PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — For years, those at the Portsmouth Humane Society have worked toward a big goal.
“We finally hit the safe percentage of 93 percent. So that will classify us as the first no kill community in Hampton Roads, that’s a city intake shelter,” said Portsmouth Humane Society outreach coordinator Mandy McCluskey.
Workers say they don’t euthanize because of space or time.
A total of 1,324 animals were adopted out in 2018.
McCluskey says there were a bunch of things that contributed to reaching this goal.
“A couple of different things happened. We started a community cat chat page on Facebook so that we could let everybody know we had barn cats that were available for adoption.”
Fifty-two barn cats, also known as feral cats, were adopted.
And holiday programs also brought awareness to fostering and adopting animals.
“Also our fostering for Thanksgiving program that we initiated two years ago really took off this year, we actually had more fosters then we had dogs this year,” she said.
In addition, the humane society treated 22 heartworm positive dogs.
“It’s one of the easiest diseases to be prevented and one of the hardest, so to speak on the animal, one to treat,” McCluskey said.
They also completed 800 spay and neuter surgeries.
And while they met their 2018 goal, they have a goal for the new year too: maintaining their no kill status and working to save even more animals.
“Obviously in 2019 we’re still going to need all the supporters and advocates for the animals to keep helping us make sure that we can maintain this,” she said.
To learn more, or donate: https://portsmouthhumanesociety.org/.
