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Sandy, a Yorkshire terrier

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Junebug, an abandoned cat

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Junebug, above, an abandoned cat, and Sandy, a Yorkshire terrier, are two of the animals the Dakin Pioneer Valley Humane Society has taken in in recent weeks.

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Sandy, a Yorkshire terrier

LEVERETT - A 12-year-old cat with a fractured leg was found abandoned near the Greenfield Rescue and Rehabilitation Center June 9. She was also suffering from a mild heart murmur and heat stroke.

Many shelters would regard her as unadoptable and her medical care as too expensive.

But the Dakin Pioneer Valley Humane Society, which runs the center, named the cat Junebug, took her to a vet and located a foster home.

An increase in the number of dogs and cats dropped off at the society's doors may be because of tightening household budgets, said Leslie Harris, Dakin's executive director.

And the situation is mirrored nationwide, where animal shelters across the country are seeing more people giving up their pets or seeking financial help to keep them, said Stephanie Shain of the Humane Society of the United States.

The day after Junebug turned up, a Yorkshire terrier was found abandoned in a box at the door of Dakin's adoption center in Leverett. The dog, which the staff named Sandy, had a skin disease or burn from chemicals, perhaps from abuse, and required medical care that will cost $200 to $500, said Harris. Sandy is also in a foster home.

Way over budget

Harris said she usually budgets $20,000 a year for "extraordinary care" for cats and dogs, basically anything beyond vaccinations, sterilization and treatment for fleas and other parasites. Even before Junebug and Sandy, the center had spent $15,000 so far this year on more serious health problems.

"It's our obligation, and it's what people expect of us," said Harris. "It's what makes us different from other shelters. We've always gone the extra mile for animals, from orthopedic surgery to full-mouth tooth extraction."

The decision about whether to euthanize an animal is a close call, however, as the center has a limited number of cages for animals eligible for adoption. The center takes in about 250 dogs and 1,500 cats a year and euthanizes only 2 to 4 percent of them, all because of behavioral or health problems, Harris said.

Similarly, some people are deciding to euthanize their pets because they can't afford medical treatment, said Candy Lash of the Western Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Springfield.

"People are up against it financially, with food and gas and foreclosure problems bearing down on them as well as escalating costs of caring for pets," she said. "They don't have the wherewithal to do that and pets are being surrendered."

Many shelters are facing the financial pinch as well, as demand increases and donations become scarcer, said Shain of the Humane Society.

"They want to do whatever they can to help these animals, but shelters are finding they are looking at potential financial hard times ahead," she said.

Dog ownership tends to rise and fall with the state of the economy while cat ownership remains steady, and people don't spend as much on vets during tough times, she said.

Harris said that people who are determined to keep their pets are asking for reductions in the $50 co-payment for spaying and neutering.

"If we don't help this person, she's not going to get this done, and we'll be in a vicious cycle and see more animals later," Harris said.

Helping amid the hurt

Petfinder.com, a compendium of adoptable pets consisting of more than 11,000 shelters and rescue groups, recently completed a survey to measure how foreclosures affect pets and their owners, according to The Associated Press. Among 1,055 responses, half of its members had pets relinquished to them in the last six months because of a home foreclosure.

As a testament to the growing problem, some parts of the country are putting teeth into local laws to reduce the number of abandoned animals. For instance, an Orange County, Calif., grand jury recently urged officials to fully enforce mandatory spay and neuter laws to cut the number of abandoned animals euthanized at shelters.

Other measures aim to be kinder and gentler, as with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals opening a pet food bank in Monterey County, Calif., for owners who are thinking of giving up their pets because they can no longer afford to feed them, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

Also, the Humane Society of the United States earlier this month announced the first round of grants of up to $2,000 to assist local shelters and rescue organizations during the country's current foreclosure and financial crisis.

Locally, the Dakin Humane Society operates a pet food bank in Greenfield and delivers surplus food to the Amherst Survival Center, Harris said. Last March, the staff began a program of providing food for people's pets to the Amherst Senior Center's Meals on Wheels program for shut-ins, she said.

Harris often receives donations much later from people who said that they were grateful to have received this assistance when they were experiencing financial distress.

Extraordinary measures

Even though times are tough, the Dakin Pioneer Valley Humane Society does everything it can to help and heal animals that pass through its doors.

"This organization goes the extra miles that many organizations wouldn't," said Pat Yurkunas, the director of development. "We make it a priority to see that these animals get a chance."

Houdini, a lethargic 11-year-old cat with hypothyroidism, had been tossed into a yard full of German shepherds, Harris said. The Dakin staff found a single donor to pay for his recent $1,000 radiation treatment for its thyroid problem in Wakefield, and Houdini went to a new adoptive home this week.

"If you tell people that 1,800 animals come through, it can be hard to grasp," Harris said. "But people respond to one animal in need. If you can make a difference for one animal at a time, it's more gratifying."

A 1-year-old Australian sheepdog named Arian Lyn had no symptoms when he came to the area from a shelter in North Carolina. But he started to limp and an X-ray showed hip deterioration, possibly from an old injury. Arian Lyn needed hip surgery that cost $1,300; he arrived back Tuesday and is available for adoption.

Dakin gets discounts from vets of 10 to 30 percent, but these bills still add up. And if it exceeds the budget for "extraordinary care," that money has to come out of some other area of operations, Harris said.

Increasingly, Dakin is providing a "safety net for older dogs," she said.

There are fewer homeless dogs needing a shelter, and those who do arrive at its doors are older and typically have more physical and mental health problems, she said. Kittens are more likely than before to arrive with infections and needing vaccinations, she said.

"We've been so successful as a community in relieving animal homelessness that those that are still left are in much more dire need," she said.

Looking to consolidate

The Dakin shelter in Leverett merged with the Greenfield Animal Shelter in 2006, and now all the sick and new, incoming cats and dogs go to Greenfield, and the Leverett facility is for adoption. The organization has been looking for a piece of land on which to build a new consolidated center, and there are currently some good prospects, Harris said.

The Leverett center is small, loud and not well ventilated, and the organization would like a space that is "more humane and homelike, a place where people come to learn more about animals," she said.

The center likes to receive animals by appointment, to learn about their medical conditions, especially diseases that could be contagious. But when animals are dropped off in the middle of the night, the center still cares for them.

"The community wants us to help animals like that," Harris said.

Nick Grabbe can be reached at ngrabbe@gazettenet.com.