Berkshire Humane Society Celebrates Helping Thousands of Animals
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Berkshire Humane Society supported more than 23,000 pets over the past year through it life-saving and pet retention programs.
These programs provide resources including pet food and free foster care to help families keep their pets.
"I think the most important thing, and I see this every year that we do, is we're an open-mission, socially-conscious shelter that keeps our doors open," Executive Director John Perrault told the society's annual meeting on Wednesday.
"We're not prejudiced. We help anybody that comes, whether it's an animal that's bitten 10 people, whether it's an animal that is suffering, whether it has severe behavioral issues, they come to our board, and we do everything we can to help."
The annual meeting, held in the society's Dr. John Reynolds Adoption and Education Center, highlighted the shelter's accomplishments over the past year.
One of the biggest achievements was the renovation of Purradise in Great Barrington, a cat boarding facility and satellite cat adoption center. The $75,000 renovation included a new roof, "homey" cat areas and kitchen in the former single-family home to attract more visitors.
The shelter received 1,409 surrendered pets, a slight decrease from last year.
Jessica Cunningham was recently hired to oversee the pet food bank, which saw an increase in both donations and purchases. Perrault said Cunningham has improved record keeping and operations.
"Our pet food bank had 6,437 requests that we were able to supply the answer for," he said. "And that's up 180 percent over the previous year."
The wellness clinic assisted more than 4,000 animals and provided 3,527 vaccinations.
"We had 4,500 visits at our clinic and, granted the hours grew from the previous year, but that's a 37 percent increase," Perreault said. "We spayed and neutered at our clinic 1,332 [dogs and cats], that's up 80 percent from the previous year."
The Humane Society opened the wellness clinic in early 2023 in a former veterinary hospital at 289 Dalton Ave. for health exams, vaccinations, and parasite services, and some spaying and neutering.
The shelter received $110,000 in grants from multiple organizations to help assist the wellness clinic. Three clinics were held to vaccinate 178 animals and microchip 140 dogs and cats at no cost.
"It all went towards the clinic helping people with spay neuter. It went to our cats program. Went to our community cat program with spays and neuters but it also gave us some money to see people for wellness that didn't have it as well. So it's really made a difference at the clinic for seeing the public," Perreault said.
The shelter was also awarded a three-year contract with the city of Pittsfield to house stray dogs. This year the shelter received 130 dogs with most of them being reclaimed.
The meeting ended with the board of directors electing a new board of directors for a three-year term and reappointing members to the full board.
Tags: annual meeting, Berkshire Humane Society,
