Fort Leonard Wood’s stray animal facility staff members plan to be more aggressive in their efforts to help people adopt dogs, cats and other animals found at Fort Leonard Wood.
Speaking Wednesday morning at the monthly Woodworks meeting of the post’s community service organizations, Kay Flores, the acting director of the post’s Non-Appropriated Funds division, said the facility has many animals available for adoption.
“We have mostly dogs and cats, and then sometimes things that are a little different,” Flores said.
A current example of unusual pets being held by the animal facility is a pair of sugar gliders. They’re currently on a 10-day hold and not yet available for adoption, but Flores said they’re some of the cutest animals she’s seen.
“It’s like a flying squirrel; they look like little chipmunks,” Flores said.
Unlike most off-post shelters, the Fort Leonard Wood animal facility can hold cats.
“We have kittens, we have adult cats, and we have some that are already spayed and neutered,” Flores said.
Responding to questions from her audience, Flores said there is an adoption fee that covers vaccinations and microchipping. Spaying and neutering is not done on post but adopting families must sign a contract to do that.
Flores urged people looking for a pet to consider adopting one from the shelter.
“Many of these animals were from military families that are PCSing to a location where they cannot take their pets or do not want to take them,” Flores said. “A lot of these dogs are already used to a family environment, so please, before you go off post to look at those cute puppies, stop and look at the vet clinic.”
Flores said the stray animal facility has about a dozen dog runs and has space for 30 to 40 cats at a time. While there is some limited cage space available for dogs, Flores said if the shelter becomes crowded enough to require use of the dog cages, animals may have to be euthanized.
“If we find ourselves with more animals than we can handle, we may have to make decisions about which are more adoptable than others,” Flores said.
Deployments and PCS moves can be high-stress times for military families, but Flores said animals shouldn’t have to suffer when a service member deploys or moves.
“We don’t want to promote the stray facility as a place to dump dogs, but we don’t want people dropping off dogs at the river, either,” Flores said. “If they do have to surrender the dog, they can bring it to our facility. They will have to pay a small fee, but we will do everything we can to find their pet a new home.”