Simpson County Animal Shelter seeing overcrowding, urges community to adopt

FRANKLIN, Ky. – The Simpson County Animal Shelter is seeing some overcrowding, and they’re asking for the community’s help in adopting, as some of their animals have been there for nearly a full year.

“We have seen, just like every other shelter in the area, lots of intakes. Some of ours are owner surrenders or moving into apartments, they can’t take their dogs. Some are aged owners that can’t keep their dogs, and of course a lot of strays. It’s an amazing amount of strays that we’re seeing coming in,” director Ruth Garriott says.

Like many shelters around the country, they’re facing this issue… so much so, that tough decisions may need to be made.

“We have over the past 4 or 5 years achieved ‘No Kill’ status according to Best Friends… and ‘No Kill’ doesn’t mean no kill per se. It is a 90% and above save rate of healthy adoptable pets… and so we have achieved that for the last five years, and it’s been really great to be able to do that. Right now is making it much more difficult… We try to look at dogs with behavior issues or I won’t even say senior dogs because senior dogs we can adopt out fairly quickly actually. Everybody loves a senior which is wonderful, but it does sometimes mean that really wonderful, healthy, adoptable dogs have to be considered for euthanasia, and that is not anything anybody here wants to do,” Garriott says.

One of their boys in particular is Sturgill, who has been at the shelter for nearly a full year now, and it seems there’s good news on the horizon for him.

“He does have a couple applications that people are coming to look at him, so that’s always wonderful… Sturgill is about 75 pounds, and so I think because of his size he’s sometimes looked over,” Garriott says.

With plenty of other dogs to choose from, the best thing the community can do is simply spreading the word.

“We’re open to out of state adoptions, we’re open to all sorts of creative things. We just… we would much rather adopt a dog out than have to make a different decision, but we need people to do that… and our community has been fantastic. We put out pleas for dog food, they send dog food. We put out pleas for cat food, we get cat food… and they’re really wonderful about that… and we do have a sponsorship program, so you can donate $50. You can earmark it to whichever dog you want… and that does help cover the medical fees, because a dog like Sturgill that’s been here 11 months… it’s about $20 a month to keep them on heartworm prevention and flea prevention and make sure he’s getting his De Wormer and all the things, because we still have to care for him and that costs money,” Garriott says.

To help out, visit simpsoncountyanimalshelter.org.