Photo Story: Heartland Humane Society

The Heartland Humane Society is an open-door, local, progressive, and non-profit animal welfare center. They opened up in Corvallis Oregon in 1966 by a number of different community members, looking to start a program to help the stray animals around Benton County. They are currently housing around 2,000 animals, and working to find all of them new loving and kind homes. They put on a number of different programs including Humane Education, where they visit classrooms to talk about care and treatment of pets, and Pet Food Pantry, a program that allows the community members who cant afford food for their pets to pick up free food twice a month.
Their Mission: To build a more compassionate community by teaching humane messages to our youth, caring for homeless animals and strengthening the human-animal bond.

This is Stewart. Stewart has been in the center for five months, and still keeps up his charm. Volunteers and community members can walk the dogs, and big yard is available for all of the dogs to run around and play in.

Volunteer Amy Wilks, has spent her day doing rounds. Today, she is going around checking on the cats with FIV, a feline virus that a large number of the cats brought in have. While this is a highly common virus, cats that have FIV are less likely to be adopted because of the extra work they take. Amy volunteers at the shelter a couple times a week, and loves getting to check in on the animals and see if any of them have been adopted.

While the cages may look small, between getting held by volunteers and perspective adopters, the cats are rarely in them! Bay, the cat on the right, is on hold far a family, and Leroy on the left, is hungry for attention.

Community members that come to the Heartland Humane Society are free to open up a cage in the cat room and hold any cat they like. This gives perspective buyers the chance to see if they connect with any of the animals and are free to engage with them.

This is Gulliver. Cats like Gulliver are brought into the humane society will all different stages of medical care needs.  Gulliver had a gash on the side of his eye that needed stitches upon admission. Like a lot of cats in the system, Gulliver  is older. Hes 10 years old, and a part of a community of older cats that were abandoned when they stopped being small and cute.