- November 19, 2024
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When some people see the rain, they think of plants growing and rainbows spreading across the sky. But at Second Chance Rescue, rain means one thing: mud.
The grassy, fenced-in area at the nonprofit no-kill animal shelter forms puddles in a heavy rain, and that means the animals — up to about 900 per year, according to founder Debi Root — don’t want to go out.
“So then we have more messes to clean up, and then they don’t get their exercise,” Root said. “Some just need to go run laps, and when they can’t, they have built-up energy, and then people don’t want to adopt them.”
Root launched an online fundraising effort a few months, with a goal of $75,000 to essentially rebuild the shelter. She wrote about how the shelter started, with her father and husband building it themselves. Then she vented her frustration about the difficulty of keeping the facility running:
“Now, it's been 7 years and my amazing rescue is falling down around me. I have no money to keep it up and even if I did, I have no help to get it done. My nice buildings are falling to pieces, they need repairs, they need roofing, they need electrical work, they need new duct work, they need new floors, they need paint.....Our well pump is almost shot, our pressure pump is hanging on by a thread, the water lines break almost weekly, we rarely have a washing machine that works more than a couple weeks, the kennels need sanded and painted, the outside kennels need replaced, we need new crates. My fences need replaced, they'll not hold the animals in much longer. The yard is a mess, we need truck loads of sand to stop the mud, we need backhoe work to stop the flooding, we need pest control, we need a new van to transport the animals to and from vet appointments and adoptions.”
Root said in a March 26 phone interview that she is confident she will be able to raise the money. The shelter has conducted successful online fundraisers in the past on a smaller scale, and so far, this one is showing that people in Flagler County really care about animals.
As of press time, $8,035 has been raised so far, which has allowed Root to pay to have the roof fixed. Excavators are currently working to grade the facility, she said, to fix the draining problems and provide a cleaner, safer environment for the animals to get their exercise.
“People are wonderful, and especially if you tell them where the money is going exactly,” she said. “If they see progress, they continue to donate, and that’s the goal is to keep showing them the progress.”
The next step is to fix the water pump. Visit www.everribbon.com/ribbon/view/16555 to make a donation.
BOX: A one-year hiatus
Second Chance Rescue will not accept animals for the next year, according to founder Debi Root.
In that time, she said she will focus on raising money to rebuild the shelter. Adoptions will continue as normal, every Saturday at PetSmart, though, and the shelter will continue to post notices about animals on its Facebook page, which has more than 7,000 fans.
“We’re not closing the rescue,” she said. “We’re still going to be working hard to get dogs in homes.”
Root was considering taking a year off from accepting animals anyway, but the decision was accelerated by the dog attack at the shelter earlier this month. She called the attack a “freak accident” that resulted in media camping at her door. Now, she said, she needs time to regroup.
“I need to breathe and get past this mess,” she said.
Considering the shelter accepts 800-900 animals per year, she said, “I understand that’s going to make it hard on our community. I get stray calls every day. I get people showing up to the gate every day, and there’s not a lot of options in this community, but I just don’t really know another way to do it.”
