A county without a shelter

[Jonasmom]

hello I live in a small isolated town on the Oregon coast. My husband and I moved here almost four years ago with our dog, and since then added on with our first child. We were shocked to learn that our entire county has no shelter in place, and there is a severe feral cat problem, and dogs found loose on the street go to some runs up at the county dump. These dog runs are horribly unsanitary (rotting wood floors) and not heated, and usually cramed with more than two dogs each. I am a member of a group thats spent the last year fundraising and begging for land. We recently aquired some donated land through the fair board, but Im worried it wont work because its mostly wet lands, if we can get throught the red tape to be allowed to develop it for our purposes, it will be terribly expensive. This land however is a miricle, because here on the coast there are some giant developers requesting maps of the county, so everyone is hanging on to their land in hopes of making big money. Its frustrating dealing with small town polotics, and find that these little local cliks are just like high school. Also our little depressed town cant finataly support it. We probably will try to pass a tax to help with this, but in talking to alot of towns people its just not a priority, alot are struggeling just to survive. In the mean time the feral cat population continues to grow and spread illness, and our dogs get held at the dump for 3 or 4 days then shiped over the mountain range to Portland and surrounding areas where they are moved up to the front of the euthanasia list because they are imports (somebody elses problem getting dumped on them). It all makes me weary, and any advice to help our cause would be most helpful.
Thanks
Shannon

[dogisluv]

You may want to try contact the Humane Society of the United States: http://hsus.org/

and in addition, another VERY helpful resource would be the American Humane Association: http://www.americanhumane.org/site/PageServer

both groups would be your best bet on how to do it and may even be able to help out?

Good Luck!