Two thousand dollars a month. That’s how much Floyd County, Kentucky pays for the Floyd County Animal Shelter. That number includes the salaries of all three people who work there ($7.25/hour), the food, the utilities, the medical, everything for the approximately 900 animals that come through the shelter each year. When we visited there were…
Ruby has been the director of Butler County Ky. Animal Shelter for five years. As a former vet tech, she brings a lot of critical skills and animal knowledge to the job, but what she really brings is some serious smarts, of-the-charts resourcefulness, and a commitment to saving lives. The tiny shelter handled over 600…
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…
When we arrived at our first stop in Kentucky was at the Daviess County Animal Shelter, a group of middle school students was gathered in the parking lot waiting to tour the shelter. This was the first clue that this public open-intake shelter is something special. DCAS handles about three thousand animals a year. That…
Every shelter tour is hard, amazing, inspiring, heartbreaking, and exhausting, but I always learn more about the crisis of so many unwanted dogs in our country. This time we made 12 shelter visits in four states, bringing our total shelter visits to 95! Over the next few months, I will share the stories of the…
After winding our way through the rolling hills of Kentucky, we arrived at the home of Melissa, a foster for Kentucky Saving Them Together, Inc.. It was the perfect last stop for our fall shelter tour. Melissa, and Wendy, the vice-president of KSTT, welcomed us with a yummy spread of food and open hearts. Melissa…
Let’s go to @CampJean and save some dogs!
“I’ll do anything to save an animal.” Those were the words of Remi, the founder of Paws 4 the Cause in Lexington, Kentucky. We’d just met up with him as a last minute addition to our shelter tour after that morning’s originally planned visit had canceled. It was sheer luck that we happened upon Paws…
Our second week on tour coincided with Hurricane Ida, which thankfully skirted around the places we planned to visit mostly dumping a bit of rain here and there. We were able to rearrange our visits and move our one all-day outside to after the weather passed thanks to the flexibility of many people. While our…
Traveling through the south this time around feels different. It’s not just the masks that are sometimes prevalent and other times completely absent. As we wind through the mountains on our way to Nashville, I wondered about priorities. Is it wrong to want to save dogs when people are struggling so much? Will people care…
