By Loren Honea
PAL Humane Society saves animals from shelters and places them into loving homes.
College of Southern Nevada students recently volunteered at PAL. Through CSN Serves, a service-learning component of Student Life and Leadership Development, students dedicated time on March 25 to help.
“Volunteering is extremely important because we are affected by our community,” said Megan Blas, volunteer coordinator for CSN Serves. “Each month CSN Serves does a day of service. We knew that the PAL Humane Society had just moved to Las Vegas and that they needed the most help whether it was moving boxes, making shelves or even painting.”
Godliness Oyekale, a CSN student who volunteered, felt good that he was able to help the PAL. He plans on doing more volunteer efforts in the future to make the community better and to give back.
PAL is a non-profit organization that works with the community to assist low-income seniors, veterans and families find pets while at the same time saving animals from cruelty or death.
“For years I saw dead animals on the street and animals running the street,” said Katherine Schlintz, president of PAL. “[Shelters] were still gassing animals at the time and I really wanted to do something.”
According to 2016 ASPCA statistics, an estimated 7.6 million companion animals enter animal shelters nationwide each year. Of those approximately 3.9 million are dogs and 3.4 million are cats. Approximately 2.7 million are euthanized.
She was moved to find a solution.
PAL helps animals and people in many ways. Firstly, Schlintz and her team find dogs and cats for people who need and want them. They search local shelters and pounds, thus saving hundreds from uncertain fates, and transport them to their new homes. Secondly, PAL has a training company that works with the dogs to teach them skills to help their new owners. For example a German Shepherd can learn to open doors for a person in a wheelchair. Lastly, PAL provides pet food and support each month for these owners.
PAL operates a pet-food pantry. It partners with companies such as Sam’s Club and Bogart’s Bone Appetit to supply food to 235 pets each month. This elevates some of the high costs connected with pet ownership.
PAL also provides animal spaying and neutering for the general public.
Schlintz says she got a warm and fuzzy feeling the first time she received a thank-you card from someone her organization helped. “We would also get in the mail with those thank-you letters a dollar,” she said. “That dollar to that person is probably like a hundred dollars to someone else and for those people to send in that dollar almost meant more to me than the card did.” People selflessly just wanted to reach out and say thank you.
In the near future PAL will become an affiliate of an organization called Rescue Bank. The Rescue Bank will bring in food each month to help provide groups that rescue animals with the food needed to maintain the health of those animals. Starting April 1 a spay-and-neuter voucher program will also become available involving Heaven Can Wait Animal Society, The Animal Foundation and Centennial Hills Animal Hospital.
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