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Souris Valley Animal Shelter champions animals (Minot
Souris Valley Animal Shelter champions animals
Submitted Photo Shelbi Waters
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and family with a rescued kitten.
By ANDREA JOHNSON
Staff Writer ajohnson@minotdailynews.com he Souris Valley Animal Shelter and its dedicated staff and volunteers have been champions for the many companion animals in need of rescue. Volunteers were needed more than ever during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which happened at the same time as a $3.5 million building project that has completely upgraded the shelter.
Because animals could not be housed in the shelter during construction, foster families were recruited from across the state to love and take care of cats, dogs and other pets.
“The foster program was created during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020,” said executive director Shelbi Waters. “In order to keep our employees safe, we moved forward with closing the shelter to the public. However, that didn’t stop the animal crisis from happening. Our team worked with Maddie’s Fund research students to develop a solid and professional program. It has been wildly successful.”
Waters said the animals just do better when they are able to live in a home with a family instead of in the stressful, institutional setting that a shelter provides.
“Fostering is important because it allows a completely different experience for animals who are abandoned, abused, or ill,” said Waters. “It has been proven that animals do not thrive in a shelter setting. By allowing animals to enter a home instead of a shelter, they are able to develop the basic mannerisms that allow them to become more adoptable. The shelter is able to find out more about the animal’s personality through a foster caregiver, and therefore allow the SVAS adoptions team to make better decisions on adoptive placement. Bottom line, animals do significantly better in a comfortable home with loving humans than they do in any shelter setting.”
Every person on staff at the Souris Valley Animal Shelter has fostered a pet and understands intimately what is involved in caring for the animals.
“Our fosters do the hard work,” said Waters, who often takes over the role of a mama cat and cares herself for newborn, orphaned kittens who need to be bottle fed ever three to four hours while remaining on heating discs and physically stimulated so they can defecate and be weighed every day. “They care for the sick animals. They care for neonatal puppies and kittens. They care for nursing mommas. They care for animals with significant behavior challenges. They care for the dogs that are too afraid to come out of their kennel and the cats that won’t allow you to touch them. All of those are challenges that fosters take on with big hearts.”
All the care given to the baby kittens landed the shelter a $40,000 grant from Best Friends, said Waters.
This year Waters has fostered 23 cats and 15 dogs, while also running the shelter and overseeing the building project. In December she fostered a litter of a dozen puppies along with the mother dog. Waters said her husband fell in love and they ended up adopting one of the puppies from the litter. They are also dog lovers and foster St. Bernard dogs because they love the breed.
Other staffers are equally dedicated.
Logan Wood, the staff veterinarian, fosters animals with severe medical problems and adopted an elderly chihuahua with severe heart problems. In mid-August Wood was taking
has completely upgraded the shelter.
MINOT has been proven that animals do not thrive in a shelter setting. care of a cat with flesh-eating bacteria. Waters said the staff call Wood’s house “Dr. Wood ICU” or “Dr. Wood’s hospice care.”
Laura Garcia, the director of operations, fosters older kittens and adult cats and has an entire room in her house set aside for the cats she fosters. She just adopted Scout, an orphaned kitten that Waters had bottle fed for several weeks Once Scout the cat was old enough to eat wet food, Garcia took her home and fell in love. Scout and her litter mates might have been euthanized but fortunately they were transferred to Souris Valley Animal Shelter, which is now a no kill shelter.
Puppies can be a challenge to find homes for too, according to the shelter staff. Jazmine Shultz, who co-owns Prairie Sky Breads in Minot, fostered a litter of four puppies that had been transferred to Minot from a shelter in Oklahoma.
“The SVAS team actively seeks puppy fosters for several reasons,” said Waters. “Puppies are immune-compromised due to the inability to vaccinate the first six weeks of life. Puppies also require socialization which is sometimes difficult to provide in a shelter setting.”
Some foster families travel from a distance to care for the pets. Foster family Gary and Jamie Montgomery from Williston drove all the way to Minot to pick up a pregnant dog. A few days after they took her home, the dog gave birth to four puppies and had humans to help her.
“This could not happen if she were in a shelter setting,” said Waters.
