Shelter Tour Report: Focus on Solutions

We just returned from a week traveling in the south visiting nine shelters in four states. It was a great trip and as always, we met incredible heroes, interesting locals, and so many beautiful dogs. I can’t wait to tell you about them in the coming months on the blog (after I finish telling you about the places we visited on our January tour!).

We have now visited nearly 125 shelters and rescues, and while many of the issues we see are the same, we learn something new every day we are out on tour. I continue to believe that our mission of raising awareness is key because until we know there is a problem, we can’t begin to fix it. That said, I don’t want to dwell on the problems, I want to focus on the solutions.

It is far past time we stopped killing dogs for space and warehousing them in the name of no-kill. There are solutions everywhere you look, but you have to want to look for them. I asked many of the directors I met, what they would do if they could do anything at their shelter—reality and money aside. A few mentioned increasing access to spay/neuter, but many were stumped by my question. At this moment in history everywhere we go the number of dogs coming in is going up, not down. Clearly spay/neuter is a piece of the puzzle, but not the only answer.

As I share in upcoming posts about the places we visited on this tour, I’m going to also explore the solutions that could be brought to each situation. I am also going to shift the podcast’s content to talking about not just the issues, but the solutions, so look for that starting in episodes later this week. There are concrete things we all can do to move us toward a country where all dogs are safe, no matter what state they happen to be in.

You can read more, see pictures, and watch the LIVE videos we did of our visits on our Facebook page, but meanwhile, here is a quick summary of this tour:

Our first stop of was Edgecombe County Animal Control Shelter. We learned that last year they euthanized dogs for space for the first time in ten years. Of the 522 dogs they took in, they euthanized 119.

This year is shaping up to be even worse. In fact, on the morning of our visit, they euthanized five dogs for space. The pain of that fact was written on the face of the ACO who had been assigned to carry it out. This shelter works with rescues and adopts a few dogs out locally, but clearly, they are struggling with the increased number of animals coming to their shelter. A few things we saw that would help are instituting public hours on the weekends and considering using some of the unused properties around them (owned by the county) to build a dog park or walking trails to engage the community in the shelter’s work potentially bringing in more volunteers and adopters.

Our second stop was at South Georgia Equine Rescue where we met an amazing woman who houses over 100 dogs/puppies (and assorted other animals) on at her rural rescue in Brantley County, GA.

The name is misleading because while they originally began in 2019 with a plan to rescue horses, they have morphed into a dog rescue because the need was so great. The unique thing about this rescue is that during the day, the dogs roam free on the 8.25 acres of the rescue. It was inspiring to see how happy and healthy the dogs were and how well they got along. The rescue takes on many challenging medical cases, including multiple dogs who had been shot. There is no animal control in the county, so without SGER so many more would suffer.

Next we visited McIntosh County Animal Control Services in Darien, Georgia, an amazing municipal shelter saves about 500 dogs a year and does not euthanize for space.

The dogs receive enrichment and wonderful care, including time every day outside in play groups. It was awesome to see a municipal shelter with an older building that was doing everything right in terms of health protocols and care of their dogs. A couple of unique elements here – they send their puppies, small dogs, and highly-adoptable dogs to rescue, keeping the tougher cases with them so they can work with them to find the right home. AND out of over 500 dogs last year, they have had only 5 returned.

At the City of Nashville Animal Control shelter in Berrien County, GA, we met a young Air-Force veteran who has just taken over as ACO/director/sole employee of the small shelter.

Kayla is also the owner of a boarding facility and a dog-trainer who is bringing new energy to this small municipal shelter. Without Petfinder or Animal Shelter software (and only recently gotten internet access), she is networking the dogs through Facebook. Kayla utilizes volunteers whenever possible and makes the most of a small fenced area for play time and training. And while it looked tough at this juncture with all the dogs living outside in raised kennels with wood floors and wood shelters (think large rabbit hutches), it is only a matter of time before a new story is told here.

We returned to Mississippi Animal Rescue League for a second visit to discover that while it is still a hard shelter euthanizing 57% of the animals they take in, there are signs of progress and a new director with ideas for improving the situation through the use of a foster program and rescue partners.

Mississippi has so few shelters and nearly all of them are managed intake. Because MARL is open intake, they take all the animals no one else will take in addition to having the animal control contracts for about 11 municipalities. The number of animals coming in has gone down each year to 8700 in 2022, but the staff is euthanizing on a daily basis. This is a tough story, but a true one that needs to be told.

Our next stop was also in Mississippi at a foster-based rescue Midsouth Animal Welfare Foundation three hours north of MARL.

We met two women who foster 30 dogs or more at a time on their rural properties for Midsouth Animal Welfare Foundation. They are both retired and giving every spare second and what’s left of their social security money to save dogs and puppies in an area where there are no animal control services. We were so impressed by the work they are doing, that we awarded them an Instagrant to purchase materials to build new kennels to replace some of their failing kennels (formerly chicken coops).

Our seventh shelter was a return visit to Corinth-Alcorn Animal Shelter to see their new building.

In June 2022, the shelter moved into the former Men’s Work Release Center on a three-acre property adjacent to the regional jail. They are still in the process of renovating the space, but have been able to ramp up their AC Spay program offering $25 spay/neuter (plus a rabies shot) to anyone in the county. They are full with 160 dogs and unable to take owner surrenders. With a staff of only 7, they need more volunteers to get the dogs out. We’d love to see them build play yards and begin a play group program to help relieve the high stress level in the dog areas of their shelter. Their director, Charlotte, would also love help renovating the space to make it better for the dogs. But both of those initiatives take money.

We next traveled to Tennessee to visit County Road Animal Rescue, a small rescue that is effectively the county shelter for Wayne County (which has no animal control services or shelter).

The shelter is in a former auto shop right in the center of town. It’s run by three remarkable women and a handful of other volunteers who do all the work – cleaning, caring, fundraising, adopting out, and networking to rescue the nearly 600 dogs and puppies they handle each year. They are frustrated that the county does not see a need for municipal animal control and worry that many animals are left uncared for, as they can only do as much as they are doing.

Our last stop was at Coffee County Animal Control Shelter in Manchester, TN.

This was an outstanding public shelter that handles over 500 dogs a year with a save rate of 95.5%. There are just two ACOs no volunteers are allowed because of liability at their current location) who run all the calls and do all the care, in addition to marketing the dogs to the public and to rescue. They have excellent support in a new mayor who increased their medical budget and is speeding up the long-awaited plan for a new shelter. It was a great shelter to finish our tour on – and we can’t wait to see how it blooms in a new location with a new building.

I’ll share more about these organizations in the coming months on the blog, but as I said earlier, you can jump over to our Facebook page to see more pictures and stories, plus videos of all of them, plus ways you can support them whether it’s shopping their Amazon wishlists or paying some vet bills, to making a bigger investment or volunteering virtually.

If you know of a shelter we can shine a light on during one of our tours, message us at whowillletthedogsout@gmail.com and we’ll add them to an upcoming tour.

Until each one has a home,

Cara

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Learn more about what is happening in our southern shelters and rescues in the book, One Hundred Dogs & Counting: One Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey Into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues (Pegasus Books, 2020). It’s the story of a challenging foster dog who inspired me to travel south to find out where all the dogs were coming from. It tells the story of how Who Will Let the Dogs Out began. Find it anywhere books are sold. A portion of the proceeds of every book sold go to help unwanted animals in the south.

For more information on any of our projects, to talk about rescue in your neck of the woods, or become a WWLDO volunteer, please email whowillletthedogsout@gmail.com or carasueachterberg@gmail.com.

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