Southeast Animal Alliance conference

I really enjoyed attending this conference today. My FIRST animal welfare conference! It was sort of a last minute decision to attend. Reminded me how much I enjoyed attending professional conferences. The overarching theme was improving quality of life for sheltered animals and recent developments in shelter medicine. Hosted by the Atlanta Humane Society, it was great introduction for me into the professional animal welfare world.

The day began discussing best practices of providing veterinary care in a shelter environment. I was surprised to learn that shelter medicine is a relatively new discipline - only becoming a vet school specialty in 2014. This was the first I'd heard of "The 5 Freedoms". I'd even had a job in a microbiology lab that worked with research animals, and there was always plenty of emphasis on providing enrichment and allowing the lab animals to exhibit natural behaviors, but it was never articulated in this way (that I recall). These concepts were first developed within food animal industry in the 1960s. SO perfectly summed up! 

Before lunch, I chose to attend the session on data collection in the shelter system. Due to my former life as a research scientist, I know that the data is where the magic happens! I am so surprised at how haphazard data is collected, and frankly, how poorly data is managed within the shelter system. Understandably, the first priority is the care of the animals, and I can see how taking the time to input information could fall by the wayside. I was grateful to learn that the "industry" realizes that collecting data is important, however it's certainly not prioritized. If it were, shelter and rescue budgets would include line items for a data manager, or at the very least, allocating some funding for staff to take on data entry and analysis. I see a niche I could fill here...career 2.0? Perhaps.

After a yummy lunch (gotta love conference food-seriously!), I chose to join the session on The Million Cat Challenge. So inspiring! They achieved their 1 million mark a full year ahead of when they predicted! I've mentioned before that community/feral cats were the inspiration for the idea of starting a non-profit, and the Million Cat Challenge's alternatives to intake and return to field programs really embrace keeping community/feral cats out of the sheltering system. I also took to heart their important findings on how providing extra square footage for housing within the shelter environment contributes significantly to reducing upper respiratory infections! That's something I can translate to how I transport cats too!

I closed out the day going to the session on fundraising. If I'm going to be starting a non-profit, I'll need to become "fluent" in fundraising. Not my forte, I'll admit. I mean, one main reason (among many) I "poo-pooed" pursuing a PhD was the onus on one to seek out funding to support one's research. Ugh. However! This speaker was an inspiration! Certainly made the thought of fundraising and pursuing grants much less daunting. Doable even. I left the conference with a lot to ponder about how to fund my ideas! My mind was whirling the whole drive home!