Cuyahoga County Animal Shelter Cuts Ribbon on $3-Million Expansion

The county’s home for stray dogs and cats, located in Valley View since 2001, opened a training and playroom facility last Friday. Credit: Cuyahoga County

All the dogs at the Cuyahoga County Animal Shelter in Valley View were able to rejoice with wagging tails last week.

The reason: a ribbon-cutting for a 2,100-square-foot play area where they will soon exercise and train in a facility that cost the county $2.7 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars.

It was, last Friday, the first big change to the county’s home for strays since the building opened up in 2001 and an addition, District 11 Councilwoman Sunny Simon told press, that would allow CCAC to finally act as a holistic halfway house more in line with the national model it had set out to be.

A house “where we can adopt, we can train, we can educate,” Simon told the crowd last week. “And that’s why today, this expansion is vital to save the lives of dogs and enhance the community.”

A task that is equally noble just as it is tricky.

Of the thousands of animal shelters throughout the county, at least a third of them struggle with healthy live release rates, or the percentage of dogs adopted or let go compared to those that are euthanized. Often, the less space in city or county shelters, the more likely dogs are turned away—or killed.

A problem that has also plagued the CCAC and Cleveland’s shelters over the years. Shelters with full beds or with dogs continuously sick or exhibiting behavioral issues typically have no choice but to euthanize them.

Or turn away stray dogs (and cats) altogether.

Councilwoman Sunny Simon, who allotted the ARPA dollars to build the expansion, sold the new training facility as a way to turn the CCAC into a “holistic” shelter for dogs. Credit: Cuyahoga County

“This can be seen as a public safety concern,” Lauren Sammon, the founder of CLE Pups and a shelter employee since 2010, told Scene in an email. “And significantly increases the likelihood of stray pets getting sick or injured without access to care and/or freezing or starving to death.”

Shelters that release 90 percent or higher of their dogs are often called “No-Kill” shelters by animal rights and humane groups.

According to the Best Friends Animal Society, CCAC is the only shelter in the county itself that is “Nearly No-Kill”—owning a live release rate of about 85 percent. (Cleveland’s as a whole is about 80 percent.) While 940 of CCAC’s 1,392 welcomed dogs were adopted last year, 194 were euthanized.

But the attitude was anything but grim or pessimistic on Friday, in a press conference replete with dog balloons and cheery county officials that would, at least for two, later adopt dogs themselves.

Which was the overall argument from those that felt the $2.7 million was spent in good effort: that socializing and friend-making make healthier strays; healthier strays are more likely to leave to human homes.

“Though it’s only 2,100 square feet, this really is the world to us,” CCAC Shelter Administrator Mindy Naticchioni said from the podium. “This little bit of space really does so much to the shelter and the lives of the dogs that are here.”

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