FORT SMITH -- In the state's second-largest city, more stray dogs and cats these days have the run of the place.
To be sure, Fort Smith has leash and animal containment laws.
But anyone who calls the city to report a stray dog or cat is likely to hear: "Try to find the owner."
Or: "You might take a picture and post it on Facebook."
HOPE Humane Society in Fort Smith, an 82-year-old nonprofit animal shelter and pound, has shut down.
After housing more than 400 animals on any given day, the shelter stopped accepting animal-control pickups June 1, the day after its contract ended with the city.
Fort Smith administrators are working to line up another animal-shelter operator, but nothing's finalized.
Meanwhile, the city's animal-control unit has no place to lodge stray animals for a city of 88,000 people and an estimated 45,000 dogs, cats and other creatures.
Sherri Nellum's daughter, Victoria, last week found a black-and-white pit bull mix lying among bottles and glass on a moldy blanket beside an apartment complex in north Fort Smith. There was no food or water. And the animal shelter down the street on Kelley Highway was shuttered.
So the dog, now called Hope, is in Sherri Nellum's backyard while she exercises her own four dogs in her front yard.
"There's no place to take animals now," said Nellum. "So I'll try to help." She and her daughter posted the female dog's photo on Facebook with the caption, "this little baby still needs a foster home!! She's very sweet!"
Fort Smith, Nellum said, "has to make this more of a priority. We have a people problem. People let dogs loose, drop off dogs, let them go free. And now it's worse. There's nowhere for them to go."
The city's relationship with the Humane Society ended when the two couldn't reach terms in a new contract. The organization, citing a $500,000 bank loan coming due, asked to raise the city's payment rate for impounding animals from about $300,000 per year to $650,000.
The shelter accepted dogs from the city's animal-control services and also took in stray animals from residents. During negotiations with the city, the shelter and other animal activists also pushed for spay-neuter laws to reduce the number of unwanted animals, but those efforts failed.
A city spokesman said Fort Smith tried to extend the contract with the organization for a short extension to prevent a lapse in animal services, but failed.
The city continues to respond to reports of vicious or sick animals and anything in which public health and safety might be involved and sends those animals to veterinarians, spokesman Karen Santos said.
Fort Smith also is negotiating with organizers of Kitties and Kanines, a spay-neuter facility, to establish a new shelter off Phoenix Avenue near the airport. That could open by Aug. 1 if both sides arrive at an agreement, said Brenda Altman, an organizer.
For now, Kitties and Kanines' spay-neuter office, in Fort Smith's Quarry Shopping Center, can't do much more than stack free dog and cat food and cat litter outside its doors, to aid people who are trying to help strays.
"People are keeping them in their backyards," Altman said. "And sometimes they don't have money to feed them."
But not all of Fort Smith's stray animals wind up in friendly backyards.
Veterinary clinics like All Animal Health Center in Fort Smith are getting "calls and frustration. They say they call animal control, and the city isn't picking many up since they don't have anywhere to take them. We're at a loss at what to tell people," said veterinary assistant Hannah Ray.
Jo Ellen Banhart, board president for Almost Home Shelter & Rescue in nearby Van Buren, which keeps 30 to 35 stray animals per day, said "we panicked" when they heard the big Fort Smith shelter was closing.
"Our members said 'We've got to get ready for this.'"
Van Buren animal-services workers soon began finding more strays at popular drop-off spots in their city, under bridges or in parks.
Banhart and Almost Home board member Tom Hill said they and others did some detective work on Facebook.
They would see recent posts of "found" Fort Smith animals that looked exactly like ones that a few days later appeared at their Van Buren shelter.
In one post, a person asked for help to rehome a dog she couldn't keep, Banhart said.
"Someone suggested Almost Home. And someone else said that we can only take Van Buren animals.
"We actually saw that one person responded: 'Just go dump it in the Van Buren city limits.'"
It's costly for Van Buren to maintain any Fort Smith strays. After a five-day wait period to find an animal's owner, the Almost Home nonprofit invests its own money for medical services and spay-neutering.
"It's about $150 per animal," Hill said.
The city has promised to prosecute anyone caught abandoning animals there.
Other animal shelters and rescue services an hour away say they're also getting appeals to help with unwanted Fort Smith animals.
"We are getting several calls," said Amanda Mann of Fayetteville Animal Services. "We have to tell them it's outside our jurisdiction. We can only service Fayetteville city limits."
"I think it's going to create mass chaos until Fort Smith gets a solution figured out," said Cheryl Greenmyer, president of the Chasing Miracles Animal Rescue in Kibler, Okla.
"We've been contacted for the last 45 days by a ton of people wanting to surrender animals to us because they have nowhere to go with them.
"There are so many animals in need. There are bound to be some just roaming the streets. The city is going to have to do something quickly."
SundayMonday on 07/21/2019