Chris Berendt/Sampson Independent
This 1-year-old husky terrier mix, with one blue eye and one brown eye, sits, shakes and plays games. He is one of the many furry patrons at the Sampson County Animal Shelter, which has seen a rise in adoptions in recent months.
Chris Berendt/Sampson Independent
This 2-year-old Cocker Spaniel/Golden Retriever mix is one of more than 40 dogs up for adoption at the Sampson County Animal Shelter, which has a full house and plenty of animals seeking a home for the holidays.
The Sampson County Animal Shelter is seeing a rise in adoptions, despite the implementation of fees earlier this year requiring owners to pay the cost of spay and neuter procedures upon adoption of their new pets. Originally fearing it may derail adoptions, local officials have seen those fears assuaged, especially in recent weeks.
Animal shelter director Kim Williams said adoptions have actually gone up in recent months, and the holiday rush has given that figure an additional boost.
“We’ve seen an increase in the last couple weeks,” said Williams. “We’ve adopted quite a few in the past four or five weeks. We’ve definitely seen a jump.”
The shelter has worked with some area rescue organizations, including a couple in Wilmington, in order to spread the word about those pets up for adoption and use combined resources to link them up with owners. “It’s worked well so far,” said Williams. “That’s been our biggest asset in working with these groups. It’s something we haven’t been doing but we started in the last several months.”
Sometimes, the rescues would take pets from Sampson “three at a time” after the proper fees are paid locally, including the adoption and spay and neuter fees. After the spay and neuter procedure is completed, the pets can be on the way to their new home.
Whether pets are going out of the county, or staying here, the fact they are being adopted at such a steady — and rising rate — has presented an ideal situation, Williams noted. He was not so sure it would be this way earlier this year.
At Williams’ request, the Sampson County Board of Commissioners approved new fees at the beginning of May, instituting a new system through which every person adopting a dog or cat from the shelter would be paying for the animal to be spayed or neutered.
Current fees are $40 for cats ($10 adoption fee, $30 spay and neuter fee); $80 for male dogs ($25 adoption fee, $55 for neutering); and $105 for female dogs ($25 adoption fee, $80 for spaying). The fee for dogs includes one parvo vaccination, and one post-op visit. That was a sizable hike from the previous fees, which consisted solely of the $25 for dogs and $10 for cats adoption fees.
Even though touting the spay and neuter program, the shelter director had initially shared his concerns with the adverse effects it might have on the number of shelter adoptions.
The implementation of a spay and neuter program in Sampson, and the associated fees, was a move made in an effort to increase pet health and curb pet overpopulation. Williams feared that, despite being healthy for pets, the associated spay and neuter fees would dissuade would-be owners from adopting. He said a fee hike could be “debilitating.”
That just has not been the case.
“We were afraid that might not be a help,” he stressed. “That has not been that big a deterrent.”
Where the shelter used to adopt somewhere around six animals each week at the beginning of this year, that weekly number now consistently averages around eight or nine. And Christmas time has seen even more visitors come through the doors at the shelter, located off of U.S. 421 south of Clinton.
“We’ve had a much better November and December than we had last year,” said Williams, who took the helm as director in November 2010. “We’re doing better than we did last year. It’s not because of me. I don’t really know what to attribute that to.”
More exposure, and a new system that takes care of a spay and neuter procedure for new pet owners might be part of it, he noted.
Spay and neutering for cats is done at the animal shelter facility; those who adopt dogs will be referred to a local veterinarian so the animal can be treated. The full fee is paid to the shelter upon adoption. After payment is received, vouchers are given to those adopting dogs. Along with the voucher, an appointment is set by the shelter for the new pet owner to go to the local vet’s office to get their pet spayed or neutered.
While many pets go out the doors to new homes, still many are coming in. Currently, there are close to 65 animals, roughly 45 dogs and 20 cats, that are being housed within the shelter.
“We’re getting a lot of animals in, some surrenders,” said Williams. “Our inventory is back up, and the quality (of canines) is up a little bit as our adoptions have increased. We have Jack Russells, a Maltese mix.”
Blue tick and walker hounds are also among those up for adoption. With its fees, although inflated from where they have been traditionally, the shelter has been able to provide a feasible alternative for those who want to rescue a pet.
Many have taken advantage of that opportunity, as the numbers show.
“The numbers continue to be good,” he said. “It’s just the economics of it. You get to adopt a dog and have it spayed and neutered, $80 for a male and $105 for a female, where just a spay and neuter costs alone may be much larger than that. That’s not a bad deal. Economics has a lot to do with it — then, just the time of year.”
This past summer, just a couple months into the revamped adoption procedure, Williams shared much the same news of steady adoptions, something that surprised him at the time. The news came with some apprehension, as shelter officials waited for the backlash, and the other shoe to drop.
Now that it hasn’t, Williams is much more optimistic that the decline in adoptions that normally comes after the holidays might not be as drastic in Sampson.
“I’m expecting to see maybe a little drop off around January,” he said, “but as well as we have been doing, we might not see as big a drop off as expected.”
Chris Berendt can be reached at 910-592-8137 ext. 121 or via email at sicrime@heartlandpublications.com.
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