Pet Lovers Rejoice!

For residents of upstate New York, all dogs are worth keeping, even the mutts. The Buffalo News reports that the Erie County SPCA has just won a whopping $5 million grant to make all of the shelters in the county, both public and private, into "no kill" facilities within five years.

The SPCA will partner with Buffalo Humane, City of Buffalo Animal Shelter, HEART, Operation PETS: The Spay/Neuter Clinic of Western New York, Second Chance Sheltering Network and Ten Lives Club in completing the project.

The grant comes from Maddie’s Fund, a foundation focused on pet rescue that Dave and Cheryl Duffield founded in 1999 to memorialize their miniature schnauzer. The Fund's ambitious goal? Creating a “no-kill nation” that will safeguard all healthy dogs and cats living in shelters. The Fund has given nine other such "community collaborative" grants since it was established a decade ago.

The first part of the grant, around $700,000 to be dispensed Oct. 1, will fund not only the shelter project but also an effort to reduce the population of feral cats through sterilization. The project will spay or neuter around 17,000 cats by its completion.

Pet lovers can now rest easy knowing that one crusading organization is slowly chipping away at the euthanasia policies that make shelters into some animals' final home. Erie County now; next, the nation!