Message from the Board of Directors
Many of you have been to our shelter; most of you have some familiarity with our organization; and a few of you are new to us and what we do. But for all of you, we'd like to go into a little detail about what sets us apart. Taken individually, these characteristics are not all unique; taken together we believe they do make us unique.
Animal Friends is mostly a shelter, where we take in rescued and homeless animals, nurse them to health, provide medical attention, love them and place them in good and loving homes. However, we must also function partly as a sanctuary, for we take in difficult to place animals, older animals, feral animals, and FIV and Feline Leukemia positive cats.
We are very proud of our success with domesticating feral cats. We have some volunteers who do only that. Many of these cats become "adoptable". However, a few seem to prefer their status of staying out of people's way on a high shelf. Here they are safe, altered, well fed and encouraged.
One of our favorite stories is about a dog named Bosky who came to us heartworm positive after being rescued from an abusive situation. He was likely to bite, especially at a raised or pointing arm. However, the other side of this blond Akita mix was a surprising sweetness. We were advised by several "experts" to euthanize him. Unwilling to take this advice, we started looking in the yellow pages. The right person answered the phone at a local dog training school. They kept Bosky for a month, at no charge. He came "home" controllable and lived a happy life until he died of natural causes with his sweet side dominant every day.
Like most shelters we exist on donations. Unlike most shelters, we do not have a large budget and do not spend much of it on personnel, but for animal care. We are very proud of our staff.
Not having a highly paid executive director, our volunteer board of directors functions in this capacity. We do hope to grow, to get to know more of you, to have a larger budget, more volunteers and maybe even a larger staff and facility at some point. But our focus will always be animals who need us, and we will always spend most of whatever money and time we have making a better life for them. | 
