In late 2005, a group of shelter administrators and rescue group board members came together to form what is now known as the Animal Alliance of Western New York (AAWNY).  For the first couple years, meetings were held at the offices of Child and Family Services with a professional mediator.  Although the AAWNY now operates without mediation and as a strong coalition, we would not have survived without their help those first couple of years.  We lost some groups along the way as some groups dropped out, feeling their time was better spent elsewhere, and the progress we made too slow.  But many of us stayed, fought and persevered, knowing that together we would make a much bigger impact to animals in our community than we ever could separately.

Coming to understand each other was a difficult task as we fought about definitions, resources and experience.  There is nothing more passionate than animal welfare people, nor as unrelenting in their philosophies and beliefs.   We sat around a table each month for almost three years arguing and posturing (we once had a 45 minute discussion on the difference between “may” and “shall” in our bylaws), but then a funny thing happened - we slowly began to understand and respect each other more.  As we started seeing our differences in a new light, we started seeing our strengths as a group.

We are now in a position to make a major impact on companion animals in Erie County.  We now work together, cooperatively, succinctly and with great hope for the future.  Operation PETS, WNY’s first low cost spay neuter clinic has now been open for an entire year.  In the first year, over 5000 animals have been altered at that clinic.  Feral cat caregivers now have a chance to get their colony animals altered and vaccinated more easily and timely.  Area shelters now feel comfortable asking rescue groups to take animals that need more attention than they can get in a shelter environment.  Rescue groups now feel more comfortable asking shelters for help with holding animals or sharing resources.  More animals are saved and more animals are helped – and the differences that were so important three years ago, don’t seem so important anymore.

The people in our community have been companion animal’s biggest asset and their biggest supporters.  The Maddies Fund board of directors chose our community for their grant because of what our area had already accomplished in reducing euthanasia rates in our county.  Our community’s ability to make such progress on our own has brought us to a place where we could actually become the first no-kill county in the United States.  But we cannot do it alone – we need within the community to continue to come together and help us put an end to the useless killing of companion animals in Erie and surrounding counties. 

Our journey is not over, rather it is just beginning.  We have to work together even harder to get to our goal of becoming a no-kill community.  Operation PETS and the Maddies Pet Rescue Project Grant are just important tools to help us get there – our community needs to continue to change their attitudes toward companion animals.  We need our cat population to decrease dramatically over the next five years and we need our attitudes towards cats and dogs being disposable to stop.  But most importantly we need our community to step up and support the efforts by adopting their family animals from shelters and rescue groups, by making a firm commitment to spay/neuter all their companion animals, by supporting Trap/Neuter and Release as the most effective way to control the feral cat population and preserving our ecosystem.  But most importantly, the entire community needs to make a commitment to these precious lives and to take responsibility for the animals we have made a lifetime commitment to.

If twenty people sitting around a table for a couple of years can accomplish as much as the Animal Alliance of Western New York, imagine what the efforts of the remaining 900,000 people in Erie County can do.