“A lot of what I do here is pick up poop,” said Sarah Wallace, a volunteer at Indianapolis Animal Care Services, leaning over gravel in an outdoor space where dogs are let out to run, black plastic bag in hand.
Kiwi, a brown and white pitbull mix, jumped up and licked Wallace’s face. It was Kiwi’s second trip outside that day — the staff members at the city-run animal shelter usually only have time to take the dogs out once.
“There are so many dogs, so many dogs, they don’t have a ton of time to do much of anything other than get the dogs out and clean kennels,” Wallace said. “Honestly, they are like heroic for all the work they do here.”
She tries to take as many dogs as she can outside during her Thursday night shifts, so they get a chance to potty, play fetch and run through sprinklers on hot days.
“I love being able to love on these guys,” Wallace said. “And as you can see, like, they just want to be loved on. They just want to get snuggled and lick your face and chase the ball.”
Want to help?
You’ll find details at the end of this article on how to volunteer with Indianapolis Animal Care Services.
Wallace understands when she has to pick up slack — and poop — around the shelter. The first part of her shift that night, she helped Lauren Wyatt, the volunteer coordinator, give dogs eye drops – something medical staff would usually do.
But IACS is struggling to hire and keep full-time staff; 21 of their 87 positions are open. They still need a veterinarian, adoption counselors and animal control officers, which means the shelter’s 200 volunteers have to help.
The shelter has been crowded for years, but it’s hit a breaking point. As of Oct. 1, IACS had 231 dogs. The four kennel rooms in the building are built to hold 191.
Dogs either have to be adopted, fostered, taken by another rescue or — as a last resort — euthanized to make room. IACS euthanized an average of 108 animals each month, in the first eight months of this year. IACS has started taking animals to adoption events outside the shelter, in hopes of finding them homes.
I visited the shelter for two nights in September, a few days after a dog died of an unknown illness and IACS announced it would only take in animals in emergency situations. I got to know volunteers as they walked dogs and cleaned kennels, to understand what it’s like inside the shelter.
When I pulled off of Harding Street into the IACS parking lot on a Thursday night, I could already smell the poop and hear dogs barking.
In the front lobby, as I waited to meet Wallace, I watched a daughter smile up at her mom as they adopted their second dog and debated whether to take him straight to the girl’s soccer game.
A brown dog with a cone on his head came out to meet them, wiggling with excitement. The family walked out with Hunter, their new dog, and the staff wrote his name on a whiteboard behind the front desk.
When an animal gets adopted, its name is added to the whiteboard. The days of the week are listed in colorful dry erase markers, and, on good days, the names fill the board.
But some days, volunteers don’t see a dog in their kennel. And they don’t see the dog’s name on the board.
“When you come in, and the dog’s been gone, you hesitate to ask,” said Pam Abraham, a volunteer who keeps Cheez Whiz in what looks like a toolbelt. “It’s kind of like, ‘Well, do I really want to know?’ They’re not on the adoption board.”
‘Do you know where Jade’s at?’
Wallace came inside the shelter after walking a dog and met me in the lobby. She took me into the back, where there are four kennel rooms for dogs, plus a room for cats and one with a sign that says, “Rabbits Inside.” The dog kennels were all full, except for a few that needed repairs.
Abraham stopped us in the hall. “Do you know where Jade’s at?” she asked.
Wallace wasn’t sure, and said she hadn’t seen her name on the white board in the front office.
“There’s a Jade out front,” I said.
I’d seen a black and white pitbull mix named Jade in one of the cages near the front desk. She was put there so visitors coming in would see her, without having to go back to the kennels. Often, dogs get adopted more quickly when they’re in the front area.
When dogs are adopted, Wallace has mixed feelings.
“It’s not uncommon that dogs who have been adopted show up again or are in really bad shape. So actually, I’m always cautiously optimistic when one is adopted but also a little bit sad,” she said.
Wallace, who works in technology, has been volunteering at IACS for about a year. She used to volunteer at a humane society in Michigan, but she stopped after she had kids.
“My kids are old enough now that I don’t have to be involved in every aspect of their lives, so I decided I wanted to start doing some volunteering that was more around my own interests,” she said.
Wallace led me into Kennel 1, where dogs were barking through the doors of their kennels. It was overwhelming, trying to listen to her as she explained how she takes care of dogs.
She put one on a leash, and walked him through the hallway, calling "Corner!" like a chef would to avoid collisions with other dogs. We passed cages lining the hallways. Another room was full of dogs, but it’s supposed to be an empty space where staff can take dogs off their leashes and see how they interact with people — valuable information for possible adopters to know.
Dogs in crates used to fill the space behind the front desk, too, before one of them got Parvo, a highly contagious respiratory illness. At the Sept. 17 IACS advisory board meeting, it was reported that 36 dogs out of the 243 at the shelter had upper respiratory issues — 14.8% of the population.
The dogs that were exposed were contained in a back room, and rescues took as many as they could out of the shelter.
Changes are coming soon for IACS, that could help solve some of the problems. The city broke ground on a new, larger building in June that is planned to open in early 2026. Right now, the shelter’s surgery room is a converted closet with a medical table in it, but the new building will have a bigger medical room with more surgery tables.
“Obviously, this (building) desperately needs upgrades, and things break all the time,” Wallace said. “So it'll be beautiful. I'm excited about that, but space only goes so far when you need people to run it.”
IACS will also become its own agency, instead of being part of the city’s Department of Business and Neighborhood Services, and get an increased budget. One volunteer told me she hopes this change will give IACS more visibility within the city, which could mean more power over the way it operates.
Volunteers call for change: ‘These dogs need us.’
One force calling for these changes is the Indianapolis Animal Welfare Advocacy Group, which is made up of volunteers who meet once a month to set goals about how to improve the problems Indianapolis has with animal welfare.
Volunteers like Wallace and Stephanie Waters, the person I spent a second day at the shelter with, blame backyard breeders for the shelter’s overcrowding. Backyard breeding happens when people with little experience or knowledge breed animals, often to sell them for profit.
The Indianapolis City-County Council unanimously passed a backyard breeding ordinance in August, and it will go into effect Jan. 1. It will create a registry of unaltered animals — animals that aren’t spayed or neutered — and will require owners to report new litters to IACS.
The new rules are meant to keep track of animals and discourage backyard breeding. The first response to violations is to educate pet owners, but a second offense results in a fine.
Getting the ordinance passed was one of the goals of the Indianapolis Animal Welfare Advocacy Group. Chris Roberson, an attorney and chair of the IACS advisory board, started the group in 2022 after a dog, Deron, was killed by his new owners just nine days after he was adopted.
He said one of the advocacy group’s next priorities is to educate pet owners about backyard breeding before the ordinance takes effect.
Waters is also a member of the group. Until her nursing shifts changed, she used to volunteer every Friday and stayed until 11 p.m. to give every dog a chance to go outside.
She didn’t have pets until she and her husband took in a friend’s cat whose kidneys were failing. It made her think she wanted to provide hospice care to cats, but decided it would be too hard.
It was the start of her passion for animal welfare. We sat outside with Roddy, a pitbull mix and fetch expert, as she told me about the two dogs she’s adopted, Beibhinn and Mordekei.
“What’s one thing you would tell someone thinking about volunteering here?” I asked.
“Put your head down and focus on the dogs,” Waters said. “A lot of great volunteers have stopped volunteering here because they get upset about the politics of the shelter, rules that have been put in place, decisions that have been made – euthanasia decisions.”
“It is important for somebody to speak up about that stuff, but,” she said, pausing, “these dogs need us.”
Indianapolis Animal Care Services: How you can help
IACS Deputy Director Kelly Diamond shares four ways to get involved:
- Volunteer at the animal shelter.
If you’re interested in volunteering, you can fill a variety of positions. You can walk dogs like Sarah Wallace and Stephanie Waters, do laundry or take pictures of pets to post on social media. There are more options for volunteers, too. - You can donate supplies or money.
The animal shelter often runs out of supplies and posts on Facebook for help. You can donate money to IACS, or they have wishlists for supplies on Chewy and Amazon. - You can foster an animal.
Diamond, and the volunteers, said dogs don’t behave the same way in shelters as they would in homes. Fostering an animal is a way the shelter can learn what the animal’s personality is really like, which is information people want to know before adopting. IACS will provide crates, food and other necessities to foster parents, although many supply their own. You can foster for weeks, or for months. You have to fill out an application to get started. - Spread the word.
IACS posts adoptable pets and updates on Facebook. Diamond said one of the best ways to help is sharing those posts and spreading the word about how to help the shelter.
Mirror Indy reporter Sophie Young covers services and resources. Contact her at sophie.young@mirrorindy.org.
This story relied on Indy Documenters notes from two IACS Advisory Board meetings. Indy Documenters trains and pays neighbors to take notes at community meetings. Want to help hold city agencies accountable? Here's how to join.
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