By Ace Johnson
WEST POINT, Miss. – Passing by a white truck advertising the sale of pecans, I speed down the road, going just a little over the posted 65 speed limit. US-45 ALT going north slices right through the heart of West Point, a town made up of about 10,626 people (as of 2019) and sequestered between Starkville and Columbus. I only remain on the road for about eight miles then I turn off as I hit the outskirts of the town, rolling over a set of railroad tracks going about 30, clunk, and spinning the wheel to go right. After zipping past an Americas Best Value Inn, the back of the town’s middle school and several small, dilapidated factories, we finally turn into the West Point Clay County Animal Shelter.
This particular Saturday morning starts out cold. Not just a chill, but a deep, biting freeze that eats through my clothes as if they weren’t even there. I can practically smell the frost on the air and see my breath wafting out in front of me as I hop out of the driver’s seat onto the gravel parking lot, gravel crunching loudly beneath my boots in the still air. I shake out sleeves which had bunched up along my elbows on the drive here while surveying the land to see what might be awaiting us inside those rusting silver gates with barbed wire wound across the top and a creaky track that offers little support when laboring to open them. At 8:15 in the morning, the shelter is already awake and hungry.
Entering the shelter
A small, sharp ding announces our entrance into the lobby of the main building – the sight of the scruffy floors, threadbare carpet, and worn cushions on the couch and chairs lit a spark of warmth in my chest. It may not sound like much to the passing observer, but this is the place where a lot of us have made both the animals and people very happy by bringing them together for the purpose of achieving a forever home. Sadly, our matches aren’t always successful and pets are sent back, but this doesn’t occur often.
Me, my roommate Jordan, and shelter staff member and third fellow apartment buddy Brette quickly get to work feeding and watering the cats and cleaning litter boxes. We take care of the singular adoptable cat who likes snoozing on the high shelves in the cat room and the shelter kitties (the cats who have become permanent members of the shelter themselves). When hanging out at the shelter you will most likely catch a glimpse of at least a couple of our shelter babies, such as Boo, our pitch-black alpha male, as he wanders the property in search of ways to wreak havoc, or just a place to sun himself – usually on the top of someone’s car. You may even get a chance to pet Hayes, our orange-and-white obese boy on steroid shots, who is often found sleeping on the lobby couches or on top of volunteer sign-in forms.
After the cats’ breakfast and cleanup, we handle the care and paperwork for the intake cats, including a feral mother and her four kittens. Normally, we have more help, especially on a Saturday, but all of the office staff is out sick with COVID-19, so the shelter is shut down for the day.
Shelter draws many volunteers
According to Melanie Elmore, or Ms. Melanie, the office manager of the shelter, they get around 30 volunteers a week. The job of a volunteer ranges anywhere from socializing to walking or bathing the dogs to cleaning and/or fixing up the shelter where need be. Volunteers are very important to privately run (or “closed” shelters) like the WPCCAS because they do not have the luxury of enough staff or funding to do all the extras that would make the animals’ stay more comfortable or stimulating – they only have the means to worry about keeping them healthy until they are adopted.
Katy Wallace, now one of the main cat caretakers but once heavily involved with the dogs, explains to me that both puppies and kittens almost always go quick. They might even be already spoken for before even entering gen pop, or they might remain for about three weeks or so. With adults, the range is wider, as they could be adopted out within a week or they could remain with the shelter for two, three years or so. Seniors, animals with disabilities (or behavior issues), and pit bulls are notoriously hard to adopt out at the shelter because the main buyers are college students – a sector of the population who is most decidedly broke and often have to adhere to living spaces that more than likely ban pit bulls.
“The timing is even more off now,” Katy says, “because the peak of adoption was so high when the pandemic started, but now that it’s calmed down, people don’t want to adopt as much anymore.” This peak was actually reached well after the official beginning of the pandemic as the shelter was told not to adopt anything out for the first three months.
It is about 10 o’clock when Steve, another shelter worker who oversees dog care during the weekend, walks in with a little, skinny golden puppy wrapped in a white towel. She is shivering heavily and when I go to pet her, her ears and nose are practically frozen. It seems when Steve goes to clean their kennel – this is usually done by spraying the floor with a semi high-powered hose to wash away all signs of dirt and waste – the pup, Berry, and her sister, Halle, got in the way of the spray, getting soaked to the bone. Hearing this, I quickly handed Berry off to Jordan and went to retrieve the other puppy.
Intake
Entering intake, I walk to the cage Steve had indicated and find a tiny little brown and black puppy, shivering and nervous, but excited to see me. I quickly scoop her up in the towel I bring with me and go back inside. It takes several minutes for the shaking to stop, and several more before her feet, ears and nose to warm to an agreeable temperature again.
The WPCCAS takes in about 500 to 600 dogs and cats a year. They must either adopt out all animals or send them up north to find families as it is a no kill shelter, which means euthanasia in only employed during the direst of circumstances. Being a “closed” shelter, it relies heavily on donations, grants, contracts and fundraising; To stay just ahead of the curve, they have to put their faith in the kind-heartedness of others to offer up much needed supplies and money.
It also means they can take animals in at their own discretion. Practically all of their animal population come from the streets – homeless, strays, runaways – as they don’t accept owner surrendered animals. Just unwanted and unloved little lovelies such as the two little bundles of fur yawning in our arms.
Not much time had passed before the two pups, still chilled and tired to the bone, couldn’t resist exploring and playing with us and Tony (a dog Brette adopted from the shelter over the summer). They played hard and long for about an hour, with intermittent five-minute snoozes on our laps in-between, but eventually we had to put the puppies back in their kennel and get ready to close up the shelter for the day.
Departure
At about 12:10, we say our goodbyes to the cats and dogs and pull out onto the road, leaving the animals to their quiet, chilly fate until later this evening when some of the staff will come back to quickly feed them dinner.
If you are unsure how you can help at the local animal shelter, The Humane Society of the United States gives a list of ways to do so. The most common way is to adopt an animal; You could also donate, volunteer, or become a foster, as these are such necessary components of a thriving shelter.
Volunteering, while beneficial for the animals and the staff, is also beneficial for the volunteer. Western Connecticut State University has a whole web page on the benefits of community engagement which claims that volunteering can increase self-confidence, combat depression, and help you stay physically healthy – not to mention it looks great to future employers. It’s not just WCSU that thinks this way either – it has been proven in many studies by psychologists and is taught about in the Positive Psychology course at our very own Mississippi State University, that engaging in altruistic acts releases greater and longer lasting dopamine. And, personally, I think all of us could use a little boost on resumes and dopamine levels.
You could also do out of the box things, like publicly thanking the shelter on social media, liking and following the shelter on social media, taking concerns you have for the shelter to city officials and really rally support for your local shelter by being a public voice. Even doing something as little as properly identifying your own animals (by way of chip or collar) so they don’t potentially end up at the shelter themselves is lending a helping hand.
After having volunteered at the animal shelter for about three years before becoming a paid staff member, Brette has enough experience and time under her belt to say, “Just do it. Go ahead and volunteer if you’re thinking about it. It’s not scary there, and there’s no major commitment or expectation of you like with some places.”
Animals just like little Halle and Berry are euthanized at shelters across the nation everyday – according to the ASPCA, approximately 920,000 shelter animals are euthanized in U.S. shelters each year – so supporting the local no-kill shelters are important in the fight to save as many animals as possible.
When asked what Ms. Melanie would like people to know about their little shelter, she jokingly replies, “Just come adopt a dog!”