If each person donated a quarter during the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) annual tag day it would take about 280,000 people to pay for veterinarian bills and pet food at the shelter.

Of course, Bermuda doesn?t have anywhere near 280,000 people. This is one of the reasons the SPCA is coming up with new ways to generate revenue, after a couple of years of being financially in the red.

?We do a tag day every year, but we are lucky if we get $10,000, which is really a drop in the bucket,? said Heather Kromer, president of the SPCA. ?We do as much as we can in terms of fund raising.?

The SPCA recently implemented a number of new policies to improve their financial picture. There is now a processing fee to adopt an animal: $100 for a kitten, $50 for an adult cat, $150 for a puppy and $100 for an adult dog. ?I haven?t had anyone say they are upset about it,? said Theresa Ince, shelter manager. ?It really is a nominal fee, especially when you look at what people are paying to import a breed dog; people are paying huge money.

?We have heard of $3,000 to $5,000 for a pure-bred dog, so $100 to $150 shouldn?t be a deterrent to anyone.?

Mrs. Kromer said no one at the SPCA is trying to get rich, they are just trying to deal with the high costs associated with running an animal shelter seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

The shelter spends about $9,000 a year on cat food, $3,000 on dog food and about $40,000 on veterinary care. The shelter also has paid employees, utilities, and various types of insurance to pay for, plus the cost of maintaining the property. ?A lot of people think we don?t pay for veterinary care, but we do,? said Mrs. Kromer. ?The veterinary hospitals here are good to us, but we do have animals that need to be seen. They all get a health check. Sometimes a dog comes in with a hip problem or knee problem. Depending on the circumstances we will pay to have that done.?

The SPCA wants to reduce expenses and make improvements without actually lowering the level of service their provide.

?We intend to be here forever,? Mrs. Kromer said. ?We are not out of line with what other shelters charge. In fact when we talk to other shelters they are surprised we haven?t done it sooner.?

The SPCA is also trying to expand its education programme. Helle Patterson, who is well known for her work at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research (BBSR) has developed an animal welfare programme to take into the schools. The SPCA is also increasing the education of its own animals.

?We are working on adopting out a better behaved dog by giving the dogs the basics of training. We are working towards doing a formal temperament assessment. At the moment the assessment is more informal. It is a small shelter and the shelter staff get to know the animals very well.

During the interview with the , a dog named Pete lay on a towel in the SPCA office, getting up, occasionally, to gently ask for a back scratch.

The staff at the SPCA like to single out different animals that they feel need attention. Five-year-old Pete might be referred to as a ?Labrador retriever trapped in a pit-bull?s body?. He is friendly, not hyperactive, and likes cats. He had been adopted out from the shelter, but was returned when his owners? relationship broke up.

?We are small enough, and we have the right people so that every animal here is an individual. They are not a number,? said Mrs. Ince. She added that Pete is a very nice dog and will probably find a home, but for some of their other pit-bull mixes it isn?t so easy.

?We have another one in the kennels that is jumpy and barky,? she said. ?Potential owners either want to chain her outside as a guard dog, which we won?t allow, or they are afraid of her and they wouldn?t even consider her. It can be tricky.?

Mrs. Kromer said the shelter doesn?t adopt its dogs out to just anyone; it is important to find a good match. ?Sometimes we get criticised for that,? she said. ?But I am really proud of the way we try and work for the right match.?

In addition to fundraising, the SPCA also likes to organise events that provide people with an opportunity to spend time with their pets and other pet owners. The SPCA recently held a doggy social at Ferry Reach Park.

?People loved it,? said Mrs. Kromer. ?We didn?t go all out with advertising. We just passed the word around with our membership. We had a fantastic day. We had probably about forty dogs. We provided a picnic lunch and a tent at Ferry Reach park. People could take their dogs for walks around the forts and trails. It was an opportunity for dogs to socialise with one another. People were asking when are we going to do it again.?

In September the SPCA will be holding their annual Animal Expo and in November there will another Paws to the Park walk.

?They are signature events for us,? said Mrs. Kromer. ?We are trying to think of ways of making them better.?

When the SPCA is back in the black, financially, they would like to renovate some houses on their property to be rented out. They would also like to improve the access road to their building, and add on to the facility.

?By the end of the next financial year we will be looking pretty good,? Mrs. Kromer said. ?After that we want to build what we call the Observation Building. When we bring animals in, if they are not well or we are not sure healthwise, we can have some space over there and a couple of kennels, and a cat room for kittens. Once we are sure they are healthy then we can introduce them into the regular kennel.?

At the moment, one sick animal in the kennels can infect all the other animals, bringing adoptions to a halt while the animals mend.

?Also, we really want to do an education room,? she said. ?That is very important to us. School groups do come here, but we would like to have an area for them. We are a bit cluttered here. It is great for the kids to come through and see the animals but we would like to have a nice sized education room with workshops and equipment.

?We want to have a laptop and a projector and that kind of thing for presentations. Volunteers are also very important to us, and we would like to have a room for them to relax in and leave their things.?