EATON — The Preble County Humane Society is asking the community for donations of adult dog food to help feed the many dogs they house, something they have not had to do since 2016 when they lost a major funder and the community rallied around them.
According to Kennel Tech/Assistant Manager Tiffany Kreider, the Humane Society has been around for more than 40 years, but in the current building since 2006. They take in as many dogs and cats as possible. They have room for 60-75 dogs, but have housed 90 when there were litters of puppies. They can house 30 cats at the most, while keeping room for kittens (who get adopted at a faster rate).
The shelter is no-kill, so any animals they accept are kept until adopted out. Their monthly adoption rate is 35, although that depends on how many dogs they have in the shelter. There is an adoption fee, but all Humane Society animals are spay/neutered, microchipped, given flea treatment/deworming, examined, given a heart worm test, and vaccinated.
“It has been a hard year with how many dogs have been surrendered and dumped,” Kreider said. “For the first time in awhile we’ve had three dogs test positive for heart worms in the past three weeks. Heart worms are fatal if not treated, and treatment is expensive. We’re working on getting that taken care of right now.
“We work with the dog warden to try and pull from him once we have room. He holds them for awhile as we assess them and makes sure they’re adoptable before we move them here and put them up for adoption. We do have an application process that we have potential adopters fill out. That way we know what they’re looking for, what their set up is, and how they are going to exercise their dog. We get a lot of dogs from the dog warden as strays so we like to make sure they have fences so they can’t run the town.”
With the amount of adult dogs they house, the Humane Society goes through 50lbs of food a day. There is no specific brand the shelter needs, though Kreider noted, most dogs enjoy Purina the best.
“Adopt, don’t shop,” Kreider stressed. “There are a lot of mixed breed dogs who deserve good homes and with us getting them neutered or spayed, the adoption fee we have for them is not bad. It is worth it to get an older, already fixed mixed breed dog.”
If interested in adopting, the Humane Society has an active Facebook page where they post all of their dogs and they also have a Petfinder page where adoptable animals can be found. Applications can be emailed or dropped off in person.
