By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The St. Joseph Animal Shelter is currently at capacity.
Humane Educator Aubrey Silvey says the biggest problem causing the overflow is not enough people having their pets spayed and neutered.
"So, there's a large, during the summer months we see all the litters of puppies and kittens and overpopulation and people just can't keep all those animals, and that's when they come to us," Silvey tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "So, it's just really important that people remember to spay and neuter and realize that shelters across the nation are overwhelmed, there's just simply too many animals and not enough homes for those animals."
Silvey emphasizes again that truly the number one way to combat shelter overpopulation is to, as Bob Barker reminded folks for years, have your pets spayed and neutered.
Currently, the shelter is seeing an overflow of cats and dogs in need of adoption or foster care.
Silvey says with the shelter being at capacity it is always providing resources to help or asking people to rehome a pet themselves.
"The animal shelter should be a last resort because we get over capacity and we're open intake so we can't say, there's no cutoff, we can't say our last cage is full we can't take anymore pets, we just have to keep taking them no matter what," Silvey explains.
The animal shelter is currently running an event to encourage adoption where adoption costs are $25. The event runs through tomorrow.
Silvey says the number of adoptions usually drops during summer and drops even more as the start of school gets closer.
"So, we do struggle a little bit more during that time which unfortunately is also, August is when we are at max capacity notoriously every year," Silvey says. "It's an unfortunate way that it works out but usually we have pretty good luck if we have an adoption event or some specials that we can run that we can encourage people to come out and get pets anyways."
The shelter has run many adoption events through this summer to encourage adoption and foster care of pets.