Working at the Lawrence Humane Society certainly has its perks. After all, the staff members have easy access to an endless supply of purrs and wagging tails.

And if you can get past the fact that the staff also have endless litter boxes to empty and messy little puppies to clean up after each time those little guys play in their water bowls, it’s a pretty rewarding job.

But the fact is, the animals at our facility aren’t the only animals Midge Grinstead and her staff worry about. Right now, they have two different organizational matters that they’re working on: one statewide group, and one legislative concern.

The first is a new group that began forming in response to the disasters around New Orleans and our own right down the road in Greensburg. Midge is now helping organize the Kansas State Animal Response Team (KsSART), which hopes to reach its goal of setting up an emergency response team for animals in every county in the state. According to the Web site www.kssart.org, “Kansas State Animal Response Team is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the survival and welfare of animals during natural and manmade disasters.”

The Kansas group hopes to model itself after the SART in North Carolina that formed in 1999 after Hurricane Floyd. SART programs, says the Web site, “train participants to facilitate a safe, environmentally sound and efficient response to animal emergencies on the local, county, state and federal level.”

County Animal Response Teams (CART) are the local versions of the state teams. Here in Kansas, these CARTs will join government and nonprofit organizations with businesses, livestock producers and regular volunteers to form emergency response teams that will assist the often-forgotten animals when emergencies arise.

So far, only Sedgwick and the combined counties of Pottawatomie and Wabaunsee have formed teams, but the dedicated animal professionals throughout the state are working to form others, with the goal of all 105 counties being covered.

To be an emergency responder requires training in Federal Emergency Management Agency classes. Staff at the Lawrence Humane Society would be required to take the first two levels of training to qualify.

It takes some effort to get everyone trained, Midge told me, but it would be worth it so our staff wouldn’t be looked on as “unwanted volunteers.”

A second and ongoing effort to protect the animals in the state is a bill that animal rights activists in Kansas have been trying for years to bring to legislators’ attention. House Bill H-2229 seems simple enough: It’s basically a change of one word in a state statute. Currently our laws state that only dog fighting is a felony. Anyone caught fighting other animals only receive a misdemeanor charge. This includes cock fighting, horse fighting (something that is becoming popular in Mexico) and “hog-dogging.” According to the Humane Society of the United States, “In a hog-dog fight or ‘hog-dog rodeo,’ a trained dog attacks a trapped feral hog who is released into an enclosed pit from which there is no escape. To confer an advantage on the dog, fight organizers will either cut off the hog’s tusks or outfit the dog in a Kevlar vest.”

Supporters of H-2229 hope to change the law from “dog fighting” to “animal fighting” as worthy of a felony charge. The logic is clear: wherever animals are being fought for sport and wagering, we also find drugs, weapons and strong evidence of various kinds of mental and physical abuse in the families involved. Cruelty breeds cruelty; study after study has added to this evidence, and in Kansas, we want to stop that cycle.

H-2229, however, has never gotten out of committee despite the fact that Midge and other supporters have gone to the Legislature year after year after year to support this bill.

In a similar issue, Kansas animal rights supporters also want to increase the number of staffers at the Kansas Animal Health Department to better assist in enforcing the Kansas Pet Animal Act. To date, only five people are assigned to check out problems with animal facilities across the entire state, and the money provided by the state for this work has not increased since 1990.

The KAHD licenses all animal facilities in the state: pounds, shelters, pet shops and breeders. Funding for extra positions has been a concern to the Legislature despite the fact that in two separate surveys conducted in different years, licensed facilities agreed nearly 100 percent to an increase in licensing fees in order to fund these positions.

Our legislators, unfortunately, will not even listen to this one.

How, then, to address these problems?

For legislative matters, we encourage you to talk to your representatives in Congress and tell them how you feel about this. Explain that you are concerned about violence against animals but also about the violence that it perpetuates against children and other family members.

Not sure who your legislator is? Simple enough. It’s all at www.kansas.gov.

The disaster training? Check in regularly at the Kansas SART Web site. It’s still under some construction, but it will try to list current training classes, and it’s a good place to find links to helpful resources.

And as always, it takes funding to run these operations. If you’re interested in supporting KsSART, your check will be put to good use “to provide shelter, medicine, and food for any animal in need.” Send donations to Kansas Animal Response Team, P.O. Box 377, Topeka 66601.

The animal supporters in the state will thank you.

And so will those messy little puppies.