Humane Society sees record adoptions, a few furry tales

The Humane Society for Southwest Washington wrapped up a banner year in 2018, as the organization tallies up a record year for adoption numbers and looks toward the future with a new vision for animal welfare.

The shelter saw its best year for adoptions in its 123-year history — 5,202 animals found homes in 2018. The previous record had been set the year prior with 5,144.

The big mover? Surprisingly, it was adult cats. Clark County residents took home 200 more cats last year than they did in 2017.

The uptick in feline fascination defies simple explanation, said Mary Clayton, the humane society’s supervisor of adoptions.

“We’ve had a couple of good promotions this year on cats,” Clayton said, citing a three-month “name-your-own-price” promotion on cats over six months old. But the strategies were nothing too far out of the norm. “It may just fit the lifestyle better of people.”

Also on the upswing: puppy adoptions. An additional 125 puppies found homes last year, compared with the total adoption numbers in 2017.

The shelter population looks vastly different than it did a decade ago, or even a few years ago.

For starters, it’s a lot less crowded.

“We’re taking in almost half of the number of animals we were taking in 10 years ago,” said Lisa Feder, vice president and director of shelter operations.

When she started in 2007, the shelter housed more than 13,000 animals through the year. Last year, it handled around 8,000.

“There are fewer homeless animals,” Feder said. “Part of it is people are taking better care of their animals, especially here in the Pacific Northwest.”

The drop in the local stray animal population can be traced to a few factors. For starters, there are fewer cats and dogs around because campaigns urging owners to spay and neuter their pets have proved so successful.

That’s fantastic, but it’s also a double-edged sword, Feder said. Because it means that the local animals that do come to the shelter are less likely to come from well cared-for, domesticated parents and more likely to be litters of strays, especially the dogs.

“The happy, healthy friendly dog, the family dogs that you grew up with, are harder and harder to find in shelters these days because people in the community are taking much better care of their dogs,” Feder said. “You don’t see people that have accidental puppy litters anymore; and if they do, they put them on Craigslist and sell them.”

As a result, the animals that come to the humane society tend to need more intense medical and social intervention before they’re ready for adoption. There are fewer individuals, but those canine charges often require more man hours.

“The expectation is that we’ll be able to take care of whatever comes in our door,” Feder said, “We have to invest a lot more internally in our resources to be able to rehabilitate our dogs to put them up for adoption.”

The humane society also sees less traffic due to lost pets. Once upon a time, the local animal shelter would be the first place someone would go with a found cat or dog, and the first place that a frantic owner would look.

Now, with online community forums and social media, it’s rare that the shelter ever needs to get involved in the reuniting effort.

But ultimately, the lighter load is awesome, Feder said, because it frees up resources to care for animals from other areas. Around half the dogs adopted out this year were transported in from natural disaster areas — from hurricane scenes in Florida and Texas, and wildfire victims from California. The shelter has the space to ease animal suffering in other parts of the country, so why not take advantage of it? The ability to do that, Feder said, means that she and her colleagues must be doing something right.

“Our business is very reactive. Especially on a day-to-day basis, you never know what’s going to walk through the door,” Feder said. “The thing that keeps me going professionally is seeing the arc of animal welfare.”