Homeless pets a step closer to real shelter

Joan Callender was living on Lake Minnetonka with two champion show dogs when, one day, along came Buddy, a foster placement dog.

"He just looked at these two show dogs," she said, "as if to say, 'Ladies, I'm here.'"

His temporary status soon became permanent and he moved in for good to her home in Shorewood. Or, as she puts it, "I 'flunked' at being a foster home."

And that, for decades, has been how Scott, Carver and western Hennepin counties have handled the hundreds of animals turned over each year to the Carver-Scott Humane Society -- in Callender's words, "abused, neglected and God knows what."

More often than one might imagine, the animals wind up in the homes of animal lovers in affluent communities around Lake Minnetonka.

"Our 'cat coordinator' is, herself, the biggest cat foster home, with a whole floor of her house just for cats," said Callender, a member of the organization's board.

"She lives on a hobby farm in Minnetrista. Only a handful of us live in either Scott or Carver County. Most of us are in western Hennepin."

"Beautiful dogs and very fulfilling to us," Jeff Fox said, "but over the next three years, we had to put both of them down because of age. In the meantime, while we had them, we brought in foster dogs, one or two at a time. We have fostered probably close to 10 dogs over the past three years, and ended up adopting a couple of them."

The creation of the area's first permanent shelter -- if that proposal is approved, and if money can be found for a building -- won't change that network of volunteers, who will still take animals in.

"Not every animal does well in a shelter setting," said Terri Fox, who helps evaluate would-be adoptive families for the organization. "If a dog has been in a puppy mill, for instance, without lot of human contact, we would want them to be in someone's home."

The group is issuing a plea to residents of Scott and Carver counties both for contributions for the proposed shelter, and for foster and adoptive families.

"This is a little grass-roots group that started because there was a need to save animals," Callender said. "With the population explosion in the southwest metro, so also has there been a pet explosion."

For purposes of comparison, the Minnesota Valley animal shelter, serving Dakota County from Burnsville, has room for about 80 cats, 45 dogs and a certain number of "smaller critters" such as rabbits, a spokeswoman said.

The capacity of any new Carver/Scott facility would be matter for negotiation between the society and the county, given the size of the building proposed, according to a draft of new zoning rules prepared for consideration by the county's planning commission.

The group wants to build a 12,000-square-foot facility with room for future expansion, according to a letter it submitted to the county. One to three people would work there, in contrast to the all-volunteer set-up at present, in which callers need to leave messages and wait to have calls returned.

Lisa Schickedanz, the associate county planner responsible for overseeing the project as it works its way through the approval process, said she knows of no big obstacles to approval.

"It would require a permit later on in the process," she said, "and that would bring neighboring property owners into the process. But Jackson Township is OK with it, and I haven't heard of any other opposition."