THE BATTLEFORDS — The Battlefords Humane Society is looking for the community to step up to help them get their new facility up and running.
Michelle Spark, executive director, says barring any construction delays the crew hopes to hand the keys to the grooming and boarding part of the new building by Dec. 2 of this year.
“That would give us the opportunity to be up and running before Christmas,” said Spark recently. “That's a really nice Christmas present.”
It’s exciting to see the boarding and grooming facility, the first phase of the new facility, taking shape, said Spark. With no complications, the society hopes construction will start on the next phase, the actual shelter, in the spring. The new building is located just north of the city, in the RM of North Battleford.
“We really need our community support right now,” said Spark. “We need people to donate, we need people to step up and say, hey, I want to buy a foundation level, I want to buy naming rights to a part of the building, or sponsor a cat cage or dog kennel.”
While support is still needed from the community, the society has decided to finish the grooming and boarding part of the facility first as it will be an ongoing way to raise funds for the rest of the project, the shelter, and once that is built, it will raise money to help operate the shelter.
“Any profits that come from the boarding and grooming facility, all revenue from that, will go to the shelter building fund and towards helping the operations at the existing shelter so that we can continue to operate here until the new building is built,” said Spark.
She said it will be great to have a brand new, bigger building, but with that comes a bigger budget, bigger expenses, more staff.
“We need the boarding and grooming to do well because all the profits will go right back into the humane society, which is which is what this is all about right,” said Spark. “We didn't build a boarding and training facility [just to] have a new business, because, really, who wants to run two businesses, we didn't do it for fun.”
But, she said, they recognize it is something the community does need, and it's all about the humane society and making sure that it can be successful. The more successful the boarding and grooming facility is the more successful the humane society will be.
Progress of the project can be followed on Facebook, particularly their Shelter Us Campaign page where photos taken by the construction crew are shared.
“They've been fantastic and giving us weekly updates and they send us photos and tell us what they've done and what's planned for the following week,” said Spark.
