Smith County Humane

Smith County is a rural county without a shelter or animal control services. Our goal is to obtain a physical shelter location within the next 2 years and work with the county and local municipalities to begin providing full animal control services to the residents in our county.

We have set a goal of getting 75% of the dogs in the county microchipped, to allow us to get roaming or escaped dogs back to their families as quickly as possible. Since our rural county has a lot of farms, and sees a lot of roaming dogs and repeat roamers, microchips will assist in minimizing costs as well as Length of Stay in foster home or shelter when we get one.

We are looking to begin a wellness plan program for low income families, those on government assistance, our seniors and veterans to provide annual wellness check and routine vaccinations at a reduced cost. We believe this program will be instrumental in preventing some animal welfare and neglect situations, which saves resources. We all believe this will help reduce owner surrenders from health related issues with maintaining proper healthcare.

We have a goal of reaching a goal of 85% of the owned animals within the county being spayed and neutered in the next 3 years. We are currently working on developing metrics to determine where we are and how many are needed annually to reach 85%.

Within 2 years, we hope to have 50% of the animals living on chains in outdoor kennels and off the chain/tether with our UnTetherMe Campaign. We currently have a large number of animals who live their entire lives chained or tethered outside. With continued education and providing a low cost kennel program for families in need we hope to begin to reduce the number.

We are always reviewing the needs within the community with a goal to identify the root cause of the problem. We utilize that information to create new targeted programs that are geared to reduce the needs that arise. We seek to reduce the overall number of animals in need by utilizing the prevention is worth an ounce of cure mantra. Creating assistance programs, intake diversion programs, helps keeps the number of dogs and cats in shelters down, and saves lives.

Assistance programs also create new homes for animals, which helps when you have a big overpopulation issue. Our county has been behind the ball for decades on managing the complexity of animal issues and needs in the community, and the needs of the residents.

We believe that being aggressive with these programs will save the organization money overall in the long run, and will create a more humane county for the animals residing here.

We are capable of implementing all of the new programs on a small scale initially, and work to grow the programs from there. We believe the new programs will also open up new grant opportunities, and support outlets.

We are bringing capitol fundraising initiates now to raise funds to buy/build a shelter, and hope to achieve this in the next 2 years. We have already tripled the average donations raised on an annual basis this fiscal year as compared to the 19 previous fiscal years. Activity begets Activity, the more we do in the community the more donors that come on board. The more we do now, the less we will have to do years down the road. Creating long term strategic management of the animal welfare landscape within the community will reduce lives lost and neglect cases long term.

We have rented warehouse space to begin working with HSUS and Chewy for truckloads of items to be donated to the community through community distribution days. We recently just held our first one, giving away 26 pallets of hard good items to the community including crates, gates, food, wireless fences, cat trees, carriers, pet strollers, and more!

We are beginning to work with the county to re-institute the animal welfare committee to begin discussions about steps towards a shelter and towards combined efforts of Animal Control.

Our spay and neuter numbers have been steadily increasing as we continue pushing spay and neuter in the county.

We have established a law-enforcement line for animal welfare related calls and emergencies that need assistance in the absence of Animal Control.

We have two volunteers who are undergoing National Animal Control Officer Certification.

We have established an emergency response team who is undergoing various trainings to be able to respond to various situations as they arise within the county, and to be able to assist other counties nearby when needs arise.