{"id":5405,"date":"2020-01-04T22:27:41","date_gmt":"2020-01-05T03:27:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=5405"},"modified":"2020-01-04T22:28:02","modified_gmt":"2020-01-05T03:28:02","slug":"polk-co-saves-1500-animals-following-no-1-rank-in-the-state-for-euthanasia-in-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2020\/01\/04\/polk-co-saves-1500-animals-following-no-1-rank-in-the-state-for-euthanasia-in-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Polk Co. saves 1,500 animals following No.1 rank in the state for euthanasia in 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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 New efforts to save animals\u2019 lives in Polk County lead to improvements in 2019, but more work is still left to be done in the new year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polk County has Florida\u2019s highest animal kill rate<\/a> and ranks in the top 10 across the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SPCA Florida, a no-kill shelter, made it its mission in 2019 to change that ranking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to executive director Shelley Thayer, 1,500 more animals were saved and the county improved its kill rating by seven points through the month of November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That means more animals were saved than were killed. Thayer is waiting on numbers from December to be able to fully analyze the progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, she said, that doesn\u2019t change Polk County\u2019s ranking as the top county for euthanizing animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll still be in that position with that target on our back but in 2020 everything that we\u2019re learned from 2019 is going to be applied,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through a collaborative effort between SPCA Florida, the Humane Society, Polk County Animal Control, Lakeland Fire Department, Lakeland Police Department and local veterinarians, a focus was placed on saving animals, rather than euthanizing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of a new initiative, SPCA Florida transported 300 kittens, which are the most vulnerable, to northern states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSpring and fall, when they\u2019re not producing in the north or they didn\u2019t make it through the harsh winters, we\u2019re now transporting with our vehicles up to those states, like Maine and Vermont, Chicago, Minneapolis,\u201d explained Thayer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The coalition also worked to spay and neuter more animals and find foster homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can predict, we\u2019re going to hit some milestones this year. We\u2019re really going change our numbers here in Polk County, moving towards that no kill equation in 5 years,\u201d said Thayer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first transport of kittens is set for next week. A team will be taking some kittens to Maine, possibly using a private plane rather than the SPCA vehicle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 New efforts to save animals\u2019 lives in Polk County lead to improvements in 2019, but more work is still left to be done in the new year. Polk County has… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"6","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}