Lynchburg Humane Society Blog

The summer months are crazy for shelters. Our intake goes from an average of 140 pets a month to 300 to 400 pets a month. That could be a very crowded shelter if we didn’t ramp up our adoption events and work to find good homes as quickly as we can. Over the last two years, we have called our summer adoption promotion the “Summer of 1,000 Lives.” This year, we are calling it the “Summer of Love.” It kicks off the weekend of June 3 with FREE Love Friday, featuring free adoptions, and Peace Saturday and Sunday, during which adoptions will be $2 (though exceptions may apply). Our “Summer of Love” will last until the end of August and will feature specials with adoption fees from half-off to free all summer long. Some might think that by reducing adoption fees and offering free adoptions, we are somehow sugges...

In our area, we are fortunate to have many great rescues, shelters and humane organizations working to end the needless death of pets.   We each have our own role and we each do our part. We feel it is much more productive to work together and put differences aside and help one another do what is right for the pets rather than publicly rant about what we disagree on.  We also believe that statistical information is important and speaks to one set of truths much more strongly than anecdotal stories that may show a small percentage of situations but not the greater whole.    That is why we were disappointed on May 5 th when a long standing board member of the Humane Society of Amherst County posted a Facebook post criticizing a number of things at LHS. The main focus of the post was about our free and low cost adoption specials we run.   The title of the post was CATS LIVES MATTER.   They speak about a certain situation around a cat named Da...

What we are finding in this amazing world of animal welfare is that everyone has a cat problem.   In the shelter world there is a “cat season”.   This is the time of the year when cat intake goes through the roof and there are way too many cats than there is space for.   This results in alarming euthanasia rates at traditional county/city run shelters. What does it look like? Well to give you an idea – Jan, Feb, Mar months typically see an intake of around 49-55 cats a month, during kitten season and summer months it shoots up to around 200-279 a month. Why?   Kittens.   Spring is when kittens begin arriving.   The question we always ask ourselves is when it will end? Some years it starts around March other years later like May, and continues all the way through to the fall.    The traditional shelters who are not no kill will euthanize cats to make space for new ones coming in because there is just no room at the inn, so to speak....