Press Release - January 13, 2010

THE HUMANE SOCIETY OF OCEAN CITY IS GOING TO THE DOGS

The Humane Society of Ocean City is for the first time, in a long time, completely at capacity with dogs. While the shelter usually finds itself bogged down with cats, dogs are usually much easier to place into loving forever homes and with such a high rate of placement, space is usually not an issue. At the moment though, many of the dogs waiting for homes at the HSOC are special needs animals or are older and more difficult to adopt.

Usually January is a time of relative surplus at the Humane Society of Ocean City. The holidays usually bring in a great deal of donations. Many people come back year after year and donate toys, food, treats, linens, and cleaning products. These donations can sometimes stretch out over months at the shelter but this year the shelter is seeing the bottom of the donation bin already and January isn't even half way over.

"With this many dogs at the facility everything increases. Increases in the amounts of food, cleaning supplies, treats, toys, and double the amount of work for staff and volunteers. It is not uncommon for the HSOC to do up to ten industrial size loads of laundry per day under normal circumstances but with this amount of dogs we are doing 15 or more," said Bill Hollingsworth, Executive Director of the shelter. Hollingsworth added "cleaning products are among to most over looked supplies when people come in and drop off donations, especially laundry soap and bleach."

The shelter is hoping that the community will remember them throughout the year when it comes to adoption and for donations. The shelter has a wish list viewable on their website, www.hsocnj.org and is hoping members of the community will drop off some much needed donations of laundry soap and bleach.

The Humane Society of Ocean City is open seven days a week from 11-3p.m.and is at 1 Shelter Rd in Ocean City, NJ. They operate a no-kill animal shelter, low-cost spay/neuter and wellness clinics and hold Humane Education seminars. The HSOC is a private 501 (c)3 non-profit organization that relies on donations for support.