They call on local rescues for help, like Save Our Souls Rescue run by Kerri Hatcher-Fickling. Fickling says weekly, she sends 50 or so animals to new homes almost a 1,000 miles away. She even had a special van made to transport them all. Most of the dogs are saved from local shelters like Macon-Bibb Animal Welfare.
Tracey Belew, director for Macon-Bibb Animal Welfare, says each animal spends about two months in the shelter before getting adopted or put down. "The way we can get animals out alive is through adoptions through rescue pools and transfers," said Belew. She says each animal spends about two months in the shelter before.
The shelter only has enough space for 80 dogs and 40 cats. When they near capacity, Belew and her team look to rescue organizations for help. "If we can't get animals out of adoptions, then we have to put them down and we take care of them for weeks," said Belew.
In 2018, the shelter took in nearly 4,500 animals, but it was outside groups... who rescued more than half of them. Belew says a quarter of the cages are filled with animals on legal holds, meaning they were seized by law enforcement for things like dogfighting or animal cruelty, cases that can last years.
In the meantime, the shelter can't let anyone rescue them. That's 20 spots adoptable animals can't take. Bibb County's Assistant District Attorney Cara Forie handles many of those cases. "If someone is arrested and the case is dismissed or found not guilty at a trial, since the animals are considered property under the state of Georgia, they can get their animals back," said Forie.
She says the county attorney's office has been filing petitions to force the animal's owners to pay for their care. If owners don't pay up, the animals are given up for adoption.
Belew says what they have now is enough. She says cost of care petitions cut legal holds in half, but that isn't enough to keep the shelter from filling up. "It is never-ending -- no matter how hard I work, how many I transport, how many dogs and cats that I send every single week, there are thousands more," said Fickling.
Fickling says to really tackle the issue, the county should require people to get permits for their animals and the state should punish people who don't spay and neuter their pets. She also wants social and classified web sites to ban online animal sales. "'If we have too much of something, we can just kill it,' when did that become OK?" said Fickling.
In the meantime, she and a dedicated group of volunteers keep going the extra mile to find rescues good homes.