Financial strain threatens this Southwest Missouri animal shelter’s operations
CARTHAGE, Mo. — An area animal shelter, which is currently full, may have to shut its doors without an influx of more money.
Even if you found a stray cat or dog in Carthage, you wouldn’t be able to take him or her to the community’s no-kill shelter. If things don’t change in the coming months, Nancy Corely, the president of the facility’s board of directors, says there won’t be a shelter to take them in at all.
“It’s hard to calculate but somewhere between four and six or seven months and if funding does not increase, we will have to shut our doors and I do not want the public to be surprised by that,” said Nancy Corley, President of the Board of Directors, Carthage Humane Society.
She says the vast majority of animals at the shelter are brought in by the city’s animal control officers.
The city currently reimburses the shelter one hundred twenty-five dollars per animal, a number Corley would like to see doubled in the coming budget.
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Her concern is that personnel issues the council is currently embroiled in may shift the focus away from animals needing a home, including those that have been abused.
“He was left tied to the railroad tracks to die,” said Corely.
Corley is talking about this dog, “Thor,” one of the facility’s successful rehabilitation projects.
He’s healthy now, but Corley says he had wounds consistent with being mutilated by animals in the dog-fighting trade.
“We work very hard to gain their trust to rehabilitate them to make sure they’re adaptable so that they can find a forever home,” said Corely.
But Corely isn’t putting all the blame for a lack of operating capital on the city council, she’s pleading with the public to increase the amount of money coming in through donations.
