ST. LOUIS — Sleeping in the shelter until every dog has a home: that's what staff and volunteers are going to do at CARE STL. The shelter is hoping to get 52 dogs adopted or fostered this weekend.
CARE STL Executive Director, Dr. Abbie Atteberry, explained why dog placement is urgent: "It's important that we get our floors repaired to meet Missouri Department of Agriculture licensing requirements before we renew our license in 2024."
The team is hoping to start the repair work on Monday, but before they do, the dogs need to go. "Our staff is going to be living on-site at the shelter 24/7 until we find placement, either adoptive or foster homes for all 52 dogs that are still left on site," Dr. Atteberry said.
The sleepover is a unique way to raise awareness for the shelter pups.
"The goal is twofold," Dr. Atteberry explained. "One, we want every dog to be in a home for the holidays and not be here lonely at the shelter. The other part is that we have to some repairs to our facility to our flooring, so we need to remove all of the dogs from our dog housing building and we need to do that by Monday."
Getting dogs into foster or forever homes will help the staff, but Dr. Atteberry says they will still be busy over the Christmas break, "we need to deep clean the shelter. We need to paint. We are going to do all of our annual maintenance during this time."
While the dogs are still there, staff and volunteers staying at the shelter will give them a little extra TLC. Dr. Atteberry tells 5 On Your Side, "We'll take special videos and pictures to really help promote them and get to know them better, so we can make good matches for them."