Over the last few months, the Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter has established a program where dogs are transported from the southern states to the northern states. Shelters across Texas and other southern states who see a surplus of dogs and puppies make arrangements with transport companies or rescues in the northern states to send dogs to them. The dogs we send up north must be friendly, have a health certificate and be spayed and neutered.
While the animal shelter recently expanded, last year we were housing around more than 150 dogs. That is simply too many to house appropriately or care for adequately given the space and available staff. When dogs come into the shelter at a faster rate than them being reclaimed by the owner or adopted, a shelter must figure out what to do to ease the stress on the shelter and the staff.
Adoption specials have been successful getting a large number of dogs into forever homes, but they haven’t kept up with the intake. Our shelter receives about 350 dogs a month and adopts out approximately 200 dogs each month.
Remarkably, the northern states have a shortage of dogs and puppies. Many states have legal requirements on breeders and spaying or neutering your animals is an expectation. A shelter director in Maine told me that the shelter there would be empty if it wasn’t for the transferred dogs and cats they take from the southern states. Until there is a cultural shift in the South, too many dogs and cats will continue to be an issue.
To continue to be a “no-kill” shelter, it is imperative that dogs quickly move through the system. Once the shelter is the legal owner of a dog (a dog surrendered by an owner or the stray hold is up), the dogs are either made available for adoption or transported out of the shelter.
Transports are planned a week in advance. A list of dogs and their pictures and behaviors are sent to the shelters we work with and they “tag” the ones they can take. After the dogs or puppies are tagged, then they must be medically evaluated and a veterinarian must complete a health certificate for them to travel across state lines. Once these dogs are tagged, they are no longer available to be adopted locally.
As many as 30 dogs leave at a time. Many of the dogs we send out already have potential adopters or are adopted within days of arrival — even ones that have been at our shelter for months. We also have an agreement that if a dog cannot be adopted at one of these shelters, they come back to us.
While adoption is still the No. 1 life-saving avenue for the dogs and cats that land in our shelter, this gives us one extra way to relieve the stress on the shelter, free up space and remain no-kill.
Cheryl Schneider is director of the Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter. Learn more about the shelter at pets.wilco.org.
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