The Million-Dollar Girls

By Gretchen Pressley

The smiles are back at the Central Missouri Humane Society.
Gone is the somber mood that descended upon the animal shelter when a fiscal crisis forced the humane society to cut hours and staff last fall. Things were looking pretty grim until a pair of unlikely heroines came to the rescue with a wild and crazy plan to win some money for the shelter in a contest. All it would take was the entire community pulling together to beat out every other shelter in a nationwide battle of votes.
Piece of cake.

When officials of the Zootoo.com Shelter Makeover Contest announced on April 27 that the Central Missouri Humane Society had won the contest — and up to $1 million in goods, services and cash — the small reception area at the shelter was crammed with grinning staff members mingling with reporters and photographers.
“It’s been a crazy, wonderful day,” said CMHS executive director Patty Forister, her closed office door only muffling the continuous cheering in the hallway outside.
Zootoo.com is a social networking site where pet owners can exchange their doggie tales, kitty photos and pet tips. To become a Zootoo member, animal lovers must create a Zootoo account and profile. Once a member, they can join like-minded groups and interact with other members.
To win the Zootoo contest, CMHS had to get the most votes from Zootoo members. By the end of the contest, more than 11,000 members had joined in support of CMHS and the shelter had accumulated almost 2 million points in pursuit of the big prize.

The Secret Weapon

The Zootoo Shelter Makeover Contest started in early fall of 2008, but CMHS didn’t begin promoting the contest until four months after the contest began. Two local teenagers discovered the contest and made up their minds their shelter would win. Amanda Huhman and Libby Burks — names now well known to Columbians — were the driving force behind the shelter’s bid for the prize. The CMHS’s secret weapon, as the girls became known, didn’t keep their plan a secret for long.

On Jan. 15, the girls were at Amanda’s house and began discussing the financial difficulties of the shelter, where they volunteer. The two began brainstorming about ways they could help the humane society with its mission to be the best possible temporary home for the many dogs and cats it protects.

That’s when Libby recalled an article she had seen in a dog magazine. It was about a shelter makeover contest that would guarantee a shelter some financial help and renovations. The twosome resolved to find out about the contest. Libby went home and both girls began their search.

“We both found it at the same time and called each other,” Amanda says. “We both said, ‘I found it. Is it called Zootoo? Yeah. This is it.’”

At the time, CMHS had nine members in its online Zootoo community and only 250 points toward the contest total. The shelter was in 859th place. Undaunted, the adolescent animal lovers headed over to the CMHS office to discuss the contest with Forister.

“They had heard about it, but they didn’t want to do it because it was so late in the competition,” Libby says. “They said they had tried the first time and didn’t really get anywhere, so we were like, oh well, I guess we can just do it for fun.”

The girls began earning points for the shelter. They encouraged their friends and family to create accounts and earn points as well. By the first week in February, the grassroots effort had pulled the shelter up to 55th place.
“It wasn’t a hard thing to do,” Libby says. “You just make accounts and post your picture.”

Once they hit 55th place in the rankings, the CMHS staff and the girls’ parents took notice.

“That’s when everyone realized we could do it,” Libby says. “And that’s when we really started trying to promote it and do all the stuff we’d done.”

Forister also recalls the first time she thought her shelter just might win: “It just seemed like an impossible feat for my limited PR staff to promote and capture that kind of attention, but [the girls] moved us up in the 200s so fast. They were pretty adamant that CMHS was going to win, and that made me pretty adamant, too.”

In It To Win It

Bolstered by the initial success, shelter staff and volunteers began organizing events to raise money and awareness about their cause. They campaigned for help in the local media and met on a regular basis to brainstorm new ideas.
Amanda and Libby took their promotions to the streets. They stood outside businesses such as Wal-Mart, Bass Pro Shops and Petco. They handed out dog treats with information about CMHS and the contest. After every promotion, the girls would see a rise in the number of members and points. The twosome also visited local schools and even took trips out to retirement communities, where they taught the residents how to create online accounts.

“It’s really hard to say no to Amanda and Libby,” Forister says, laughing. “They really made a commitment to get out there and get audiences we don’t usually hit. Amanda and Libby make this story special.”

The shelter hit the first-place ranking for Phase 1 of the contest in mid-March. The lofty position won the shelter a $20,000 prize from Zootoo sponsors and the opportunity to continue on to Phase 2. During that phase, Zootoo CEO Richard Thompson toured the shelters to choose the 10 most in need of his company’s help. He arrived in Columbia on March 19 to much hoopla. Citizens lined his route to the shelter, clad in blue shirts and waving signs to show Thompson that the Columbia community had a big heart for the animals at the shelter.

CMHS made the cut as one of the top 10 finalists in the contest on April 7. Voting in Phase 3 continued until April 19. A week later, USA Today formally announced that the Central Missouri Humane Society was the winner.

Next Steps
Winning the Zootoo contest by a wide margin wasn’t enough for the two young marketing masterminds. Amanda and Libby have started a Web series called “Animal Talk” for distribution on YouTube.com. The show will feature adoptable animals from the CMHS as well as tips for pet owners and news from the animal community in Columbia.

The girls will also help head the new junior board at the shelter. It will be a copy of the CMHS board of directors, but made up of members that are Amanda and Libby’s age. The junior board will help brainstorm ideas both for the renovation of the shelter and for public exposure.

“One of the best lessons I’ve learned here is that youth is very powerful,” Forister says. “We want to use all of our resources to their full potential, and youth is definitely a resource we want to push farther. We want to keep Amanda and Libby involved with the shelter, and we want to rope in some more of their friends to get involved, too.

CMHS is currently planning meetings with Zootoo and the Columbia community to get input on what changes and renovations need to be done at the shelter.

“This is a community achievement,” Forister says. “We succeeded as a community. And so we want to give the community some input in the makeover project. We want to invite people to meetings and give them ways for them to contribute ideas and avenues for them to get involved.”

The idea behind the Zootoo Makeover, according to a blog by CEO Thompson, is to promote the shelter within its community and raise public awareness of its needs.

“That is what the National Shelter Makeover is all about: communities coming together to support their local shelters and help needy animals,” Thompson says.

But Forister doesn’t want Columbians to take a catnap where her shelter is concerned. The Zootoo win comes at a fortuitous time, when the humane society was beset with financial trouble. The money Zootoo donates will certainly shore up the shelter’s financial situation, but it isn’t a miracle cure.

“This is no financial windfall for us,” Forister says. “We will definitely still be asking for donations of goods and monetary support. We are just coming out of this crisis where we were just not sure where the money would come from. We’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

To that end, the shelter is organizing a donations campaign called Operation Zootoo. This two-part campaign will not only renovate the existing shelter, it will ensure the financial stability of the shelter in the years to come. Forister is asking for a pledge from every Columbian to raise or donate $100. The shelter will give each supporter a white tile to decorate; the tiles will be used in the shelter renovation.

“We are going to do everything we can with our budget and know that we would do a lot more if we had more money,” Forister says.

Meet The Heroes
Amanda Huhman and Libby Burks are 13-year-old seventh-graders at Columbia Catholic School. They both have birthdays in October. They both are left-handed. And they both are as crazy about animals as anyone can be.

The two met in the third grade, the first year they shared a class. They became fast friends, and when Amanda heard they could volunteer at the Central Missouri Humane Society, they both jumped at the chance. Their involvement with the shelter back then was limited to once or twice every month. Just this year, however, the girls upped their involvement tenfold and become an integral part of the shelter, says CMHS Executive Director Patty Forister.

“Libby would be out here seven days a week if she could,” says her mother, Liz Burks. “They love it. They realize they are making a difference in those poor animals’ lives, by giving them love and attention. I admire the passion they have for the animals.”

The girls volunteer at the shelter for a couple of hours three or four days every week. They walk the dogs and play with them in the fields behind the shelter. They socialize with the cats and small animals. And of course, they participate in shelter events.

“We make a conscious effort to make sure we stay in communication with the school, so we are not taking them out at a bad time or when they have a test,” says Amanda’s mother, Angie Huhman. “Mostly we keep shelter time scheduled after class.”

Like most 13-year-olds, Amanda and Libby have other interests that pull on their time. Libby dances competitively, and Amanda helps out on her grandfather’s farm. They also have to stay on top of their schoolwork.

“We’ve gotten better at juggling things,” Amanda says.
The girls do their homework at school, on the way to and from school and at lunch to keep up. “Some of my grades have actually gotten better,” Amanda adds.

The two dog lovers admit it’s hard to keep an always-positive outlook when dealing with a never-ending influx of animals from all around Missouri.

Amanda knows her weaknesses when it comes to cute puppies. “She would go and pick the bigger dogs to play with so she wouldn’t be tempted to pick the cute one she would want to bring home. It’s like she knows her own temptations,” Angie Huhman says with a laugh.

“To keep myself from adopting all of them is the thought that this dog is going to get adopted if I work with it more,” Libby says. “You have the ones that you love, and then you see them get adopted and it’s just the happiest feeling in the world.”

The animals aren’t the only ones that benefit from the girls’ time at the shelter. Their families have noticed that Amanda and Libby are also growing and developing their personalities based on their experiences with CMHS.

Amanda is happiest when she can be around animals, her mother says. From an early age, she would make dog and horse treats to sell and would give the money to local animal shelters.

“There’s a sense of peacefulness in her when she’s around them,” Angie Huhman says.
When Libby was younger, she was “extremely shy,” her mother says, but no one who hears her speak now can imagine anything but the enthusiastic and chatty teen they see. Since beginning their Zootoo campaign, the girls have had to speak to numerous reporters, have appeared on live radio, the news and the “Pepper & Friends” television show, and have addressed an audience of 150 people at a recent shelter event.

“They are really comfortable [speaking in public],” Liz Burks says, adding that the girls had that showbiz spark and flair for speaking from the beginning.

And what do the girls think of their newfound fame?
“We really had no idea any of this could happen,” Amanda says. “It’s really good we can get our message out to people.”
Libby adds, “We never planned this. We never thought, ‘Hey, we’ll get on TV.’ It was always about the shelter.”
And mom agrees. “They are two phenomenal girls, they really are,” Liz Burks says. “They are quite a team. I truly don’t think they have any clue the importance they’ve played in all of this.”

Let’s Go On A Tour Of The Central Missouri Humane Society
The Central Missouri Humane Society is the largest open-door shelter between St. Louis and Kansas City, and down to Springfield. Last year, the shelter took in 7,500 animals from 56 counties around Columbia. It costs the shelter at least $100 for each animal it receives.

The shelter employs about 30 people, most part time, and has hundreds of volunteers. These doggie do-gooders put in several hundred hours of canine walking each month. The shelter has a core group of helpers who do the laundry, wash dishes and help with data entry.

The shelter can kennel 157 pets. They keep more than 200 in the system by doubling up in the kennels and through foster care.

“The longer an animal gets to stay, the more likely its future home will walk in and want to take it home,” Forister says. The shelter has no set time period for how long an animal can stay in the shelter.

Even with the creativity the shelter displays in housing pets, the humane society is forced to euthanize almost half of the animals that come in. If they must euthanize, shelter employees try to select ones with health or temperament issues before healthy, adoptable ones, Forister says.

The yearly budget for everything at the shelter is almost a million dollars. And that’s not counting the frequent repairs needed in a building from the 1970s. When Forister began working at the shelter three years ago, the staff was using a wrench attached to a faucet to run the cold water. They’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on repairs, from addressing flooding issues to rewiring the electrical system to fixing holes in the floor.

First Impressions
The visitors’ entrance opens to a reception area, which is a small room with an austere tiled floor. Two sets of waiting tables sit against the wall. The reception counter is just to the right of the front door, and the walkway into the animal area is too narrow to fit more than one person-and-pet pair at a time.

With money and help from the Zootoo campaign, Forister would like to make the welcome area more appealing to visitors. She wants separate intake and adoption counters to cut down on the chaos. She’s also talked about having rooms set aside for people to interact with animals and discuss pet tips before leaving the shelter.

Find A Friend
In the kennels, visitors will find a pair like Pedro and Georgia. Pedro, a 1-year-old cocker spaniel, and Georgia, an Australian stock dog/beagle mix, live in one of the two dog areas. Pedro stays excited and stressed because he can see the dogs directly across from him as well as the volunteers as they walk through the kennel with other dogs. The lighting in the kennels is poor, and some kennels have rusted metal areas on the floor that have only just been repaired. Pedro is constantly in danger of getting kennel cough or another disease because of the close conditions and lack of isolation. He only gets to go outside to the play area when volunteers are cleaning out his kennel. The play area Pedro runs in is made of gravel, not concrete, and is rough on his feet.

Just off the dog kennels are the small-animal room and the main cat room. In the small animal room, Tornada, a 6-month-old rabbit, sits in a large wire cage. There are seven other cages filled with rabbits in the room and one cage holding a guinea pig. Tornada and her friends get to run around an empty room used for visitor/animal interactions but only when the shelter is closed to the public. Tornada can clearly hear all the barking dogs just 20 feet away.

The main cat room is right next to the small-animal room. About 20 cats live in small cages stacked like building blocks. Bebee, a 6-month-old torbie with leopard markings lives in one of the bottom cages. Bebee gets to come out of her cage and walk around the small room whenever the shelter is closed to the public or when a prospective family wants to see her. She can hear the noisy dogs as well as Tornada can.

The rest of the cats live in tiny rooms off the garage. Cheeto, a 14-year-old orange tabby, and his friend Trey, a younger gray and white cat, curl up in crates for most of the day. Once a cat is removed from the main cat room, Cheeto or Trey might move into those more visible habitats. They only get to come out and play when they are being fed or having their crates cleaned.

Forister says her top priority for the shelter makeover is to improve the lives of its feline friends. “It’s hugely stressful on the cats in our shelter,” she says. “They need to be able to soak up some sun, stretch out for a while.”

The other top priority on Forister’s list is to add more areas for isolation. Right now, animals with contagious illnesses have to stay in another small room in the main building. It is cramped, and the sick animals risk infecting one another in the close conditions.

“Overall, we are going to focus on having a healthier and less-stressed population of animals,” Forister says. “We are going to make things better for the animals.”