Shelter Tat Could’ because it took us years to get where we are,” she said. Tese aren’t the only non-profit animal


shelters in Columbus, and many of these no-kill centers work together to retrieve animals from the Animal Care and Con- trol Center. “One of the things we started was the Save


a Pet program,” said Drale Short, manager of the Columbus Animal Care and Control Center. “Te program required us to culti- vate better relationships with various res- cues, so we have a very large rescue base that comes in and are able to get animals.” PAWS Humane Society was one of the


first to work closely with animal control, and their buildings are only separated by a stretch of grass between them. “We try to have a very close relationship


with animal control,” said Missy McClure, director of marketing at PAWS. “We pull about 50 percent of our animals from ani- mal control. Te other 50 percent we pull are owner surrenders.” Even with PAWS opening right next


door, the control center still needed more space to house the animals, which moti- vated them to cooperate with approxi- mately 30 other shelters in the area. “We were kind of in a la-la dream land,


thinking that with them being the non- profit they were going to be our adop- tion agency, but we found that the minute we opened our doors, both places were packed, so we had to continue our adop- tion process as well,” Short said. McClure has four dogs herself, though


she didn’t anticipate a fourth until she saw Jake, a laid-back boxer she couldn’t help but adopt. “We had some St. Bernards that we were


trying to socialize, so I would come in and get on the floor with the St. Bernards, and Jake would move his bed across the room and scoot it over where he could look over and see me,” McClure said. “I was like, ‘All right, you’ve got to come home with me.’” McClure said she quickly discovers the


animals’ unique traits, though some are more apparent than others. One Basset Hound in the shelter’s care


was specially trained to help soldiers deal with PTSD, and several puppies in one litter were born with pads on both the tops and bottoms of their paws. People in the animal rescue business


usually have a lot of animals Smith-Stull said, and before she opened Animal Ark,


AUGUST 2013 Columbus and the Valley 11


she had dozens of foster pets at a time. No matter the number of adoptions, however,


many animals are still euthanized each day, espe- cially during breeding season, McClure said. “Kitten season has hit everybody hard,” she


said. “Of course, we are at max capacity right now. We want to take in more, but as soon we adopt one another comes up.” Te control center has worked hard to lower


these numbers and has reduced their euthanasia rate considerably since 2010, Short said. “We started with a euthanasia rate of 79


Barley joined the Sprague household in 2006.


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