I’m going to post this entire letter we received from Pet Helpers’ Emily Laurie yesterday. I got the numbers used in the story from an employee. We’ve smoothed things over with them, but apparently a lot of folks have tried to take them dogs this week after reading the article. I disagreed with her that anything in the story was negative about Pet Helpers or discredited their mission, but said I’d do what I could to let the public know that they are indeed FULL. (Until they get 3 million dollars).

This is the paragraph in my story that mentions Pet Helpers (You can read the whole story here.)

That’s another problem. In addition to the abuse and tight confinement dogs face at puppy mills, they add to the growing problem of overcrowding at kennels. Moncks Corner’s Doc Williams SPCA has 25 dogs right now, the Charleston Animal Society has 50, and the Francis Willis SPCA in Summerville has over 100. The area’s “no kill” shelter, Pet Helpers on James Island, recently expanded and has about 17 adults — they can keep up to 40.

And here’s the letter… (In my own defense, 14+14+4+4=36 — the employee wasn’t too far off with the 40 figure, and 15 now could mean 17 last week).

My name is Emily Laurie. I am the PR/Event Coordinator for Pet Helpers. I am the person who is in charge of speaking with the media about anything involving Pet Helpers.

I am very disappointed with your article “Saving the Furbabies.” As I applaud your efforts in making puppy mills and Furbabies aware to the public, your article discredits what Pet Helpers stands for.

In the article Mr. Lawrence wrote that we have a total number of 17 adult dogs and then adds we can hold up to 40 at full capacity. This information is NOT TRUE! I do not know who Mr. Lawrence’s source is. He did try to get hold of me but I never spoke to him directly. I returned his message and he never called me back.

We have 14 kennels on the adoption floor, 4 kennels in intake (We keep these dogs separated from the rest of the dogs for 14 days. We do this to make sure they have no diseases or behavioral problems.) and 4 kennels in quarantine (for sick dogs who have parvo or injuries). We try to double up our dogs in the 14 kennels on the adoption floor. However, some of our dogs have behavioral issues and we CAN NOT double up because these dogs don’t get along with other dogs.

We currently have 15 adult dogs and 25 puppies. That equals to 40 dogs alone. Plus we have another 20 adult dogs in foster care.

Kristin Kifer is our Operations Manager. She deals with people calling us every day to drop off their animals because they know we are a no-kill shelter. We have a waiting list just of people who want to get rid of their animals. The public does not understand that we are at maximum dog capacity. They just want to get rid of their animal as quick as possible and writing false information about Pet Helpers just adds fuel to their fire.

Everyone at Pet Helpers works extremely hard to fight the use of euthanizing unwanted animals. This is why we joined forces with Charleston Animal Society and the national ASPCA.

If Mr. Lawrence would like to come by and take a tour our shelter to see first-hand that we are at maximum dog capacity and what he wrote is incorrect, I’d be more than happy to make this happen. I would also love it if he would write an article explaining why we have to turn away people who want to get rid of their animals and also explain that we are still in the process of building our new shelter. We have only finished phase one of our shelter. We are in the middle of a capital campaign where we need to raise another 3 million to start building phase two. Once we finish building phase two we will be able to almost double our intake of animals. But as you know, raising 3 million dollars is not easy! ;0) We’ll take any POSTIVE publicity we can get.

Thanks, Emily Laurie