Juli Huth stepped into her new role as executive director of the Madison Oglethorpe Animal Shelter (MOAS) this past March with quite a bit of experience. She served as interim director twice in the last two years.
Huth has also been a foster volunteer, kennel technician, receptionist and shelter manager the past five years.
The Oglethorpe Echo spoke with Huth about her plans and goals for MOAS.
Comments have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: How have you found the transition from your previous roles into this current role?
Huth: It's definitely an adjustment. Having done interim twice now, it's not something that's totally new and foreign to me, so it hasn't been as big of a shell shock as it would have been had I not done interim. It’s a lot of changes, a lot of responsibility. It’s kind of like when you turn 18, and you’re like “We need to get an adult. Oh wait, I’m the adult.”
Q: What was the state of the shelter when you took the director position?
Huth: As far as the state of the shelter, we've had a lot of management turnover. That's difficult for everybody. Every time you have somebody new coming in, people have different preferences that you have to learn. It's been a lot of learning for staff, a lot of flexibility.
As far as changes and all of that, that's what I would like to do, is get out and talk to the community. You'd be probably shocked to talk to people in Madison County who don't know the shelter is in Madison County. People don't know there's an animal shelter. So I know for a fact that out in Oglethorpe County, there have to be people who have no clue that they have the resources that they do.
Q: You’ve worked under four executive directors in the past five years. How do you plan to bring stability to the position?
Huth: As far as staff goes and all of that, staff knows exactly where I stand as far as rules and what I want us to be doing. I try to be very clear and upfront and explain, “Hey, this is what we're doing. This is why we're doing it.” So my hope is just that everything will kind of settle out. We’ll get a good manager in, and we’ll be able to just chill out for a while.
Obviously, staff turnover, management turnover, all that's stressful. So hopefully we'll be able to just kind of settle out and plateau for a little while. That would be nice.
Q: What is the shelter’s capacity?
Huth: So capacity is one of those tricky things. We don't really have a set number. Obviously, if I say, “We have 300 animals in the shelter,” that would be over capacity. But when we're talking about just capacity and all that, we're looking at staffing. How much staff do we have? How many people do we have coming in every day? And then we're also looking at the number of animals. So the number of animals can fluctuate between a pretty large number. When I say large, it’s probably about 50ish. Because if you have a bunch of itty bitty kittens, they can fit and they're all going to be together. If you have a big adult cat, that cat is going to take up the space that the four or five kittens, litter mates that were just born, are going to take. So at any given time, the numbers may fluctuate, but right now, our capacity for care is probably between 120 and 150. So it really just depends.
Q: How have adoptions been looking recently?
Huth: Up until about last week, we were doing pretty good on adoptions. It kind of goes up and down. It fluctuates. As we're getting closer towards spring break, you're not going to get as many adopters, because people are going to be going out of town. As you get towards the beginning of summer, you're going to have less adopters because more people are going to be going out of town. The closer you get towards the school year, you're more likely to get some adopters. And then once the school year starts, you won't have anybody for a couple weeks in general.
Our reclaim rates have been really good recently as far as strays coming in. We've had a pretty good reclaim rate the past month or so, which is excellent. We love seeing the animals go back to their homes. But yeah, the adoption rates last week were not that great, but it ebbs and flows. So this week, we may have pretty good luck.
Q: As someone who has worked with the shelter for several years, what would you want to change?
Huth: I wouldn't say I necessarily want to change anything that we've done.
A lot of times we’ll have a festival or something like that, where we go out and we just get out in the community. We'll set up a tent. We may bring dogs.
The Colbert Fourth of July parade is a great one where there's all sorts of people out there. People come from all sorts of counties, and it's right by the Oglethorpe County line, so you have people coming from both counties.
I would love to just expand on that and be able to get out a little bit more. I think one of the best ways to get out into the community and meet the people who are the movers and shakers is just by shopping locally, talking to local businesses and going out and really introducing yourself. That's something that I would love to do as I have a little bit more time, because that's a great way to spread the word.
Q: Is there anything specific you’re looking forward to in this new position?
Huth: I would love to see our length of stay go down. Obviously, it's a chronic issue in Georgia, specifically, but basically in the South. The length of stay for all the animals is going up. I would love for us to come together as a community and try and figure out what's going on.