Oktibbeha County Humane Society reaches max capacity

OKTIBBEHA COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI)- When it comes to stray animals whether they’re dogs or cats, over-population can become a problem for any area.

The Oktibbeha County Humane society usually combats this issue by sending the extra cats and dogs to other shelters with a lower volume of animals, but sometimes even that isn’t enough.

Ardra Morgan is the Vice President of the Oktibbeha County Humane Society.

She sees hundreds of animals daily.
Lately, there’s been more than the shelter could handle.

“We just don’t have the room for them. If we could, we’d take in everything that we could. When we get full like we are, we run more of a risk of disease transmission because we’re in cramped quarters,” said Morgan.

Morgan said adoptions slow down this time of year, so she and her team have to rely on foster parents to step in and take a few dogs home.

“We have a lot of other resources here for people with their animals to try to keep them in their homes instead of having to give them up,” said Morgan.

Another solution to the over-population issue is setting up a puppy play-date.

Karleigh Kidd and her boyfriend scheduled a date with Sam, a black lab who’s been in the shelter for 2 months now.

Even though they can’t adopt her themselves, they hope taking her out in public will help her find her forever family.

“We actually used to have a black lab who passed away about 2 and a half years ago, and we saw Sam and she looks almost identical to the one that we lost. So, we were like ‘hey at least can we message them and see if we can take her out for a day’… If I can get her adopted and see a post a few days or a few weeks from now saying she’s adopted then my job is done,” said Kidd.

Morgan said that bringing more awareness to the issue is the only way to solve the problem of overpopulation.

“My biggest hope is that at some point, we’ll put ourselves out of business. That we won’t need the shelters and the rescues that we have. The only way we’re going to be able to do that is with education, and it’s going to take everybody in the community spaying and neutering, proper health care, making sure that your animals are well fed and cared for,” said Morgan.

For more information on the Oktibbeha County Humane Society and it’s many resources, click here.