Animal control no longer taking owner surrenders as strays reach capacity

Shelters in the Blue Water Area are feeling overwhelmed as more animals are being brought in then people are coming in to adopt.

And if owners are thinking of surrendering, they are running out of options.

About six weeks ago, St. Clair County Animal Control stopped allowing owners to surrender their pets to the shelter because of the lack of space.

“We just didn’t have the room,” Melissa Miller, St. Clair County Animal Control's director said.

“Our intake is up by about 30% (since last year). Pretty much every kennel in the building has been full.”

She said that as soon as an animal gets adopted, another stray shows up in its place.

The increase of strays typically trends up throughout the summer.

“The weather is nicer, so dogs are outside more,” she said. “Things like fireworks cause the dogs to get spooked and run off.”

Kitten season, the time when more kittens are born, also occurs in the summer months.

“We’ll get a call saying, ‘I found a cat and it had kittens,’ but other shelters are full and we are full, so there’s no place for these animals to go,” said Sandra Kilby, Humane Society of St. Clair County SNAP's executive director. “So, then these people will curse us out and call us names… Then they threaten to throw the kittens in a field, shoot them or poison them.”

In the past, Kilby could contact shelters in surrounding counties or the Upper Peninsula to take in cats if they were full. She said that is no longer an option as they are also at capacity.

“We’re exhausted,” she said.

SNAP is aa spay and neuter clinic rather than an animal shelter. They also examine and vaccinate all the animals in their facility. With their Trap, Neuter, Release program, free roaming cats get their left ear tip clipped. Kilby said SNAP has spayed and neutered at least 27,000 cats in the area.

Kilby said 10 cats is capacity for SNAP. They are not intaking dogs at this time.

Miller said 35 to 40 cats and 30 to 35 dogs is capacity for St. Clair County Animal Control.

Assistance programs for owners

The St. Clair County Animal Control has programs in place to help animals either find or stay with their owners. During kitten season, the shelter is implementing kitten kits and a Find or Foster program.

“We’ll be working with the Find or Foster program and kitten kits probably through September,” Miller said. “That’s usually when orphaned kittens start weaning off.”

The kitten kits were a result of a virtual event the shelter put on where they asked people to donate cat-care items. The kits led to the Find or Foster program. This is designed to keep kittens out of the shelter environment, stay healthy and get socialized. The kits ensure anybody volunteering in Find or Foster have supplies to take care of the kittens.

“We have all the supplies right here for people to take care of the animals,” Miller said.

Animal control also has the CARES program to assist pet owners. The program is essentially a pet food pantry, with the goal to help ease any financial strain owners may be feeling.

“We want to keep pets with their families,” Miller said.

How can people help shelters?

Both Miller and Kilby said people can help by fostering animals for their shelters. Kilby emphasized the importance of responsibility when people want to foster animals.

“Nothing about a dog or a cat is free or easy,” she said.

Miller said to keep pets on leashes when outside and to keep them supervised. She also advised owners to keep some kind of identification on pets, whether it be tags, writing on the collar or microchips.

“Those have been helpful in a lot of stray cases,” she said.

Donations are appreciated at all the shelters. Additionally, Miller said people are welcome to volunteer whenever they can.

SNAP has a trapping program where people can rent cages to trap strays safely. People can then bring the animals to the shelter to get spayed and neutered.

“It takes a village, and we all need to do our part,” Kilby said.

Contact McKenna Golat at mgolat@gannett.com or (810) 292-0122.

This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: animal shelters in St Clair see increase in animal intake