Gearing up for Giving Tuesday!
This year, we’re putting our giving-season focus where the need is especially urgent: feral/stray community cats, and large-breed dogs.
These animals face very different challenges, but they share something important: they are among the hardest animals to find affordable care, placement, and lifesaving support for and when resources run out, they can be at greater risk of euthanasia. Humboldt County does not have consistent municipal funding for spay/neuter, leaving nonprofits like HSNN to carry much of the responsibility for addressing this need.
Click to learn more about each fund!
Your support of the Feral Fund and Big Fix isn't simply funding a surgery. It is creating an opportunity for an animal who might otherwise be overlooked, surrendered, abandoned, or euthanized to have a different outcome.
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This giving season, we’re asking our community to help us reach the animals who need us most and make sure “too many,” “too expensive,” or “too difficult” never becomes a reason an animal doesn't get a chance.
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This year we are hoping to double what we made last year. Raising $8,000 and this year will be splitting it between two extremely important community programs.
The Feral Fund
Since 2014 we have fixed 14,200 feral/unhoused community cats. We offer a special package just for feral cats that include several other treatments for their health and thanks to generous donations to this fund we have been able to offer this package at a sliding scale rate.
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Our Feral fund helps us support our community of caring citizens and dedicated volunteers who work to help the voiceless cats of our community seek and receive care through our Feral Cat TNR (trap neuter return) program. We run the largest and longest running TNR program in the county serving over 1,200 feral cats a year from all corners of our county and neighboring counties including Lake, Mendocino, Trinity and Del Norte. Contributions made to our feral fund help us bridge the gap of restricted grant funding and help us serve cat populations outside Humboldt, allowing us to continue to offer our feral package at a sliding scale. This sliding scale format has helped empower the community to take part in caring for our community cats, helping create a more humane/and healthy environment for us all to share.
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TNR Programs and our Feral fund bring to light that community cats are not an issue affecting individual cats (although helping individual cats is the action and why we are here), but a population-level community problem, one that requires population-level solutions.
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When someone donates to spay one community cat, they aren't simply helping that cat avoid another litter. They are helping prevent future kittens, future shelter intakes, future suffering and future demands on an already stretched animal-welfare system.
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In Humboldt County, that argument becomes even stronger because, as there is no broad municipal spay/neuter funding supporting these services countywide. That leaves nonprofit organizations like HSNN carrying much of the responsibility for addressing the population before it becomes a larger crisis.
Every unaltered female represents another generation of kittens. Every spay prevents future litters, and every neuter prevents another male from contributing to the growth of the population.
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Free-roaming cats don't exist in isolation. Every unaltered cat can contribute to another generation of kittens and those kittens can become the next generation of shelter intakes, abandoned litters, sick and injured animals, and cats struggling to survive outdoors.
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Research has shown that sustained TNR programs can dramatically reduce free-roaming cat populations. In one long-term study, a community-cat population declined 55%. In another, it declined 85%. A San Francisco Bay Area study found a 99.4% decline over 16 years.
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TNR also helps prevent cats from ever entering the shelter system. One study found a 66% reduction in shelter intake in an area receiving intensive TNR, while another study across six communities found a median 83% reduction in feline euthanasia.
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The Big Fix Project
We fix over 620 dogs each year, with around 70% being considered a large breed dog including Pit Bull Terriers, Malinois Shepherds, Labradors, and Huskies.
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Our Big fix program is a direct response to a need we see in the community. While in-house and other local voucher programs exist, funding is often expended early each year. This new program aims to address the largest barrier to care people face for their big dogs, cost. Larger animals means increased medications, longer more involved handling times before, during and after surgery. Our Big Fix Program will set aside certain clinic days to fix at-risk large breed dogs at no cost or extremely reduced cost to the owner. This program will benefit dogs in our community, whose owners struggle with housing, limited/no income and/or dogs with a history of repeat litters and roaming behaviors. This will help us access the most vulnerable dogs in our community, allowing owners to keep their dogs healthy and in their homes and reducing intake and abandonment rates at our local Shelters.
With a couple generous donations we have already had the privilege of fixing for large dogs through this program. Your donations will strengthen and expand this program.
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When large dogs enter the shelter system, they face disproportionate barriers to getting back out, and an unaltered large dog can create significant reproductive, roaming, behavioral, and public-safety challenges.
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A 2024 study examining more than 1 million shelter intake records from 21 U.S. shelters found that large dogs had significantly lower odds of a live outcome than small dogs (PubMed Central).
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Size itself can become a shelter disadvantage. A 70- or 90-pound dog simply requires a different kind of placement, housing, transportation, adoption and handling than a 15-pound dog.
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Large dogs stay in shelters longer and face greater barriers to adoption. Pit bull-type dogs are particularly vulnerable: in one study of 21 U.S. shelters, they were euthanized or otherwise had a non-live outcome at more than twice the rate of other dogs, 13% compared with 5% (PubMed Central)
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Preventing unwanted litters is one of the most powerful ways we can change that outcome before a dog ever reaches a shelter. Sterilization prevents reproduction and can reduce hormone-driven behaviors such as roaming, marking and, in some dogs, fighting (American Veterinary Medical Association)
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