Highlight Story: Local Animal Shelter Awareness

I decided to do a highlight story on a local animal shelter here in Hattiesburg, MS.

Check out my video here: Animal Shelter Highlight Story

 Working in an animal shelter has its ups and downs. Ginny Sims experiences these rewards and hardships on a day-to-day basis.

Sims studied Photo Journalism at the University of Southern Mississippi. After she graduated she started her career journey working at a non-profit organization that went out of business.

Soon she found herself with a lot of spare time.

“I was choosing between Netflix, or keeping my sanity and getting out of the house. So I started out as a volunteer here, at the shelter. I did adoption counseling and was part of the pet photography project.”

Sims realized fairly quickly that she wanted to be at Southern Pines Animal Shelter every waking hour that she could.

Now Sims works as the Shelter director.

“I waited until there was a job opening and became a volunteer coordinator and kind of worked my way up from there because I knew that, one thing was for sure, I wanted to wake up and come here everyday.”

Sims explains having a community that is willing to help is vital when it comes to taking in animals who need placement, “without the community helping take in these animals, there is just not enough room.”

Southern Pines performs routine transports twice a week.

“It’s never sad, we’re always happy. I have had transfers of my own load up and head up to more northern states , and I know that they are going to have a chance at a home and at a good life.”

The shelter is an open admissions shelter and in South Mississippi being an open-admissions shelter has its challenges.

“People tend to use the term ‘kill’ and ‘no-kill’ shelters but I really prefer limited-admissions and open admission, and there’s a need for both.”

Southern Pines accept all animals because of this there are no age limitations, behavioral requirements, or health standards necessary to surrender  an animal.  Therefore they are often forced to euthanize animals in order to protect the health and safety of their general shelter population.

“Euthanasia is always in the back of our mind, we know that every adoption special that we host, every plea for fosters, volunteers, or adopters is  a desperate motion to keep from having to euthanize, because we don’t want to do it,” Sims says, “when you run out of space they have to go somewhere and for us, we understand that there are worse things than euthanasia. There are worse lives and worse suffering.”

Sims and the rest of the workers at Southern Pines know that when the animals come to their shelter they are cared for and loved, even if it is not a permanent stay.