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Concept, Design and Features of our Renovation The mission of this renovation is to reduce euthanasia in Monmouth County and New Jersey by increasing adoptions, humane education and support for all animal-related issues, towards our vision that every creature is treated with respect, kindness, and love. In summary, the renovation will: - Provide housing designed to reduce stress and disease for all animals in our care so they are healthier, happier and more adoptable - Create a warm, relaxing, efficient, eco-friendly facility that will welcome more potential adopters and supporters - Provide space to support Humane Education Programs, Dog Obedience Training and Community-oriented Seminars Read the full story below! (click here for our "blog" detailing the construction progress of our renovation). A functional, forward-looking design, a renovation desperately needed A team of board members, volunteers and our Executive Director, Ursula Goetz, worked with architects Tim McCorry and Bob DeSantis of the firm Kaplan, Gaunt and DeSantis in Red Bank to come up with the perfect combination of form and function. Tim and Bob listened to all our concerns and created an absolutely beautiful design that will markedly improve the lives of the pets in our care as well as the humans who care for them.  Above is a rendering of what our new facility is going to look like. Once the renovation is complete, we will no longer be "just" a shelter. We will be an Adoption Center- a light and bright, clean, odor-free, beautiful, pleasant and relaxing place for animals and humans. The theme of the renovation is "bring the outdoors in" - bright sunshine and a tranquil, park-like setting will set the tone for the new Adoption Center. When you visit, you will enter a bright and airy Visitor Center, where you will be greeted by volunteers who will guide you to where you need to be. If you come to adopt, you will walk down a corridor to the back of the building, where an entire wall of windows will greet you. The Adoption Center will be filled with natural light, and the view out the back will be of trees and sky. In the back of the building there will be new trails for walking and there will be many doors that will allow access to those trails. Great for walking dogs! The Adoption Center will be constructed so all the dogs are to the left and all the cats will be to the right. Exotics like rabbits and Guinea Pigs will have their own room. No more mixing of species!  A major goal of this renovation is to eliminate stress and disease for all pets in our care and the Adoption Center was specifically designed to do just that. For example in our current situation, every dog can smell, see and hear all of the other dogs. This is overwhelming for many of our canine residents, causing fear and anxiety. In our new Adoption Center, dogs will be in "gazebos" (shown to the left), divided to hold 4 dogs each. The top of the gazebo is clear glass to let in natural light. Each dog will be able to see the other dogs in his gazebo, and since each gazebo will have its own air circulation, they will not be able to smell them either. Noise will be significantly reduced. The dogs will be able to see a *few* other dogs so they will not be isolated. Our research told us that if smell and noise are controlled, the dogs will be much, much calmer and happier.  About Half of the kitties waiting for adoption will live in gazebos holding 12-15 cats each, as shown to the right. Cats love to climb, and this setup is perfect for that. These cats will be able to see outside, which they will love! Like the dog gazebos, each kitty gazebo will have its own air circulation. The rest of our cats will live in individual spaces. While we originally wanted to go "cage-free", our research told us that some cats simply are not happy living with other cats and need their privacy. Also, once stray cats get past their 7 day holding period in our Stray Holding Area, they will need to move to individual cages in the Adoption Center for 4-6 weeks so we can assess their personalities and monitor their health. The Cat Adoption Center is specifically designed to reduce disease by tight control of air flow and also by reducing stress. Studies show that less stress significantly reduces upper respiratory disease in shelter kitties, which in our current situation is almost impossible to control. If you look behind the gazebos in each drawing, you can see the wall of windows that will go the entire length of the building. This part of the building faces North, perfect! Also, the back of the building is very park-like, full of trees and with plenty of room for walking trails. So, why do we need a renovation?  In 1999, the Monmouth County SPCA decided they
would no longer euthanize adoptable animals. Since then, over
ten thousand lives have been saved. In order to succeed in our mission not to euthanize adoptable pets, it is vitally important that their stay with us is as stress-free as possible. If this community agrees that keeping animals for however long it takes to find a home is the right thing to do, then it is our moral responsibility to house them humanely. Unfortunately, the conditions in our shelter fell woefully short of that responsibility. Most of the animal housing areas had not been updated in 30 years. Our shelter was built as temporary housing, animals who were here for "too long" were humanely euthanized to make room for the inevitable next pet. The shelter simply was not built to humanely house animals for more than a few weeks.  With the decision not to euthanize adoptable pets came new challenges to an organization that was already pushed to its limits. Our thirty-year-old facility, built to house 40 dogs and 60 cats, today serves as many as 75 dogs and 250 cats every day. Every room , every square inch of available space was used as a makeshift home for a homeless dog, cat, even rabbit or guinea pig. We were even forced to house kitties in our staff lunchroom (shown to the right). The condition of our facility was hard on people as well as animals. Our renovation will enable us to provide improved conditions for the animals in our care and for the people who care for them and was desperately needed. The Emotional Life of Kitties  One consequence of not euthanizing adoptable pets is that our cat population
in particular has exploded. Going from a population of 60 cats to over 250,
something's gotta give. Shown to the left is what used to be our dog training
and socialization room, where staff members could interact with shelter
dogs in a more home-like setting. Instead it was used to house over a hundred
cats. For most cats, life in a cage goes against every fiber of their being but the ever-burgeoning population of unwanted cats leaves little choice. Though this lifestyle goes against their very nature, at least in here, they we re safe, well fed-and alive. We had only one "Kitty Playroom" where 12-16 cats could live together, move about freely and have many comfy places to sleep and get privacy when they needed it. We need more. After our renovation, over 100 cats will live in 7 different kitty playrooms (gazebos) and 80 will live in individual housing. The remaining 80-120 typically in our care are not ready for adoption, and will be in our new stray holding area or in veterinary care. Probably the biggest improvement for our cats is that they no longer will have to listen to the constant barking from the dogs. In the old building , most of our cats were located just a few feet from the dog kennel. During the day, the barking was nonstop. Noise and smell is very stressful for cats. Research tells us that stressed-out cats = sick cats. Stress is a major cause of upper respiratory disease, and we had many cases of upper respiratory all the time. In our new Adoption Center, cats will have their own "wing", separate from the dogs, and will have their own air circulation. Shelters who have similar improved living conditions for cats have seen an exponential decrease in upper respiratory disease and we look forward to that for our kitties as well! No More Doggie Jails!   Age
and overpopulation had taken a toll on the kennel area where the dogs were
kept. With only forty dogs, the noise level in here was once tolerable.
With seventy dogs barking, the noise reverberating from the cement
walls and ceiling was unbearable. The adverse effects of this constant barrage
of deafening noise on the psyches of shelter dogs cannot be overstated.
It made them nervous, fearful and anxiety-ridden during every waking hour
of every day.  Because of the way the cages were built, the bigger dogs were able to see
and taunt each other all day long. This constant bickering with doggie neighbors
can be devastating to their emotional health. Sadly, it's not uncommon
for a perfectly normal dog to become acutely fearful or even aggressive
after enduring months upon months of living in this incredibly stressful
environment.  The new dog Adoption Center will have no more cages, no more chain link. Instead,
dogs will live in individual glass rooms, much like that shown to the
right. This dog is waiting for his new home at Tompkins County SPCA in
Ithaca, New York. We visited Tompkins to learn all about its state-of-the-art
Adoption Center. One thing we learned- if you control the smells that
circulate amongst the dogs, they get much calmer. We walked into Tompkins
to hear- silence! No barking! Having glass enclosures instead of caging and having very good air handling will mean a much quieter environment
at our shelter. Also, no smell! Won't that be nice? This design is also
much easier to clean and disinfect, keeping disease at bay. Most importantly, dogs will no longer be able to bicker and taunt each other. Their emotional health will remain intact, the dogs will be calm and happy! We will also have new and improved dog walking trails that will be easy to get to from the Adoption Center, making walking the dogs easier and more enjoyable. Finally, our dog obedience training program will be able to thrive. Since our training room was full of cats, dog training could only happen outdoors and so could not be offered in bad weather. Did you know that dogs who have been through obedience training are significantly more likely to stay in their homes and not be returned to a shelter? While this seems like a no-brainer, reasons people cite for not going though training are cost and convenience. In order to be successful in our mission not to euthanize, it is vital that we provide dog obedience training and there is a large multi-purpose room planned in the new renovation that will enable us to offer an expanded dog training program as well as expanded Humane Education programs. The forgotten ones- Rabbits, Guinea Pigs and other small animals  Many people do
not know that we care for many species, not just canines and felines.
We always have a small population of rabbits, Guinea Pigs, hamsters, gerbils,
birds... even a reptile  or
two. Because of overpopulation, these creatures were often shunted to the
side, put in any available space. This meant gerbils were close to cats,
shy rabbits were in the middle of the bustling and noisy lobby. Cages were
stacked upon cages. Not only was this stressful for the animals, this poor
presentation hindered their adoption. Our new Adoption Center will provide a special place for these "exotics", a place of their own where they will not be stared at by creatures who want to eat them, away from the hustle and bustle. A room of their own will significantly reduce their stress and enhance their adoptability. Veterinary Care  Tending
to the medical needs of animals at the Monmouth County SPCA are veterinary
technicians. Their work area was designed
to accommodate one vet tech but the increased animal population here now
requires a staff of two to three on duty at any given time. This woefully
inadequate space is shown to the right and was where they all worked. If Stacy stretched
out her arms, they would have touched both walls, that was how narrow this space
was. There was also not enough room for sick animals in the vet tech area.
Often, tiny kittens or baby birds were kept in a crate on a electric blanket
on the table in the vet tech area, since there was nowhere to put them.Our new vet tech area will have a maternity room for nursing moms, tiny kittens and puppies, and other fragile creatures who need care. We will have separate isolation areas for ailing dogs and cats, away from noise and with separate air handling, all of which will enable them to get better faster and will stop disease from spreading. Read about our construction progress on our Renovation News Page How You Can Help In order to complete this project, we will need help. We still need $2,000,000!  To make a donation, please send
a check to MCSPCA with "for renovation fund" in the memo section
to 260 Wall Street, Eatontown, NJ 07724. Or, donate
online over our secure server and choose "Building Renovation fund.". Naming opportunities in the new Adoption Center are available HERE. Thank you! Any questions about the renovation? Email Laurie!  |
 Monmouth County SPCA, 260 Wall Street, Eatontown NJ, 07724, 732-542-0040 We are open Saturday-Wednesday 1 PM - 5 PM, Thursday-Friday 1 PM - 6 PM Click Here For Directions Copyright 2000, MCSPCA |