We Have To Close The Floodgates, Please!
AnimalCare 
Jul 22, 2013 
AnimalCare, NGOs 
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As you all know, we have policies, and one of these policies is that we subsidise only hospitalisation and not boarding. There is a difference between the two. Hospitalisation is when the animal needs to be boarded because it needs a certain treatment or procedure that only a vet can administer (for example, being on IV-drip or close monitoring due to a life-threatening condition). Boarding is when the animal can be discharged but the rescuer wants to board this animal for her own reasons.
Our reasons for not subsidsing boarding:
AnimalCare does not subsidise boarding for neutering unless complications arise. For medical cases, we do not subsidise boarding if the animal’s injury or illness does not warrant hospitalization.
The cost of hospitalisation for surgery cases is subsidised but ONLY for the duration as per required, as determined by the vet. Extra boarding is not encouraged.
REASON 1: So that your animal will not be exposed to diseases, if any, in the clinic environment.
REASON 2: Your animal, once declared fit to be discharged, is better off being fostered by you at home. Many clinics do not have 24 hours monitoring.
REASON 3: The boarding space at the clinic is meant for sick animals. We should be considerate and not deprive a sick animal of the needed hospitalization.
If you are not able to foster the animal yourself, please make the necessary arrangements with a fosterer.
However, recently we made some exceptions:
(1) Ah Fatt’s case where he rescued a mother-dog and her puppies and another heavily pregnant mother-dog (about to deliver). He had to take them off the streets as these dogs had escaped capture twice. Ah Fatt needed a place to board these dogs, so he appealed to us to help him raise funds for boarding. We did. We did not use our Medical Fund, but we put out an appeal for it and our readers contributed.
(2) Norely Abd Rahman’s case where she offered to help the Lebuh Ampang cats in getting them neutered. Norely’s initial request was that she would pay for the neutering at Klinik Kembiri and she only needed 2 days’ boarding charges from us (RM30 per cat). Since Norely was going to pay for the neutering charges, we agreed to raise extra funds for the boarding. Later, Norely asked if it was possible to raise funds for 5 days’ boarding, we said we could not. And when the forms finally came in, Norely decided to claim for the neutering charges as well. We kept our word and paid for both the neutering charges as well as the 2 days’ boarding for the first 2 cats (the boarding charges were contributed by a reader, not taken from our Medical Fund). Norely has now informed us that it is very difficult to catch the rest of the cats and we have also informed her that we can no longer raise funds for the boarding now.
(3) Lester Hiew and his mother, Jenny Khong’s cases. Lester and Jenny, on their own, pay an extra RM198 for boarding for each spaying case to ensure that the female dogs recover completely before releasing them back to the colony. Now, we did not appeal for Lester and Jenny. A reader, Mr Kok, wanted to support their work and channeled funds through us for this purpose. We don’t say no when our readers want to offer extra help to any rescuer.
Because of these recent exceptions, a few other applicants are requesting the same favours now, ie. that we pay for boarding or we raise extra funds for them. One even accused us of practising double standards.
We realised that we have opened the floodgates now and we need to close them or else, we will run out of funds in no time.
Just imagine, we subsidised 14 cases today. If everyone asked for boarding fee, AnimalCare will close shop by the end of the month!
I suppose it is hard for others to see what we see, that Ah Fatt’s case was a desperate and very urgent case or that Lester and Jenny feed so many dogs on so many roads as well as at the industrial sites and they go out every day at midnight to look after these dogs. I definitely cannot compare myself with Ah Fatt or Lester and Jenny. What I do is nothing compared to what they do. But I suppose some applicants do not see this. They feel that what they do is worthy of the same “privileges”. We certainly do not doubt the “worthiness” of their work at all. So, that is why we need to close the floodgates that we have opened due to our own lack of foresight. We need to be fair to everyone now.
So, we are really sorry, but we cannot raise extra funds for anyone anymore.
However, if our readers want to support any of our applicants and offer to contribute extra for them, we will certainly accept on their behalf and channel the funds back to these caregivers. That is fair.
Reminder to self: Stick to your policies or you will be asking for trouble.
Source: http://myanimalcare.org/2013/07/22/we-have-to-close-the-floodgates-please/
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