Lynchburg Humane Society Blog

The Lynchburg Humane Society has had a long standing relationship with the City of Lynchburg.   We are very lucky to have a positive association with both animal control and city officials.   In the State of Virginia every locality needs to have a public animal shelter. Here in our area we are the only public animal shelter that is run by a private humane organization. The code states: The governing body of each county or city shall maintain or cause to be maintained a pound and shall require dogs running at large without the tag required by § 3.2-6531 or in violation of an ordinance passed pursuant to § 3.2-6538 to be confined therein So what does that mean? The definition of pound or “public animal shelter” is “a facility operated by the Commonwealth, or any locality, for the purpose of impounding or sheltering seized, stray, homeless, abandoned, or surrendered animals or a facility operated for the same purpose under a contract with any locality.” The primary r

Choice, it is all about choice.   Organizations, government, the community as a whole have to decide. Is it ok for the life of a pet to be taken because there is another pet needing its cage?  I recently had the privilege of speaking at the Best Friends Animal Society’s National Conference in Salt Lake City, which hosted over 1,300 industry people.   At the conference the group planted a stake in the ground, announcing they were taking the United States to No Kill by 2025.   Wow, that seems daunting when you consider that there are only around 300 No Kill communities in the US.       Similarly, in 2009 the Lynchburg Humane Society’s board of directors planted our stake in the ground for Lynchburg City.   We made a commitment to change how we operated and created a community where pets’ lives were valued and no healthy or treatable pet would be euthanized.   In 2011, the Lynchburg Humane Society succeeded with a save rate of 90%, which is a nationally recognized threshold.