Wabash County Animal Shelter, Inc. Wabash, Indiana

We are also not a No Kill Shelter. In some No Kill Shelters, animals are not put down for any reason. In that environment, you need various rooms for sick animals to suffer and live out their lives. No matter how careful you are, other healthy animals many times will still catch the diseases. In a true No Kill Shelter, injured animals are sometimes allowed to suffer and just given occasional pain meds to help with the pain.

We at WCAS love animals and want the best for them. As a Limited Admittance Shelter, we occasionally put down animals for poor adoptability such as issues with aggression or medical conditions that affect the quality of life. For example, in 2017, only 1% of the dogs received were put down for aggression or disease and only 6% of the cats received were put down for disease or injury. We Do Not euthanize for space. That means there are times when you may call and we do not have room for a stray animal. In the small shelter that we have, we only have room for 13 stray or owner-surrendered dogs and 2 kennels are kept open for law enforcement to quarantine a dog after a dog bite. If your child, grandchild, niece, or nephew was bit by a stray dog, I am sure you would want us to keep check on the animals for rabies instead of giving the child a series of very painful injections. (Note: We only take owner surrenders when we have ample room for additional strays). Many shelters never take owner surrenders. We only have room for about 24 cats and 8 of them are in the quarantine room. We keep a list of stray and owned dogs and cats and we take them in in the order the calls were received.

Cats are very susceptible to many diseases, we have a special room that all of them must go in for a minimum of 5 days while we check them for various disease symptoms. We then vaccinate them and hold in the quarantine room till the vaccination antibodies build up to start to protect the animals.

We are very proud that over 45% of the stray dogs we end up with are returned to their owners. However, when an animal is injured by a motor vehicle, usually no one takes responsibility and just drives off. The shelter steps up to help save the animal, but we get stuck with spending a lot of money for our efforts. Those owners never seem to come forward and claim those animals.

We appreciate the public’s support and ask you to be understanding when we are full and do not have room for additional animals. Most animals that get loose will find their way back home. We do our best to get animals adopted or find rescues for animals that are here for a while and have not been adopted. We also ask the public to remember, the real definition of “Rescue” is walking out of the animal shelter with an animal that no one else wanted!!! If anyone has any questions, feel free to call the shelter manager at 260-563-3511.