April Proclaimed as Safe and Humane Fort Wayne Month

This morning, the Mayor’s office proclaimed April as Safe and Humane Fort Wayne Month, encouraging all citizens to help Fort Wayne Animal Care and Control and Humane Fort Wayne by volunteering, fostering, donating, or adopting a pet to celebrate the month. 

Fort Wayne aims to change animal shelters into lifesaving centers saving all healthy and treatable animals. Fort Wayne Animal Care and Control and Humane Fort Wayne encourage innovative joint programs, including return, transfer, community outreach, and other humane programs, policies, and partnerships deemed necessary to ensure live outcomes for dogs and cats.

“We need the community’s assistance to ensure we can provide the best possible outcome for the animals in our care.  Adopting one of the thousands of animals, becoming a temporary foster home, volunteering a few hours a month, and or donating so we can continue fulfilling our mission are all options to create a safe and humane community,” Fort Wayne Animal Care and Control Director Amy-Jo Sites said.

“Fort Wayne is fortunate to have two strong organizations dedicated to saving the lives of animals in our community and we look forward to work together even more cohesively in the month of April. We encourage citizens to join us in that fight ,” Humane Fort Wayne Executive Director Jessica Henry said.

“Collaboration is the key to success and we are so excited to see these two organizations come together and put forth a call to action to improve lifesaving efforts within Fort Wayne. During Safe and Humane Fort Wayne month, we encourage the community to join the efforts by adopting, volunteering, and fostering,” Best Friends Animal Society Senior Strategist, Midwest Region Liz Stamper

With the help of the residents of Fort Wayne and Humane Fort Wayne, positive changes can be made to help bring about positive outcomes for the dogs and cats in the care and possession of Fort Wayne Animal Care and Control.

To be part of the positive change please click here to donate funds or click here to be a foster home. If you are looking to adopt please click here.

Fort Wayne, IN. – Looking back on 2022, Fort Wayne Animal Care & Control continued to expand its life-saving efforts and develop more ways to be more of a positive resource to the community.

Throughout 2022, FWACC encouraged the community to consider donating to our Angel Fund. The angel fund helps create life-saving options for animals in our care who have advanced medical needs, and one of them was a severely malnourished Siberian Husky named Shadow.

Shadow came to us as a cruelty case at the start of the year and stayed with us until June. Shadow was on IV fluids and a strict feeding plan to help him gain weight and feel healthy again. The day he officially became ours and able to be put up for adoption was a day worth celebrating.

Our Humane Education department hosted their first ever Spring Break One-day Camps in a continued effort to teach children compassion and empathy through animals. The camp was a success. A total of 58 kids learned about dog and cat body language, wildlife safety, pet overpopulation, and how to care for pets along with the expenses.

In June, we were honored to begin our journey with the Black Forest Cat Café – Fort Wayne’s only cat café with adoptable cats from our shelter. This unique environment provided so many benefits for our community and our shelter. Not only did we have more crucial space to put available cats up for adoption, but it also provided our community with a relaxing and safe place to enjoy the therapeutic effects of cats while enjoying delicious homemade pastries and drinks. In only a six-month time frame, the café adopted out almost 200 cats!

A pivotal change occurred in August. Despite our strict disinfecting protocols, an outbreak of feline panleukopenia occurred, a fatal disease most often is very difficult to treat. We had to work together to create ways to keep our cats safe and healthy. This breakout affected our adoption, foster, and intake processes. We are thankful to have a group of proactive and intelligent staff members that worked together to slow the spread of this disease. It was an ongoing battle for the rest of the year.

The shelter completed the Return to Home Challenge in October. To help more animals find their way back home; Animal Control Officers offered free microchipping and vaccines to animals they encountered in the community to help prevent animals coming into the shelter. This initiative was to encourage more pet owners to claim their lost pets from the shelter, the first-time redemption fee was waived all month long.

At the end of the year, we presented our 2023 budget for approval. We are grateful for the support received by the administration, as well as at City Council. They all agreed there was a justifiable need to increase our headcount of staff and create more functional space at the shelter in 2023.

We are your community shelter - here to help you and your pets. FWACC will continue to improve every year with the support of our community; together, we can help as many animals and pet owners as possible.

Visit www.fwacc.org to learn more about Fort Wayne Animal Care & Control.    

Animal Care 2022 Statistics:

• 12,125 animals (1,105 is wildlife) came to the shelter in 2022
• 1,857 animals returned to their owners.
• 1,131 animals surrendered to the shelter by their owners.
• 477 animals transferred to rescues/other shelters.
• 1,192 Community Cats returned to colonies.
• 3,099 animals adopted.
• 1,514 animals sent to foster homes.
• 260 active foster families
• Recruited 99 new Foster Homes
• 12,439 volunteer hours
• 167 active volunteers
• 87 new volunteers
• 1,473 animals euthanized at owner’s request and for medical or behavioral reasons.
• $35, 000 grant from PetCo. Love to cover to cost of contractual veterinary services.
• $37, 328 grant from Orphan Kitten Club to provide additional Foster Program staff
• $10,000 grant from Latham Foundation to support Humane Education Summer
• $20,000 grant from Better Cities for pets A MARS PETCARE PROGRAM
• $10,000 grant from PNC Charitable Trust to support the Angel Fund

Community Outreach Data and Highlights from 2022:

• Animal Control Officers responded to 20,353 calls for service.
• Animal Control Officers responded to 2,262 calls of suspected animal cruelty and neglect.
• Eight offsite adoption locations for adoptable cats that allowed more space in the shelter.
• FWACC became Bissell Foundation Partner; participated in Empty the Shelter and 103 animals were adopted.
• FWACC was chosen as the FPCC FCU Strikes for Charity
• FWACC became a corporate sponsor to Fido’s Forest
• FWACC became an exclusive partner of Black Forest Cat Cafe
• 671 children participated in the shelter’s humane education programs.
• 42.35% of pet owners who made appointments to surrender their pet decided to keep their pet or rehome outside of the shelter after receiving services through FWACC’s pet retention program.

There are three things we needed to continue providing the services we do; space, people, and time. 

We knew going into 2022 we needed more help because the needs of the community and animals in our care are ever growing.  Early in the year we began to discuss our needs with the City Administration who also agreed we needed help.  We were fortunate to have held several meetings with tours over the summer to the members of City Council.  Each visit included an overview of our need for staff and space to continue providing life saving services.  We also shared with the Community our intentions of requesting more staff and space. 

Thanks to the support of the City Administration, City Council, and our Community, we’ll be able to not only increase our staff but also begin looking at how to effectively expand our shelter’s existing footprint.  On behalf of our staff and volunteers, we are truly grateful for the support we’ve received.  We are looking forward to 2023 so we can continue to ensure we place every behaviorally and medically sound animal into new homes; provide resources to keep animals in their loving homes; and be the voice for the animals who are in neglectful situations. 

- Amy-Jo Sites, Director