Animal Indexing

The Animal Assistance Foundation has a mission to improve the animal welfare in Colorado. This foundation was founded by a woman named Louise C. Harrison in 1975. It was Louise's goal to prevent cruelty to domestic animals. She was always an animal advocate and made many donations to animal organizations. Since it was started the Animal Assistance Foundation has invested $50 million dollars to the well being of animals in the state of Colorado.


One of the foundation's current projects is the Arkansas River Valley Project. My classmates and I were lucky enough to be given the opputunity to take part in this project as researchers. The Animal Assistance Foundation decided to try and reduce the number of feral animals there were in our community.
The foundation, AAF, had a hypothesis that said the more spayed and neutered animals in the area, the less feral (FUN FACT: Feral is another way to say stray or unowned) animals there would be.


Procedure:  To test this hypothesis AAF, researched the number of feral dogs and cats in our area. Then they handed out vouchers about getting your animal spayed and neutered. After that, the AAF asked us to collect data about the number of feral dogs and cats in our area. Our job was to go on four different walks over the course of two weeks. AAF wanted to be very careful and avoid any extra variables, so our walks had to be on the same day of the week, the same time of day, and had to be along the same route. During our walks we had to record the number of animals we saw. We were given indexing forms to keep track of our count.


My Data Collection:


#1
Date: April 25th     Location: La Junta, CO; Around City Park
Start Time: 5:00 p.m.     End Time: 5:30 p.m.

Cat Sightings:                              Dog Sightings:
     Owned:      0                               Owned:       6
     Feral:         4                                Feral:          0
     Unknown:  0                                Unknown:   0
                          Squirrels: 5    



#2
Date: April 27th     Location: La Junta, CO; Around City Park
Start Time: 5:00 p.m.     End Time: 5:30 p.m.

Cat Sightings:                              Dog Sightings:
     Owned:      0                               Owned:       5
     Feral:         3                                Feral:          0
     Unknown:  0                                Unknown:   0
                         Squirrels: 5     



#3
Date: May 2nd     Location: La Junta, CO; Around City Park
Start Time: 5:00 p.m.     End Time: 5:30 p.m.

Cat Sightings:                              Dog Sightings:
     Owned:      0                               Owned:       5
     Feral:         4                                Feral:          0
     Unknown:  1                                Unknown:   0
                               Squirrels: 4



#4
Date: May 4th     Location: La Junta, CO; Around City Park
Start Time: 5:00 p.m.     End Time: 5:30 p.m.

Cat Sightings:                              Dog Sightings:
     Owned:      1                               Owned:       5
     Feral:         4                                Feral:          1
     Unknown:  1                                Unknown:   0
                               Squirrels: 4


Picture of Route:


View Larger Map




Conclusion:

I can't say for sure if I proved AAF'S hypothesis because I don't know what the data was before beginning of the experiement. In my data I only saw 1 feral dog, which is really good. However, I did see a lot of feral cats.  I do think the number of feral animals in our community has gone down since AAF started their project. I hope AAF can continue to make a difference in my community and other communities to improve animal welfare.