A place for pets

Event to benefit group that combats animal homelessness

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By LAURA TUCKER

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Heaven Can Wait Sanctuary will host its sixth annual Lose a Pound with Your Hound Doggie Walk-a-thon at 9 a.m. Oct. 28 on the UNLV campus at the student union.

The event will feature obedience training, a look-alike contest, a best licker contest, a best costume competition, a paw reader and a canine relay race. The registration fee for the event is $25 and will go toward Heaven Can Wait's programs helping homeless cats and dogs in the community. All participants, with or without dogs, are permitted to attend.

"We think animals are the greatest things in the world," Heaven Can Wait co-founder Harold Vosko said of his organization.

The main goal of Heaven Can Wait is homeless animal population control.

Some 25,000 to 30,000 cats and dogs die every year -- not on the streets, but in a shelter, said Dr. David Henderson, a veterinarian at Sunrise Animal Clinic who provides his services to Heaven Can Wait and other local organizations.

"The leading cause of death of cats and dogs is euthanasia at an animal shelter," he said.

Henderson said more cats and dogs die every day on the streets.

"Adoptions really don't do any good. You can't adopt your way out of the problem. You need to stop the reproduction. That's how you stop the problem," Henderson said.

Henderson said adoption helps only a small portion of the population, but does not address the problem of homeless animals.

He explained that cats are prolific breeders, and overpopulation can be attributed to pet owners who fail to spay or neuter their pets. One female cat has an average of one litter per year, he said. One litter can consist of five to six kittens.

"If they all survive, you calculate that after 10 years, that's 1 million cats. It increases exponentially," he said.

Henderson said overpopulation is a fixable problem, but requires public awareness.

"We figured that 10 percent of the population (of pet owners) is causing 80 percent of the problem," he said.

The organization features three programs designed to combat the rising homeless pet population, Vosko said.

The first is the Feral Cat Clinic, designed to capture and spay or neuter the wild offspring of domestic pets, then release them back into their habitat. Vosko explained that feral cats are often too wild to be adopted.

"You don't see too many stray dogs. But cats, you can't catch them," Vosko said.

The feral cats also are vaccinated and marked, alerting people that they have been checked out.

Vosko said 100 to 150 cats per month are spayed or neutered through the Feral Cat Program, which is done in conjunction with For the Love of Cats and Kittens, Spay Our Strays, the Las Vegas Humane Society, and Friends of Feral Felines.

"We don't put animals down unless they are sick or aggressive," he said.

With Ground Zero, Vosko said volunteers from Heaven Can Wait go out to low-income areas of town and offer free spay and neutering to pets of residents who are unable to pay for the service.

Vosko said people often will pack up and leave a mobile home park and cannot bring their animals with them. Heaven Can Wait stops the animals from reproducing.

"We fix them before they become homeless," Vosko said.

The organization provides the service daily. Its target is to spay and neuter 100 animals per week. Last year, Heaven Can Wait spayed and neutered 5,221 animals, Vosko said.

"Our goal this year is 7,000," he said.

Heaven Can Wait also offers the means to adopt pets. The organization currently has 300 to 400 cats in foster homes and 50 dogs enrolled in its Pups on Parole program.

With Pups on Parole, Heaven Can Wait sends homeless dogs to the Southern Nevada Correctional Facilities for women. Each dog learns to regain trust in humans with obedience training. Vosko said it also helps the prisoners.

"They rehabilitate the dogs, and the dogs rehabilitate the prisoners," he said.

Vosko said he has seen many dogs who are shy around humans. But, by the end of the program, "They lick you to death," Vosko said.

After completion of the program, Vosko said the dogs are set up in a new home.

Dogs who have participated in Pets on Parole also can subsequently take part in Tales to Tails, a children's literacy program in which children who have difficulty reading -- whether because of shyness, stuttering problems, language barriers or just embarrassment of lacking in their reading abilities -- can read to one of the dogs cared for by Heaven Can Wait.

Vosko said the group also helps special needs children who may be unable to concentrate on reading to a person.

Vosko said Heaven Can Wait does not currently have an open facility, but said it hopes to have a grand opening of a no-cost spay and neuter clinic within the next six months.

Vosko said he is optimistic Heaven Can Wait will achieve its goal of controlling the animal population.

"We'll get that number down one day. I know we will," he said.

To register for Lose a Pound With Your Hound Doggie Walk-a-thon or to obtain more information on Heaven Can Wait's programs, visit www.hcws.org.