At the New Albany Floyd County Animal Shelter, there are big changes coming as we become better than we have ever been – for the animals, the volunteers, the staff, and YOU! With the pandemic and the world as it is, we, as a shelter, have deeply reflected on where are how we can improve and have set goals to do so.

One thing that we have already started is becoming a shelter that holds to a Fear Free standard. Fear Free Shelters is a program designed to help reduce the fear, anxiety, stress, and frustration of the animals in our care as well the pubic, staff, and volunteers. This ranges from how we handle the animals during our interactions to how we clean, enrich, and educate in every area of the animal sheltering world. More than half of the staff has already been certified and completed additional courses as well!

To be Fear Free, we also need the community, in a safe way. We are completely renovating our shelter volunteer and foster programs. These programs will be instrumental in improving all the lives we encounter! We are still working on the details of these programs and hope to release them as soon as we safely can. Safety is our number one priority!

We don’t only want to help the animals; we want to help the community! We are creating programs to help current pet owners and those interested in becoming new pet owners! Education is so important and is a key part in being a successful pet parent. We want every home to have the skills and necessities needed to create and maintain an amazing pet and owner relationship.

As great as these program renovations are, it unfortunately does come with some additional new needed items. We have created an Amazon Wishlist if you would like to help us get some of these items to help get these programs up and running! Each item has a description of how the item would be used along with how many we are asking for. No donation is too small! The Wishlist link can be found on our website, www.nafcanimalshelter.org,  under the Support Your Shelter tab.

We would not be where we are already without your support. With your continued support, we can become even better. There is no limit to our potential together! Shelter staff and the homeless pets thank you!