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Marge Bart, director of the Blue Chip Animal Shelter, located on Lockville Road in Dallas, holds Ginger, a 5-year-old domestic short-hair cat that is up for adoption.
CLARK VAN ORDEN/THE TIMES LEADER
They are homeless through no fault of their own. Some lost their homes when medical bills climbed too high. Some had their home shattered by domestic violence. And some simply were put out because their families couldn’t or wouldn’t care for them any more.
Marge Bart’s heart aches for all of them, and that’s why she founded Blue Chip Animal Shelter, in Dallas.
“I started this because I saw a great need to help animals with special needs,” said Bart. “When people die or go into a nursing home, when animals have medical needs that their family can’t afford, when people have to leave their homes because of domestic violence, those animals need a place to go. I hated knowing that otherwise good animals were being euthanized because there was nowhere for them to go. I had the land, so I started Blue Chip.”
Blue Chip, a no-kill shelter that opened 10 years ago, is one of six nonprofit organizations featured in this year’s Times Leader Giving Guide. Each one needs help to continue providing services to those in need in our community, and readers are asked to consider contributing to one of these worthy causes this holiday season.
When the shelter first opened, the animals were all housed in the barn on Bart’s Lockville Road property. Through fundraisers, donations and volunteer help, the facilities have expanded to include more specialized accommodations for the animal guests, such as the “kitty cottage” that started life as an office trailer.
The goal, Bart said, is to find each animal a forever home. If that dream doesn’t come true, the animal will have a forever home at Blue Chip.
Sometimes, that means going beyond just providing a roof over the animal’s head and bowls full of food and water. Eighty percent of the shelter’s budget goes toward veterinary care for the animals.
While all the animals receive necessary medical care, including vaccinations, spaying and neutering, some of the animals they get have been neglected or abused and need care to recover, or they have a special medical condition that requires surgery or other expensive care. Blue Chip arranges for that care, often with veterinarians who provide a discount on their services, and then holds fundraisers to come up with the money to pay for the rest.
“The SPCA does a good job, but they have enough to do,” said Bart. “They can’t take the individual cases and do fundraisers like we do, and they can’t afford to keep the animals forever. The animals needed this.”
Bart said there are other advantages to this type of shelter as well. Because she and the volunteers spend so much time with the animals, basically living with them day in and day out, they get to know the animals well and cannot only help them better, they can help make better forever matches for them, too. Each month, an average of 20 dogs leave Blue Chip to go to their new homes.
“When you see the smile on the face of a child who had his heart set on a particular kind of dog, and you give him that dog, that’s what makes this all worthwhile,” Bart said.
While Bart owns the land the shelter uses, everything else about the shelter is run on donations and volunteers. Bart and a crew of volunteers coordinate and hold fundraisers such as auctions, flea markets and holiday events, and all of the proceeds go toward the care and feeding of the animals. They also provide the day-to-day care for all the animals, which currently include a maximum population of 60 cats.
“It’s so hard to find homes for the cats,” Bart said. “There’s just so many of them.”
Those already at Blue Chip will be safe there even if they never do find a family, Bart said, but that many cats strains the facilities. The kitty cottage needs a new floor and Bart is hoping to equip it with a heavy-duty washer and dryer to handle the kitty laundry, which she currently does in her own machines.
The cottage could also use a wiring upgrade, and Bart would like to add an additional room so sick kitties could be housed separately to prevent the spread of any illnesses.
Besides the kitty cottage enhancements, Bart said she’d like to ask Santa Claws for a gift he has probably never been asked for before: a manure pit.
“I’d love to have someone build us a manure pit so the animal waste could be recycled,” said Bart, noting that the shelter clears 150 pounds of cat waste a day. “We could really use a concrete pit like they use to store mulch and things like that. We could recycle the mulch and it would help with our trash-hauling bills.”
Other items the shelter would love to have include holistic cleaning supplies, vinegar (also used for cleaning) and disposable items such as trash bags and paper towels.
“Cash is always good, and so are gas cards to cover the cost when our volunteers take animals to the vet. And we can always use volunteers to help care for the animals, people to take animals to the vet or even to work on fundraisers,” Bart said. “And one way people can always help is by providing forever homes for our animals.”
“I’ve always loved animals,” said Bart, who has a master’s degree in business and started the shelter after she took early retirement from the corporate world. “There are no bad animals. They aren’t born bad, they are either abused or neglected, and they need us to take care of them.”
Bart lists some of the animals the shelter has helped, like the beagles found abandoned in state game lands, the pit bull puppy found beaten and in need of surgery, the dog whose owner poisoned him twice, the Sheltie taking medication that keeps her healthy but makes her temporarily incontinent.
She loves knowing she’s helped them, but says the rewards she gets are just as great as the new life she’s offering to the animals.
“I think of it this way,” she said. “If you lock your husband and your dog in the trunk, which one is going to kiss you first and forgive you immediately? No matter what happens, that animal gives you unconditional love, and that keeps me going emotionally, physically and spiritually.”
To Donate
Blue Chip Animal Shelter
974 Lockville Road
Dallas, PA 18612
phone: 570-836-3145
Wish List
Cash
Volunteers for shelter work and fundraisers
Heavy-duty washer and dryer
New floor, addition and wiring for kitty cottage
Manure pit
Fencing
Abady dog food (available at pet stores)
Taste of the Wild cat food (available at pet stores)
World’s Best Cat Litter
Holistic cleaning supplies
Vinegar
Fleece blankets
Paper towels
Garbage bags
Gas cards