Tri County Humane Society’s 2024 Year in Review

ST. CLOUD (WJON News) -- Last year was another busy year at the Tri-County Humane Society. They took in 5,160 animals and placed 4,489.

Executive Director Marit Ortega says the number of owner surrenders was 2,913 last year, which was down from 3,222 the year before. She says it's those pets that are easier to find new homes for.

The owner surrenders tend to be a little bit easier to place, we have a lot more information on those animals.

Ortega says the Tri-County Humane Society took in 595 transfers from other rescues, which was higher than the 464 in 2023.

One memorable event was when they took in a record number of cats at one time. They rescued 94 cats from a home in Crosby. The previous record was 17 dogs at one time back in the early 2000s.

Ortega says they were expecting about 50 cats, not the 94 they received.

She says they had a lot of successes including returning two of those cats to their rightful owners.

One of them had a microchip, it had been missing for seven years.  When we contacted the owners they came to pick up the same day the cats arrived at our shelter.

The other original owners were from Sartell.

The couple had lost their cat six months prior, they were absolutely ecstatic, we got that reunion on film which was so heartwarming.

Fifty-four of the 94 cats were adopted to new homes, four died on their own, and 34 had to be euthanized due to health issues.

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She says they worked on strengthening their stray reclaim efforts in 2024 which basically means working to find the animals' owner with microchips and using social media. Forty-five percent of the stray dogs that came to their shelter in 2024 were reunited with their owners, which compares to the national rate of just 16 percent.

The average length of stay for any animal was eight days.

The number of animals who went to foster care was 964, which was up 13 percent from the year before.

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