Coshocton County Animal Shelter offers support to struggling pet owners

With so many families struggling over finances, the Coshocton County Animal Shelter is available to help those with pets. The volunteers and shelter manager want to do everything they can to keep loved pets in their homes.

Hayley Sturtz, shelter manager, said this has been an extremely difficult year for the shelter. “We deal with so much every day. It seems like every day there is another traumatic event that we need to respond to,” she said.

Sturtz admits she and her team are heartbroken all the time. “It’s just been an unusually difficult year,” she said.

The high cost of everything and an over-population issue are forcing families and the shelter volunteers to make hard decisions every day.

“If a pet is loved and the family wants to keep him/her, we want to do everything we can to keep that family together,” Sturtz said.

The shelter can share options for families for low-cost spaying and neutering programs and also provides a food bank for families once a month.

“The next food bank will be Thursday, Nov. 20, starting at 11 a.m. The food is available in the shed next to the building, and we can use this time to meet families we might not get to otherwise. We can share educational information with them and offer to help find low-cost spay and neuter programs if they are interested,” Sturtz said. “This gives us another chance to slow the over-population that we have to deal with every day.”

Sturtz said the food that is used in the food bank is only what people have donated just for that purpose.

“We only offer food that people specifically tell us is for the food bank. Some people only want their donations of food and treats to go to the shelter animals, and that’s honored," she said. "The food bank is a separate donor provider.”

The over-population problem has been building since COVID.

“It seems during COVID people were home. They bred their pets or kept too many, looked to make quick money on dogs, and now here we are," Sturtz said. "People got pets. Then when life went back to the way it was, they didn’t have time any more, and they gave them up.”

Sturtz said from 2017-20 the shelter could see the programs they offer making a difference. There was a definite drop in the population of dogs and cats. That has changed drastically these last few years.

“The week of Oct. 19, we took in approximately 50 animals, just from Coshocton County," Sturtz said. "We don’t accept out-of-county animals any more as we just don’t have the room. This is a Coshocton County, community-based problem.”

More than $5,000 was spent in October to spay and neuter animals before they could be adopted and helping community pets be fixed too. Sturtz is grateful for partnerships, both locally and around the state, that are committed to helping her team care for the unwanted animals in the county.

Many of the animals that come to the shelter are sent to rescues when their stray hold is up. The shelter simply does not have the room or the resources to care for every one that enters its door for lengthy periods. Rescues have more funding and more fosters to help care for the dogs before they are adopted. No animal leaves the shelter, except to a rescue, without being spayed or neutered and having a medical exam.

The animal shelter is not a “no-kill” shelter.

“Sometimes, animals come to us that the most humane thing we can do is give them a little peace and love and provide euthanasia,” Sturtz said.

Sturtz is heartbroken routinely over that option but knows the animal is no longer suffering or in pain. She shared stories of animal hoarders who want to drop off 50 cats and demand she finds a home for every one of them. “It just isn’t possible,” she said.

She also said people in the community have often grumbled about the shelter’s policy.

“The community ignoring the over-population problem isn’t helping," Sturtz said. "We need everyone to spay or neuter every pet they have and the strays they feed.”

Sturtz is in favor of trap and release programs, if continuing care is an option.

The Coshocton County Animal Shelter is housed in a county-owned building, but the staff members are not county employees. The shelter has a budget of $23,000 a year and relies on donations from the community.

“We have programs that are unique to Coshocton County, and they are working," Sturtz said. "I am so proud of the small victories we see. I want the animals, even the unadoptable ones, to be treated with compassion. Even if that’s a warm meal and a gentle pat, we can at least do that for them."

The shelter has an Amazon wish list, and donations can be dropped off Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The shelter is located on Morgan Run Road. Visit their Facebook page and website to learn more about the shelter’s programs and policies.