Page 28 - BusinessWest February 17, 2025

Sheryl Blancato
CEO, Second Chance Animal Services
Her Growing Operation Saves Lives While Keeping Families and Pets Together TBy Joseph Bednar
[email protected]
wenty-six years ago, Sheryl Blancato opened an animal shelter. And quickly real- ized it wasn’t enough.
“The initial plan was, ‘hey, we’re going to help the animals.’ But I quickly realized
that it’s a band-aid. There was a much bigger issue here, and I’m a root-cause person. And the root cause is, ‘why are these animals coming
into the shelter?’ That’s why we started doing vaccine clinics, because the animals were dying of preventable diseases, and we also did spay and neuter to prevent overpopulation.
“I still remember the day I went to my husband and said, ‘you know what? We need to start having hospitals because too many animals are being surrendered for perfectly preventable, treatable things, and it’s overwhelming the shelters. And if they’re already in a loving home, why not keep them there?’”
That idea became the foundation of everything Second Chance Animal Services does: addressing the root causes of why families have to give up their pets, and then keeping those families and pets together.
“You can never build a shelter big enough to help every animal in need,” Blancato said. “But you can build things to keep them out in the community where they’re already in loving homes.”
Programs like Homebound to the Rescue. The idea behind that initiative is that many senior citizens can’t afford to provide basic medical care for their pets or don’t have transportation to bring them to a vet. So Second Chance visits low-income senior-housing areas to offer low-cost vaccinations, testing, and other care, so the animals stay
healthy and, just as important, don’t have to be surrendered because they can’t be properly cared for.
Then there’s Project Keep Me, which provides temporary housing for the pets of domestic- violence survivors, enabling their owners to seek safe housing arrangements while ensuring the well-being of their animal companions, and later returning them to a more stable environment. Without such a program, people in crisis often have to choose between staying in a dangerous situation and losing their beloved pets.
Photo by Bob Zemba, Simple Truth Imaging DM10 FEBRUARY 17, 2025
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“The initial plan was, ‘hey, we’re going to help the animals.’ But I quickly realized that it’s a band- aid. There was a much bigger issue here.”