WOOD COUNTY, OH (WTOL) - It's a record breaking year for animals in both Wood and Lucas County.
The Wood County Humane Society has helped find forever homes for more animals than ever before.
McGriddle is a short-haired kitten meeting her new family.
"We kind of woke up and were like we should get a cat," said Taylor Barr. "So that's literally how it happened."
"It was a last-minute decision," added Macie Carmel.
McGriddle is just one adoption the Wood County Humane Society will do this year. Last year they broke records adopting out 941 animals. That's 20 percent more cats and dogs than in 2016 when 790 animals were adopted. Of the 941 animals 305 were dogs, 634 were cats, and two marked as other.
"It's very rewarding because you know we used to put a lot of time and care into these guys," said Logan Richardson, an animal care lead for the Wood County Humane Society. "You know they have their own personalities and their own relationships with us so we're really happy to see people develop them on their own."
In addition to finding more homes for their animals, they also reduced the length of stay for them too.
Dogs at the shelter reduced their length of stay from 19 days in 2016 to 16 days in 2017 and puppies went from 14 days to just six. Cats and kittens also
saw a reduction in their length of stay going from 29 days in 2016 to 25 days in 2017 while kittens went from 17 days to 11. Reducing the length of stay for animals in the shelters care creates more space for other animals in need and also increases the animal's quality of life.
The Wood County Humane Society credits the past year's success to changes at the shelter.
"We were able to streamline both our adoption process and our intake and surgery process so all of that is done in-house, which helps save us a lot of time and gets these animals into homes as quickly as we possibly can," explained Richardson.
Customers like McGriddle's new owners said the process is easy and they can't wait to take their pet to their home.
"We're going to play with her all night," said both Barr and Carmel.
This year the Wood County Humane Society has set their biggest goal yet, that's for 1,050 adoptions. They say changes are in the works to make that happen like ramping up their social media use and public outreach to make sure they can find forever homes for all their animals.
Wood County wasn't the only shelter seeing record setting adoptions in 2017. The Toledo Area Humane Society said this year they exceeded their expectations. In 2016 they had 3,346 animals adopted and in 2017 4,005.
