The St. Joseph Animal Shelter has been implementing new ideas to place pets in homes and as a result, had a successful year of adoptions.

Kappy Hodges with the Friends of the Animal Shelter said the main goal of the Friends is to assist the shelter in any way possible. 

“They really make a big commitment to getting as many pets adopted as possible and so we do a lot of fundraisers to get money for vaccines and veterinarian care for dogs or cats that come in with problems that need fixing and we just do everything we can to help promote the adoptions of pets that are down there.” 

This year, 100-percent of the adoptable dogs were adopted. 

“Of all the ones that come in that were adoptable and put up for adoption they either went out to rescue or they got adopted to a home so that’s really encouraging information,” Hodges said. 

Cat adoptions are up at 82-percent, the highest in recent statistics. Hodges said she thinks the reasons for the increase include the animal shelter implementing some changes. 

“In the last several years the animal shelter’s been employing a lot of different innovative techniques to try to get fewer and fewer adoptable animals euthanized just because of space,” Hodges said. “One of the programs they’ve started is the Puppies for Parole program and that’s been going very well. This year, there were 61 adopted that were in the program.” 

The animal shelter staff also contacts rescues and other animal shelters that maybe are low on pets and they bring animals to those place. Also this year, because of a grant from Purina, the shelter was able to build a “catio” for the cats at the shelter. 

Hodges said they’re always looking for volunteers to help out with cleaning, Pet Previews and more. 

For more information on volunteering with the Friends of the Animal Shelter or donating, click here.