Big News at Lakeshore Humane Society

Lakeshore Humane Society’s board of directors finally fired the facility’s shelter manager yesterday – an action that was l-o-n-g overdue.  The Society’s current board is well on its way of overcoming the shelter’s history of poor leadership and indecision, a history that has resulted in the unnecessary, preventable deaths of too many adoptable companion animals.

Now, the board is charged with the task of making a critical choice, one that has the potential to shape the future of the Lakeshore Humane Society while simultaneously redefining its past as a period that demonstrated how the facility should not be operated ever again.  The board of directors must now select a person to serve the Society and its surrounding community as the facility’s shelter manager.  The board must filter through the resumes of people with outdated modes of operating a shelter and those with too little or no experience running a shelter.  The board must find someone to act as the Society’s shelter manager who will treat the animals in the facility as well as he/she treats the humans who visit, someone who recognizes and genuinely appreciates the fact that the animals are the reason the Society exists in the first place…someone like Dayna Kennedy, or simply, Dayna Kennedy herself.

A Manitowoc native, Dayna visits the shelter in her hometown every time she revisits the area hoping the facility has made improvements to its operations…especially since she knows so much about how such improvements can be made.  As a nationally recognized shelter manager, Dayna has earned the hard-won respect of No Kill advocates who hail her facility, the Upper Peninsula Animal Welfare Shelter in Marquette, MI, as one of the best shelters in the country.  Boasting a live release rate above 90 percent, Ms. Kennedy is eager to repeat the success she has had in turning UPAWS around by serving the Lakeshore Humane Society as its shelter manager...all she needs is the opportunity to do so.

For now, all eyes remain trained on the Lakeshore Humane Society’s board of directors to see if the members will continue making decisions that ensure the well-being of the animals within the Society’s walls.  Will they do it?  I sure hope so, but only time will reveal what this board can and will do.  I promise to keep you posted about the board’s continuing progress…or its lack thereof.