{"id":33554,"date":"2023-06-02T22:51:59","date_gmt":"2023-06-03T04:51:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-animal-shelter-seeing-fewer-adoptions-more-cats\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:11:02","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:11:02","slug":"cortez-animal-shelter-seeing-fewer-adoptions-more-cats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-animal-shelter-seeing-fewer-adoptions-more-cats\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez Animal Shelter seeing fewer adoptions, more cats"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A
A kitten at the Cortez Animal Shelter awaits adoption Friday, June 2, 2023. (Shylee Graf\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Cortez Animal Shelter sees fewer adoptions during the summer months, leading to an increase in animals at the shelter as people surrender their pets ahead of summer break.<\/p>\n

Kennel Supervisor Jennifer Crouse says that the number of animals at the shelter fluctuates daily.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are an impound facility for the Police Department and the Sheriff\u2019s department,\u201d she said Thursday. \u201cWe get impounded animals on a daily basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

As of June 1, the shelter had five dogs and 12 cats available for adoption, according to Crouse. These numbers can change day-to-day as more animals are surrendered.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn cats we are full to capacity; on dogs we are not full,\u201d Crouse said. \u201cThat could change overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crouse explained that the adoption trend usually occurs this time of year.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdoptions generally go down when school lets out because people go on vacation, they don\u2019t have time. It\u2019s the same with fall. When school starts, it tends to go down as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A
A kitten at the Cortez Animal Shelter awaits adoption Friday, June 2, 2023. (Shylee Graf\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"A
A kitten at the Cortez Animal Shelter awaits adoption Friday, June 2, 2023. (Shylee Graf\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"A
A kitten at the Cortez Animal Shelter awaits adoption Friday, June 2, 2023. (Shylee Graf\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The shelter has been receiving lots of requests to take in kittens.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an overabundance of kittens in the county,\u201d Crouse said.<\/p>\n

The shelter also has taken in more dogs in recent months, an increase that she attributed to people who have moved out of their home or who have had rental problems.<\/p>\n

\"Dot
Dot is a sweet six month old female Pit mix available to adopt at the Cortez Animal Shelter (Jennifer Crouse\/Courtesty Photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Taz
Taz is a sweet six month old male Pit mix available for adoption at the Cortez Animal Shelter (Jennifer Crouse\/Courtesy Photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Freda
Freda is a six month old female hound mix available for adoption at the Cortez Animal Shelter. She is shy, sweet, and gets along well with others. (Jennifer Crouse\/Courtesy Photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Hilda
Hilda is an eight month old female Pitbull available for adoption at the Cortez Animal Shelter. She is great with other dogs and kids (Jennifer Crouse\/Courtesy Photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

For Pet\u2019s Sake Humane Society stated in its most recent newsletter that in the 40 years of its existence, \u201cover 10,000 pets have been spayed or neutered.\u201d About 6,000 cats have been fixed in the 15 years since the Feral Cat Project was started, and thousands of pets were placed in forever homes, thanks to For Pet\u2019s Sake\u2019s help.<\/p>\n

The group provides foster care for animals waiting to be adopted, financial assistance \u201cfor spaying and neutering pets,\u201d helps \u201cdogs and cats find forever homes,\u201d manages feral cat colonies, feeds animals that are spayed or neutered and are hungry, and financially assists pet owners with \u201cemergency vet care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lynn Dyer from the organization told the Journal<\/em> reporter that they don\u2019t have a physical building; instead, the pets are sent to \u201cno-kill shelters on the I-70 corridor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a great need for puppies and kittens\u201d in that area of the state, Dyer stated. Strict spay and neuter laws mean that there is a shortage of pets available for families to adopt.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t adopt locally at all,\u201d Dyer said.<\/p>\n

For Pet\u2019s Sake Humane Society is a volunteer group dedicated to helping animals in Montezuma and Dolores counties. According to their website, this group is nonprofit, and \u201c100% of donations go directly to helping animals.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018surrendering more animals in the last two months than adopting,\u2019 shelter says<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-33554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33554"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82257,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33554\/revisions\/82257"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33554"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=33554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}