Danville Area Humane Society: There is More to the Story Than Numbers

Our first stop on our March 2025 shelter tour was the Danville Area Humane Society Virginia. About an hour from Greensboro, North Carolina, Danville is a large, open-intake shelter on the southside of Virginia in the hometown of my alma mater, Averett University.

The director of DAHS, Paulette, started her association with them about the same time I was attending Averett. She served on the board for nearly ten years before taking the job as director in 1992 and has been there ever since.

Paulette is a soft-spoken women who handles her position and the challenges of the shelter with grace. As the only open-intake shelter in the area, DAHS handles 2500-3500 dogs and cats most years (and lots of other assorted animals, including, once, a prairie dog).

DAHS has taken quite a bit of heat lately for their Live Release Rate. But let’s walk that back, just a little.

Last year, DAHS handled 3275 dogs and cats. 1085 of them were animals that were refused intake at a different shelter in the area that practiced managed intake. This means that, in a fair world where every municipality took responsibility for the unwanted animals in its area, DAHS should have only handled 2,190 animals.

Managed intake means that if someone wants to surrender an animal and the shelter doesn’t want to take that animal – because they are full or don’t believe the animal is ‘adoptable’ or for pretty much any reason – they won’t take the animal.

One of the services DAHS offers is owner-requested euthanasia. This means that if a person’s animal is suffering and in need of euthanasia, they can bring their pet to the shelter for the service. That dog or cat was never in the shelter’s kennels, but that death is counted against the shelter. If an Animal Control Officer picks up a dog that has been hit by a car, takes it to the vet to be evaluated, and the vet has to euthanize that animal, the shelter pays for the service, and that death is also on record as the shelters.

All of which is to say, that the numbers are not telling all of the story.

I asked Paulette what needed to change for her shelter to have more positive outcomes, and she said, “For the other shelters to also be open intake.” As we talked more, she also said that they need more rescue partners to transfer out animals.

The shelter has many excellent protocols in place, and every adopted animal leaves spayed or neutered. As we walked through the kennels, I handed out treats and was happy to see how calm the animals were. The dogs accepted my treats with gentle mouths (when dogs are highly stressed and/or not sufficiently fed, they snatch the treats from me, and I’m very cautious each time I hand over a treat to a dog in a shelter). One of the newest intakes, a fun white pit mix, was a pro at catching treats, and I tossed him multiple treats, watching his impressive acrobatics. I bet he’d make a great frisbee dog.

I’m not a Pollyanna, and I know that too many dogs die at DAHS; I’d bet that Paulette agrees. It’s the last thing she wants, and she and the staff work incredibly hard to save all they do. “I don’t have the power to change the hearts of people,” Paulette said. None of us do. But we do have the power to change our own hearts.

DAHS is not just fighting to save dogs in the shelter; they are battling the source of the problem. Their animals are all spayed/neutered when they leave the shelter, but DAHS also gives grants as high as ten thousand dollars to area vets to pay for spay/neuter surgeries for community animals whose owners can’t afford the service.

Remaining an open-intake shelter is also combatting the source because it reduces the number of strays in the community. Stray dogs, which are likely to be unaltered, not only present a danger to the public and themselves, they also multiply.

If a shelter is contracted to handle the unwanted animal population for a municipality, it seems to me they are legally bound to handle ALL the animals, not just the ones they want to handle. Managed intake makes for lovely numbers, but it fails our animals. And it leaves the very citizens it was hired to serve with few options.

And while there are plenty of people who discard their pets frivolously, does that mean the shelter should abandon those animals, too?

In addition to more rescue partners, DAHS is hoping to increase its number of volunteers and fosters. This summer, they will hire a volunteer and foster coordinator to help them do just that.

More positive community engagement will be a great thing for the shelter. It could truly change the story here and help make this shelter an example of how open-intake can serve its community and its animals.

The city of Danville pays DAHS to shelter the animals. That doesn’t cover all of the cost, so the volunteers and board of DAHS have to raise the rest. They’ve been blessed with outstanding donors. In fact, when we wanted to unload some of the many donations our car was stuffed with, Paulette said we should instead take it to the shelters that are truly struggling.

I often ask shelter directors and ACOs why they took the job. Paulette got into this work because she could no longer look away and not see animals in need. And when I asked why she stayed, her eyes misted, and she said quietly, “Because I’m willing to have my heart broken.”

I understand that sentiment. People ask me all the time how I can foster so many animals and how I can spend so much time visiting shelters. It’s not because we are tougher than others or that we are not heartsick at the idea of animals suffering. It’s because we know that our own suffering is a small price to pay to help an animal.

Until each one has a home,

Cara

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Who Will Let the Dogs Out: Stories and Solutions for Shelters and Rescues was published in January of 2025. It is filled with stories and ideas to help everyone be part of the solution. You can buy a hardback or paperback copy for yourself and/or buy a copy for a shelter or rescue through our website. It is also available on Amazon in paperback and ebook. We are looking for opportunities to share a presentation of the ideas in the book and facilitate conversations about how we can work together to find solutions for our shelters. If you have a dog-hearted group that would like to connect, contact Cara@wwldo.org.

To see our Emmy-nominated, award-winning short documentary, Amber’s Halfway Home, click here.

For more information on any of our projects, to talk about rescue in your neck of the woods, or partner with us, please email cara@WWLDO.org.