‘Clear the Shelter’ event draws large crowd

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – Hundreds of community members lined the parking lot of the Animal Shelter Society Saturday, just waiting to adopt a new family member.

‘Clear the Shelter’ is a nationwide event, one day a year, where all adoption fees and even dogs license fees are waived.

Executive Director, Jody Murray, said this year, the Jonard family got into contact with the shelter, and wanted to make this event happen.

“Well originally we were just thinking about doing a Saturday, maybe 20 or 25 adoptions, said Murray. As we talked back and forth, they just wanted to do more and more for us, so as we started approaching ‘Clear the Shelter’ day,  and you can see what kind of response we have had. it’s been phenomenal.”

Murray said the shelter has been busy all week with potential families ready to adopt. they were fully staffed and ready to go when they opened their doors at 10 a.m. Saturday morning.

“We’ve been talking about this for several weeks now, and as you can see now by looking at the parking lot, we have a huge crowd here. Really I don’t have any idea how many people we have here. I’m guessing well over 100 people here or so, and it’s just shortly after 10 a.m.

So far, there have been 91 adoptions made.