The Bella Vista Animal Shelter has been serving the community and caring for lost and abandoned animals for more than a quarter century.
Shelter director Deidre Knight said she's been working with the shelter since 2002 and worked as director since 2008 -- and she's extremely proud of the shelter.
One point of pride, she said, is that the shelter only euthanizes animals who are not going to survive either way. In 2020, this came in at 0.5% of the animals that the shelter took in, she said.
"To us, a life is a life," she said. "To us all animals are adoptable. Some of them may take longer."
There have been recent successes with both cats and dogs who had been with the shelter for a long time, she added.
In addition to adoptions, the shelter often reunites people with their lost animals.
Social media is a huge help, as are microchips, she explained. When a dog, for instance, is brought in, the shelter checks them for a microchip -- even if a check has already been performed, just in case -- and if that produces information staff can contact the animal's owner.
Failing that, the animal will be quarantined until their vaccinations can be provided and a post about the animal goes on the shelter's social media pages, which have been a huge help, she said.
If the animal isn't collected within a day, the shelter gets it vaccinated and ready to adopt, she said.
The two biggest challenges are space and funding, she said, and the former is likely to be felt very soon.
"We're back in kitten season, I'm not sure it ever ended," Knight said.
The biggest expenses are staffing -- particularly because someone needs to be there every single day, including holidays -- and vet bills, she added.
"We've got to either make them healthy or keep them healthy," she explained.
Knight said that she's also frequently impressed by all the help the shelter receives.
The shelter has six people on staff, she said, but when volunteers are needed it's not uncommon to see 100 to 150 individuals show up. Volunteers and donors are primarily Bella Vistans, but there are people from all over Northwest Arkansas who pitch in, she explained.
"We are very blessed by our community and the support we get," Knight said.
Susan Oliver volunteered to walk dogs earlier this month and she's also adopted two dogs from the shelter.
She's volunteered for about three years and finds the shelter's dogs easy to get along with more often than not, she said.
"I fell in love with more dogs than I can count," she said.
She works because she loves these animals and wants to help out, she added.
Anyone interested in adopting should check out the shelter, she said, noting there are always great animals to adopt.
As an adopter, Oliver said she's been very impressed with the shelter staff, who consistently work to get people with the right animals.
She brought her Staffordshire terrier mix, Luther, to meet other dogs and try to find a good fit with him and staff worked closely with her and her dog, she said.
They ended up adopting another Staffordshire terrier mix, Fagan, about two months ago.
"It's going well so far," Oliver said. "We lvoe both of them and I wouldn't trade them for the world."
