Dale Shuter has donated more than 2,000 hours to the County Animal Care and Control Adoption Center, helping with tasks such as washing dishes, cleaning kennels and walking dogs.
When she found out St. Louis County will no longer welcome volunteers when it resumes control of the shelter in February, Shuter became worried that animals would not get their basic needs met.
“Every major shelter within the metropolitan area has a volunteer program,” Shuter said. “Why would someone … turn away free help?”
For the past two years, the Animal Protective Association has run the Olivette shelter. The county signed a five-year, $16 million deal with the APA in late 2022 — four years after an auditor recommended major changes in the shelter. Advocates had accused the shelter of improper care, including needlessly euthanizing healthy animals.
More than 400 volunteers were forced out of their positions and asked to reapply in 2019. In response, two volunteers sued the county, alleging the officials wanted to silence critics of the shelter.
In August, county and APA officials announced they were parting ways but did not give a reason for the early split. Then in a public budget meeting last month, the county public health department said that the volunteer program will not continue.
Since then, volunteers and animal rights advocates have been speaking out about the decision at county council meetings, through emails to council members and on social media.
“I'm very scared,” said Denise Sparrow, who has been a pet rescue volunteer for more than 12 years in Florissant. “I'm very scared that [the shelter] is going to go right back to how it was before.”
When the APA took over, the nonprofit turned the shelter around by cleaning and renovating the facility, creating enrichment activities like doggy dates and implementing a foster program.
The shelter’s transformation happened in part due to volunteers, said APA CEO Sarah Javier.
“We simply could not do this work and have the level of success that we have without their help,” Javier said.
The APA employs more than 50 people at the shelter, but it also relies on more than 300 volunteers. So far this year, volunteers have contributed 27,781 hours of labor, according to Javier.
Javier has recommended the county continue the volunteer program. She has also been meeting regularly with the St. Louis County Department of Public Health’s leadership to ensure a smooth transition on Feb. 21. That has included sharing volunteer applications, training materials and job descriptions.
“My hope is that they will find a way to implement [the volunteer program], if not right in the beginning, hopefully very soon because I think that is one way that the animals really thrive,” Javier said.
Department of Public Health Director Kanika Cunningham said she hears the concerns from volunteers but says the shelter will not “look the same as it did in the past.”
Volunteers will be welcomed back, she said, without saying when.
“There's a lot that we need to do. I don't think that it will be fair to volunteers to bring them back into an environment in which we're trying to get ourselves on board, get ourselves up and running,” Cunningham said.
But, current volunteers say the shelter would benefit from volunteers in the transition period.
“The idea that staff will be able to be onboarded and trained and introduced to the culture of the workplace, all while trying to care for upwards of 300 animals without any additional support — it doesn't make any sense to me,” said Jenny Agnew, who volunteered from 2018 to 2019.
The shelter will have 54 employees, Cunningham said, including an adoption specialist, a volunteer manager, a volunteer coordinator and 27 animal control officers. Those officers will have more responsibilities and will divide their time between the shelter and the streets.
“We will have enough coverage to make sure that work is getting done,” Cunningham said.
Eventually, Cunningham plans to add a prison foster program that “blend community needs with pet needs” and outreach programs that address public health issues such as mental health and substance abuse.
But for now, the priority has to remain the animals, advocates say.
“What are we doing for the animals? That's the most important role in the shelter — animal care,” Agnew said. “And if you don't have volunteers there to support that care, you're missing that most critical piece of the puzzle.”
