Bertie County is a small county most people pass through on their way to vacation on the Outer Banks. The county’s tiny shelter is the next to last stop on a road that ends at the regional jail. The shelter sits on a property prone to flooding, and although the county has had plans to…
Why are there so many dogs dying in our southern shelters? This is the question that has been posed to me again and again in podcast interviews, on social media, in emails, and quite often, in person. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that question and I don’t necessarily have a concise answer,…
In Robertson County, Tennessee, just outside Nashville, there are actually three municipal shelters. In addition to the Robertson shelter written about in the previous post, we also stopped at a tiny shelter ten minutes away— Greenbrier Animal Control. This small shelter has ten kennels and was currently housing 12 dogs. Shelbie is the only ACO…
While in Tennessee we spent a day with one of my favorite rescue women – Britt. Britt is a volunteer and outreach coordinator for CASA Transport . As part of that role, she spends a lot of time visiting dog pounds and shelters around middle and western Tennessee. She scouts out the dogs, gets pictures…
It took some doing, but we finally found the Forrest City Area Humane Society which partners with Forrest City Animal Control to save animals. The blue cement building was a mile down a narrow unmarked road that ran beside the train tracks and eventually petered out into a dirt/sand road before arriving at the shelter…
Who Will Let the Dogs Out started after Nancy and I began visiting southern shelters to learn where all the dogs were coming from and why. We didn’t know how to fix the problem, but we knew we wanted to help. So we used the only skills we had – writing and photography. As we…
In 2011, hope came to Hope City Animal Control in Hope, Arkansas in the form of a new organization created specifically to save lives. At the time, the shelter was euthanizing 92% of the dogs (no cats—this city deems them free-roaming animals, so they are on their own). Enter this group of passionate women who…
Mayflower City Animal Control is tucked away in the back corner of a fenced-in property that houses the street and water departments (the sign says EMPLOYEES ONLY). It’s so tiny and unmarked that we had to call for directions when we were only 50 yards away. The tiny shelter has only nine outdoor kennels beside…
The team at Caldwell County KY Animal Shelter has too big a job and too few resources, yet they are getting it done. The shelter is located in a small metal building tucked away in the woods behind a county park. When we visited, they had about 40 dogs, but the shelter is meant to…
County shelters come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and models, but most boil down to two basic options. A county shelter run by county employees or a county shelter that contracts a nonprofit to run their shelter. And here a little sidebar: Not all counties have public shelters. Until they do (or join…
