Our Commitment to Education
KCAAP together with our partnering agencies have educated over 200,000 Northeast Texas residents about responsible pet ownership, being safe around animals, and local animal control ordinances. We work with animal control officers to help them educate their citizens on local laws, and to identify citizens who need financial assistance with the cost of vaccinations and spay/neuter surgeries. We regularly make regional appearances, attending county and city council meetings to educate local politicians on new programs, such as feral Trap/Neuter/Release and updates on State of Texas cruelty laws. We also provide them with local rabies statistics and shelter information provided to us by the Texas Zoonosis division.
Some of our current education programs are:
Community Oriented Pet Population Solutions (C.O.P.P.S) which is a collaborative effort between municipal animal control agencies, humane interest groups, and the community that identifies pet problems in all areas of our County, as well as suggesting and implementing solutions for those problems. Step one; successfully lobbying Kaufman County commissioners to institute our first animal control ordinance within the County. We were able to share this experience with other counties within our service area, helping them to understand the important role governments play in helping to reduce pet over-population and how an effect program can reduce the animal control cost within their cities and counties.
We also entered 150 classrooms with our Spoke’s Dog of the Year, Sprite and her owner Mary Lee. They taught over 4500 children between the ages of 5 years and 12 years the importance of treating people and animals with kindness and respect. They talked about basic values, such as fairness, compassion, and responsibility. Teaching children basic values with a focus on humaneness not only helps shape responsible citizens, but is also on of the most far-reaching ways we have of solving animal-related problems in our community. Mary Lee and Sprite taught children about dog-bite prevention, the importance of current rabies vaccines, the importance of spaying and neutering, and the problems associated with free-roaming animals and keeping wild animals as pets. The overall objectives are to teach values like compassion, responsibility, citizenship, and respect and to get children excited about helping people and animals through volunteering at local nonprofits.