In a city where nothing save for the occasional convenience store stays open all night, at the end of last week it was never too late, or too early, to adopt a dog or cat from Animal Humane New Mexico.
From June 22-24, Animal Humane NM hosted its 24/7 adoption event, the first event of its kind in New Mexico. The shelter stayed open all night Wednesday, June 22 and Thursday, June 23, in order to boost adoption rates and raise awareness of pet overpopulation problems.
By June 24, the last day of the event, employee Rex Nowacki had managed to catch a total of eight hours of sleep over the previous two nights, and he said much of it was in the form of short, one-hour naps.
“Wednesday I worked the 12 p.m. to 8 a.m. shift at reception, and I was dozing off a little bit, but we made it through,” he said.
Peggy Weigle, Animal Humane New Mexico executive director, said the shelter receives an influx of animals in the summer because dogs and cats give birth in the spring.
“Summer time is the time of year when we get inundated with pets that are being surrendered,” she said. “They get to be about eight weeks old and suddenly people are bringing them in boxes.”
The shelter’s goal was to stay open for 24 hours starting Wednesday until 200 dogs and cats had been adopted or the clock struck six on Friday evening, whichever came first.
Unfortunately, by 6 p.m. Friday the shelter had only adopted out 112 pets.
Regardless, Weigle said the event was a huge success, and over the course of the event the shelter adopted out about three times as many dogs and cats as it normally would have in that time.
“At this point the staff needs to go home and rest, and frankly all of the animals are exhausted, too, because they’ve been getting walked and shown and walked and shown,” she said.
Weigle said Animal Humane NM is not a no-kill shelter, meaning the shelter will euthanize animals under certain circumstances, such as extreme overpopulation at the shelter.
She said that in over a year and a half, Animal Humane NM hasn’t had to euthanize one healthy pet, thanks in part to the HEART ordinance, which passed in Albuquerque in 2006. The ordinance requires pet owners to pay an annual $150 fee and obtain a license in order to own pets that aren’t spayed or neutered.
“Albuquerque does have a higher euthanasia rate per 1000 population than many other cities our size,” she said. “That said, Albuquerque has made great strides since 2006. … The euthanasia rate in our city has gone down 25 percent in that time, so it is getting better. People are becoming more educated.”
Even though he had to function on little sleep to help run the adoption event, Nowacki said working at Animal Humane is the best job he has ever had.
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“I absolutely enjoy coming to work every day,” he said. “I work with great people, and just being able to touch the lives of all of the animals and all of the adopters that come in. It’s the most rewarding job I can imagine.”
