more information on the voting process, visit the Dallas County Elections Website.  For information on early voting, polling locations, and where the candidates stand on other issues, visit the League of Women Voters of Dallas Website.   Don’t know what City Council District you live in or who represents you?  Find out HERE.

Please note: The Dallas Companion Animal Project is not endorsing any one political candidate over another. We are relaying the information provided by the candidates themselves.  The exact survey was sent to each candidate at the same time with the same deadlines.  The responses shown were transcribed directly from those responses.

Pet food donations needed to help low-income pet owners struggling to keep their pets

Pet Owner Outreach is an important component of the Dallas Companion Animal Project’s plan to make Dallas a No Kill Community. Helping pet owners with limited financial means find and utilize available resources to better care for their pets means keeping those pets in loving homes and out of shelters and rescues. Here’s what we are doing, how, and what you can do to help.

What DCAP Is Doing:

Keeping pets in loving homes and out of shelters and rescues is an integral part of the DCAP plan. To that end, DCAP supplied over 40,000 lbs. of pet food to low income food banks, the homeless, and local rescue groups between August of 2012 and March of 2013.  We have worked with Crossroads Community Center in downtown Dallas, Angie Manrigurez, Duck Team 6 and others, and secured donations from Bark to Basics, Pet Supplies Plus, Dallas Animal Services, Elliotts Hardware, and caring individuals who were able to purchase pet food at wholesale cost for the project thanks to Eloy at The Green Pet.

DCAP chose to work closely on this program with Crossroads Community Center because it is an established and very well organized Outreach Center. Crossroads is a joint venture between the downtown First United Methodist and the Presbyterian Churches (the Stewpot) and provides low income families with food, clothing, career counseling and other amenities. In addition to simply providing pet food for Crossroads’ clients, DCAP volunteers developed a survey (in both English and Spanish) to find out how many pets those clients owned, if they are spayed or neutered, and if they are registered in the City of Dallas. So far we have received completed questionnaires from over 250 Crossroads recipients, showing over 80% of Crossroads Clients have pets that are not spayed or neutered, although they would all like to get that done for their pet. Spay/neuter resources are plentiful here in Dallas, but we think finding transportation to get those pets to spay/neuter clinics could be a challenge. We are also facing challenges getting in touch with those folks who wish to spay/neuter their pets to set up appointments because of the language barrier.

Volunteers Needed:

If you are bi-lingual (English/Spanish) and would like to volunteer to make calls and help set up spay/neuter appointments from your home evenings and weekends, DCAP could use your help. Contact us at dallascompanionanimalproject@gmail.com. We are also looking for help creating simple, informative stickers to place on the bags of food being handed out to make it as easy as possible for the pet owners to make their own surgery appointments, and simple, one-page handouts (in English and Spanish) for Crossroads 40+ satellite locations. If you have experience in simple desktop publishing and can help out, or know a printer who might donate printing, please get in touch with us.

More Pet Food Needed:

According to the latest figures from Crossroads, 300 lbs. of pet food lasts approximately two weeks when distributed at a rate of one bag per household. If the food is distributed on a per “pet” basis, so that families with multiple pets get more than just a single gallon bag of food each month, DCAP will need to significantly increase the amount of food being supplied, and today we received word that Crossroads has run out of pet food altogether. Now, not only do we need to restock the cupboards for the main Crossroads location, we also need to begin providing food and services to the 40 smaller Crossroad satellite locations. Those locations are key to reaching out to even more low income residents with not just food, but spay-neuter coupons, low-cost vaccination clinics, and other resources to help them keep and care for their pets.

It’s easy to donate pet food to the Crossroads Project:

• You can drop off unopened bags of dog and cat food at Petropolitan Dallas, 408 S. Harwood, Downtown.
• Or you can double your donation by calling Petropolitan at (214) 741-4100 to purchase FreeHand Dog Food to be donated to DCAP. For every bag of FreeHand purchased for DCAP Community Crossroads Project, FreeHand will donate a second bag to the project – pound for pound, scoop for scoop, meal for meal!);
• Or make an online credit card donation at http://www.prestodonate.com/cgi-bin/order.pl?ref=DAnimal123&fm=1 and choose DCAP Community Crossroads Project and the our Crossroads program coordinators will purchase whatever food they need most for the project.

Please share this information with your family and friends and let’s get the whole community involved in helping low-income families keep the pets they love!  Thank you!

 

Arlen D. “Spider” Bynum Memorial Donations

Our condolences to the family of Arlen D. “Spider” Bynum, who passed away earlier this week.  If you’d like to make an online donation to the Dallas Companion Animal Project in his honor, just follow the link below and choose “Dallas Companion Animal Project” from the list of options.  Please email dallascompanionanimalproject@gmail.com to let us know the donation is in memory of Spider.  Donate online at:

http://www.prestodonate.com/cgi-bin/order.pl?ref=DAnimal123&fm=1

You may also mail a donation to Dallas Companion Animal Project, P.O. Box 794073, Dallas, Texas 75379.  Please add a note in the memo on your check that the donation is in memory of Spider so we can add your name to the acknowledgements for the family.  Thank you.