You may have heard this warning a few times over the last few years ... Pampa Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) is at capacity. It’s full of dogs and cats and the shelter is once again faced with euthanizing adoptable animals, but Executive Director Faustina Curry said this time is unique because it’s not just PAWS that’s full. Even their usual rescues that take on the overflow of unadopted animals from the Pampa area every month are full, including one as far away as Colorado. Where PAWS usually transfers 35 to 50 animals a month to other rescues and no-kill shelters, this month, they can only tranfer four.
“It’s the strangest time. We can’t figure it out. Some people say it’s the economy, but we’ve hit bad times before and it wasn’t like this. To me, it’s that people just aren’t interested,” Curry said. “I’ve been doing this for 13 years and I don’t remember it being like this.”
Curry said it’s been “like this” for the last six to nine months. While they normally don’t have to euthanize animals at PAWS, this year they’ve been grappling with it every other week - mainly the pit bulls that are the most difficult to adopt out.
“It’s not that they’re all bad dogs, they’ve just got a reputation, and they’re high energy dogs and a lot of people can’t deal with them,” Curry said.
The shelter has also struggled with having more dogs returned than usual after they’ve been adopted, with adopters admitting that they bit off more than they could chew in taking care of their new furry friend. They’ve also had animals surrendered that people claimed they couldn’t afford to feed, even though PAWS has a stock of free dog food they hand out to those in need when they hit hard times. Curry said even that isn’t helping.
PAWS works with Gray County Vet to provide low-income spay and neutering for Pampa’s animals, but Curry said it’s hard to see the impact that’s made. They’ve had two mother dogs come in in the last month, one that gave birth to 11 puppies, and one that gave birth to 13. At the time of this interview on Monday, June 26, Curry said they had another pregnant dog getting ready to drop a litter. And that doesn’t even touch upon the cats, which have added five litters of kittens to deal with.
“We spayed and neutered over 800 animals last year,” Curry said. “You’d never know it. We probably have 30 puppies in the shelter right now.”
Curry stressed that when it came to potentially feral kittens, citizens should wait to gather them up and bring them to the shelter. When in the wild, mother cats may leave their litter alone for hours at a time while she’s out hunting. Curry believes a few litters have been brought in by well-meaning people thinking their mother had abandoned them, but she said that was likely not the case. If the kittens’ bellies are full, the mother will be out roaming, she said.
“If you get to the point where you notice their bellies are shrunken in and not full, then you can bring them in,” Curry said, adding that they also can’t do much with feral kittens that are over eight weeks old. Kittens who are younger can usually be turned around and domesticated, but once they pass eight weeks, Curry said they’re likely feral for life.
Ultimately, the frustration for PAWS lies in realizing most of the dogs who have come in have clearly belonged to someone. They’ve had some success posting some pictures on social media where the owners were able to stumble on them and recognize their animals and come get them, but they haven’t had many calls to the shelter from owners looking for lost dogs.
“I don’t know why they don’t call the shelter. It’s a funny thing to me,” Curry said. “Animals that are being looked for are hard to find. Animals that nobody wants? They’re right there.”
And yes, people are still dumping animals on the highways. Lately, they seem to be popping up on the Borger highway. Curry said they recently had a mother dog and five-week-old puppies dumped. She’d been laying on the side of the highway nursing them when somebody finally stopped to pick them up and bring them in.
To help incentivize people to adopt, PAWS is offering adoption for adult animals, completely vetted - meaning they’ll come spayed or neutered, microchipped, and with a veternarian approved clean bill of health - for only $25.
