News / Life / Clark County Life

Humane Society sees record adoptions, a few furry tales

Humane Society for Southwest Washington produced more animal tales than ever

By Calley Hair, Columbian staff writer

Published: January 20, 2019, 6:05am

5 Photos

Animal care technician Tiarie West of La Center greets Dasher, a 4-year-old American pit bull, while feeding the animals at the Humane Society for Southwest Washington. The humane society wrapped up a banner year for adoptions in 2018, helping a total of 5,202 animals find homes. Photos by Nathan Howard/The Columbian Photo Gallery

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.

What stories stuck out to you last year?

• Jenn Rylander, animal care manager: "We have a great transport partner called Tall Tails that helps bring the dogs from the Texas area," Rylander said. They were en route to Seattle in August in the middle of a heat wave when they arrived at the Vancouver humane society with a scary problem: the air conditioner in the trailer had given out. "They had 90 dogs on their transport vehicle," Rylander said. "We said, we need to get these dogs off." The group sprang to action to clear them off the trailer. "There was staff members from every department out there, Rylander said. "We didn't have room, necessarily, for 90 dogs, but we couldn't leave them out there in that trailer in 95-degree heat." They bought some time to get the trailer's air conditioner fixed, then sent the dogs on their merry way to Seattle.

• Stacey Graham, president of the Humane Society for Southwest Washington: While campaigning for Clark County treasurer, Alisha Topper pulled some strings to get a tumor removed from a cat. "She went out door-to-dooring and came across an older woman in her 90s who had a cat who had a huge growth on its neck. Alisha's husband used to work for us," Graham said. So Topper made a call to the shelter and asked about its $50,000 annual fund to help send pets of low-income people to private veterinarians. The shelter connected with the woman's neighborhood vet, and the surgery was a go. "Now she has a cat that she doesn't have to worry about."

• Angela Rowand, animal care supervisor: "We had a cat named Opal. She was a senior cat, I think she was about 12. She had a thyroid condition, she was a little saucy, she didn't like to be handled too much." Opal stayed at the shelter for around 200 days, the longest of any animal last year. "Finally, one of our teen volunteers came in who just started not that long ago and convinced her grandmother to come in. So her grandmother came in, and they sat right there in the colony room -- because she had her own room, she'd been here long enough -- she got on her lap, she was her normal sassy self, and the grandmother absolutely fell in love with her," Rowand said. "She appreciated her sass."

• Mary Clayton, supervisor of adoptions: Last year, a 10-year-old German shepherd was found tied to a post in bad shape -- underfed, un-neutered, with a tumor on his side. Clayton took the dog, Artie, home for a few months as a foster to help stabilize his health. Artie finally went on to be adopted by Scott Tom, a radio personality on 106.7 The Eagle. He lived out the last of his days in style before passing away in December, and Tom remains an advocate for elderly dog adoption.

• Aaron and Tamme Racine, longtime shelter volunteers and fosters: The couple took in a foster dog last year named Lady. She'd been found in a car that had been towed three days prior during the summer. "The first night she came home, she just huddled in the kennel," Tamme Racine said. The next day, Lady was all over her lap. "It's amazing how these dogs will come out of their shell when they're out of the shelter and feel safe," she said.

Lady, who despite her past trauma loved long car rides, was adopted by a retired couple that were traveling in an RV across the country. The Racines still recieve photos from her current owners.

-- Calley Hair

“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.”

What stories stuck out to you last year?

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