By Nacogdoches Miller

Sun Intern

Outside of town and past the fairgrounds down a gravel and asphalt road sits the Clark County Animal Shelter.

Since the early 1970s, an animal care facility has been located at 5000 Iron Works Road providing creatures of all shapes sizes and species shelter and the hope of a better life.

Shelter Director Adreanna Wills said it is an open-intake facility which takes everything from cats and dogs to smaller or larger animals as well. Sometimes, that means horses or reptiles.

“When you are open intake, you can’t turn anybody away,” Wills said. 

Though Wills said they have as high a percentage placement as a no-kill shelter, the open intake policy prevents using that term.

The shelter works often with non-profits and other no-kill rescues to find foster placements until the pets can be adopted to their forever homes.

“The majority of the animals that leave here are either going from us to an adopter or from us to a foster home with one of the non-profits,” said Wills.

It helps animals in two ways. They are in a safe place and they can begin to adjust to living in a house rather than being in a shelter, Wills said.

Though their main focus is cats and dogs, Wills and her team also work to find out where animals come from to help them get home.

In her five years at the shelter, Wills said the oddest was getting called to remove ferrets from College Park.

The time an animal stays in the shelter can vary from days to months depending on its needs, she said.

In a year the shelter will assist between 1,700 to 1,800 animals with the highest percentage of those being cats. 

Cats are their biggest intake because of how fast they reproduce, Wills said.

The shelter has programs throughout the year to spay or neuter cats for $25 to help reduce feline reproduction. 

Wills says shelters like Clark County’s are necessary for communities because they help keep the animal population in check and keep pets off the roads.

“If you imagine all those animals just out running loose, not having an outlet to receive care, to be safe, animals in the street getting hit by cars with nobody there to take them on, treat them, rehabilitate them and then find them homes, what kind of community would that be?” Wills said.

Though it’s hard to see them in cages, it would be even harder to see what would happen to them in a world without care, she said.

The shelter also helps reduce nuisance issues of aggressive animals. It also provides an option for people who, whether it be because of health or financial issues, need a place to surrender their pets when they can’t care for them.

“We want to be there for that, to keep that animal in a home as well as provide a service to the community to keep the community healthy and safe and not overrun with stray animals,” Wills said.

Picking up two young lab mixes Thursday  for transport to a rescue partner were Jess Toews and her two children, Marley, 10, and Nadia, 11.

Toews said they are animal enthusiasts who love to help. When Wills asked if they could take some animals, “We said sure,” Toews said.

To compete with other animal shelters, Wills said the Clark County shelter includes more with their adoption fees than many other counties.

Adoption fees are $50 for cats and $85 for dogs, and includes heartworm testing, microchipping, deworming, flea prevention, and spay and neutering.

For cats, the fee also includes feline leukemia and feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) checks.

Wills said a lot of people will go to larger adoption facilities rather than shelters because of extra amenities which can give people a “feel good” emotion just because of the pictures on the walls and a home-like atmosphere.

Wills said people also might go because more options of pets can give people “instant gratification,” in adoption.

For those who are willing to wait, she said the local shelter  constantly sees new animals.

“An animal control agency can only be as successful as its community allows it to be,” Wills said.

When the community is not taking care of its animals or keeping them in check, then the community will be overrun, she said

“The biggest thing is if our community doesn’t support us, then the end result is we have to euthanize animals, and nobody wants that,” she said.

When the community helps its shelter, takes advantage of low-cost programs and helps adopt and find homes for the pets, it benefits the community in return.

“I want people to realize just because they don’t see our shelter having all the extras or being able to provide all the programs some of the bigger facilities are, that doesn’t mean they have animals that are any better than ours,” Wills said. “We get great animals, pure-bred animals, well-trained animals that people just can’t keep any longer for whatever reason.

“We have a top notch staff that cares. They build personal relationships with these animals so when people come in, they can tell them what they know about that animal’s personality. And I think that’s something you lack in big facilities.”

The Clark County Animal Shelter is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For more information about donations or adoptions, call (859) 737-0053.