MILLEDGEVILLE — ARF’s Humane Education Chairperson Kathy Groseclose talked to the Rotary Club last week. She was great. At the end of her talk, there were a few questions. One person asked me how Baldwin County compared to other Georgia counties. I answered him, but I don’t think I did a very good job of it.

Essentially, I told him that it’s difficult to compare Baldwin County to other counties with regard to animals. We’re considered a rural county and can’t be compared to Atlanta. I also said that Baldwin County has a large number of nonprofits, so the money is spread very thinly.

All of that is true. But, there’s more to it, as there always is. I could have done a full talk on this. With donations, some people refuse to donate to animal causes. Some people only donate through the United Way. Some people donate to national organizations. And there are some who don’t donate to any organization.

I understand that some people don’t want to donate to animal organizations. Only donating through the United Way leaves out local animal organizations and some human organizations, too. Donating to the national organizations is fine, but whether it’s for animals or humans or the environment, find out if any of your money goes to the local level. If you don’t give locally, you don’t help locally.

Very few people can donate to everything, so pick and choose what organization or cause that you want to help. I donate to three or four organizations and not all of them are for the animals.

Getting back on track with the county comparisons. Baldwin County is better than a few counties because we do have animal control. Two of our surrounding counties still do not have animal control.

But — and it’s a big but — our animal control department hasn’t grown since it started in the 1970s. There are counties with a smaller population that have larger animal control departments.

Another plus, I think, is that ARF has been here since 1983 — almost 27 years. ARF is the humane society, not a rescue organization. The bad part is that ARF should be bigger and better by now.

Yes, we have our own shelter, which we have already outgrown, but we haven’t had an increase in adoptions in years. Our adoption percentage rate has increased only because we aren’t taking in many animals.

For ARF to be here almost 27 years is outstanding. We’ve had other animal organizations come in throughout the years and we have survived. I know ARF is a good organization. We have to be doing a lot of things right to still be here. At critical times, we’ve had community support. I wish that this support was year-round so we didn’t have “critical” times.

But the other side of this is, if these other organizations worked with ARF instead of not working with ARF, I know the animal problems would not be as bad as they are here.

So, while Baldwin County isn’t No. 1 in the county comparison, we aren’t No. 159, either. Are we in the top 50 counties or top 100? I don’t know if there’s a measure for that. Maybe that’s something that we can try to figure out. But we’d need parameters for the survey.

Another comment/question asked at Rotary was about moving animals north. Yes, we considered it last year and we are thinking about it again this year. We don’t want to just move our animals to another humane society. We don’t want to cause hardship to another organization. And, if we actually adopt the animals, we’ll collect our adoption fee.

Providing our animals with vaccinations and spay and neuter is expensive. It wouldn’t be fair to ARF and our donors if we gave these animals to another organization. We’ve had some of our cats and dogs for several months. They are cared for and loved and safe. But they need more than that. They need permanent homes. So we want to partner with another humane society and actually do our adoptions there.

We are reviewing our adoption policies and will be revising them. It’ll be awhile before we have everything in place because we haven’t made firm decisions. I’ll tell you about the new rules when they are in place.

Don’t forget to send in your pet pictures for our 2011 ARF Calendar. Our website has all the information. http://animalrescuefoundation.org

And, lastly, we’re still begging. We need help with maintenance of the shelter. We also need help with the grounds of ARF and the Crematory. If you love working in the yard, cutting grass, trimming and all that good stuff, e-mail me at info@animalrescuefoundation.org.