Adoption Fees Waived at Stafford Animal Shelter During "Mutt Madness" this Month
It's the third annual event, but the number of adoptions has fallen each year since it was started post-COVID.
By Ky Huynh
INTERN
This month, the Stafford County Animal Shelter is holding its third annual Mutt Madness adoption event.
As part of the month-long event, every dog at the shelter will have its adoption fee waived. With this, customers can bring home a dog for no cost.
Mutt Madness started in 2022, after people began surrendering their dogs to shelters, realizing that they might not have time to care for them when they returned to work after the COVID-19 pandemic ended. The shelter was able to get 60 dogs adopted in March of 2022.
“All the shelters started filling up and we were really trying to find everybody homes and so we decided to do Mutt Madness,” said Asta Ryynänen, assistant shelter manager.
In 2021, there was an increase of 325 dogs surrendered.
“Before that, we had like 700 hundred-something, and we went to almost 1,100 dogs surrendered to us in a year,” said Ryynänen.
Currently, the shelter is caring mostly for hounds, labs, German shepherds, huskies, and more who are ready to be adopted.
“We have a couple of huskies that came in,” said Oliver Grace VanWinkle, an animal caretaker. “Some have already left, but we have Mia—he’s a brown huskie, and Snow is a huskie mix, if I’m right.”
They continued, “I feel like hounds and labs tend to be the majority that we get in here.”
Other hounds they have in the shelter are named Simon and Benji. Nick was recently adopted as a part of Mutt Madness, along with German shepherd Winston.
The shelter also tends to receive a lot of dogs of indeterminate breed.
“We do get a lot of mixes and we can guess what they are, but it’s hard to say 100% without actually doing the DNA test of all of them,” said VanWinkle.
People also have the opportunity to foster a dog for two weeks with the intention to adopt.
“They can take the dog home for two weeks while they see if it’s going to be a good fit, if they have kids at home or other animals,” said VanWinkle. “At the end of the two weeks, they’ll let us know if they want to adopt or not. The dog always has a place back here at the shelter if not.”
In 2023, 44 dogs were adopted and last year, 31 dogs were adopted during Mutt Madness.
As the numbers have lowered through the years, the shelter has been trying to promote Mutt Madness via Facebook and other social media.
There are also upcoming events scheduled to collect donations.
The shelter will be holding an Easter egg hunt, organized by the Girl Scouts, on April 19.
For more information about Mutt Madness and upcoming events, visit the Stafford County Animal Shelter’s Facebook page.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
Support Award-winning, Locally Focused Journalism
The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
First to explain falling water levels in the Rappahannock Canal.
First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
Our media group also offers the most-extensive election coverage in the region and regular columnists like:
And our newsroom is led by the most-experienced and most-awarded journalists in the region — Adele Uphaus (Managing Editor and multiple VPA award-winner) and Martin Davis (Editor-in-Chief, 2022 Opinion Writer of the Year in Virginia and more than 25 years reporting from around the country and the world).
For just $8 a month, you can help support top-flight journalism that puts people over policies.
Your contributions 100% support our journalists.
Help us as we continue to grow!
This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”