Last year at Indianapolis Animal Care Services, volunteers put in 30,000 hours at the overcrowded shelter — walking dogs, giving them medicine and cleaning their kennels.
Now, a new policy will shorten the time they can spend with the animals. Volunteer hours will end two hours earlier, at 7 p.m., which means most of the shelter’s 250-plus dogs will only get out of their kennels once a day, for about 15 minutes.
“Why do they hate the dogs?” volunteer Stephanie Waters remembers saying to her husband, when she received an email Friday about the policy from interim director Kelly Diamond.
In her email, Diamond explained that “allowing volunteers in the building without management supervision presents significant safety risks.”
But volunteers worry that with fewer breaks, there will be more urine and feces in the dog kennels, and standing in dirty kennels leads to cracked and bleeding paws. Plus, one volunteer wrote, dogs covered in blood and feces are less likely to get adopted.
“That’s why 2-year-old dogs are part of the dogs that are getting euthanized for behavior issues,” Waters said. “They need that time. They need that enrichment, or else they lose their minds.”
Shelter volunteers share their top 10 concerns
The new policy was the last straw for volunteers, who have been frustrated by the conditions at the shelter, which has more dogs than kennels to hold them. It also has 10 positions to fill, including a volunteer coordinator, four veterinary staff and a CFO. Over the weekend, volunteers sent an email to City-County councilors, listing their top 10 concerns about the policy.
Get the backstory
Diamond, who has over a decade of experience in animal welfare, has led the shelter since 2023. Mayor Joe Hogsett’s administration appoints city agencies’ directors, and her appointment was up for approval by the City-County Council on Monday, Feb. 3.
On Jan. 22, the council’s Community Affairs Committee had voted 7-0 to send Diamond’s appointment to the full council with a recommendation to approve.
Typically, the mayor’s picks are fairly routine appointments – each of the other 25 appointments at Monday’s meeting were approved. However, after hearing from volunteers, the City-County Council voted unanimously, 25-0, to send the proposal back to the committee for more discussion.
Councilor Jesse Brown said the vote “is the best opportunity for the council to demonstrate publicly, ‘Hey, we have concerns with the way this department’s being run, and we’d like for the administration to acknowledge those concerns and fix those before we go out and just rubber-stamp your appointees.’”
Ahead of the meeting, Brown, a Democrat who serves District 13, sent an email to constituents and animal rights advocates, saying he was a fan of Diamond’s but that he wants to improve communication and collaboration between the animal shelter and the mayor’s office.
“I think volunteers are mistaken in attributing these kind of problematic policies to director Diamond. I don’t think it’s her fault personally,” Brown said.
Diamond was not at the Feb. 3 meeting. When Mirror Indy reached out for comment, a shelter spokesperson wrote in an email: “Kelly is committed to advocating for the animals in our City and is eager to work with the Council on issues related to animal welfare.”
Before this year, Indianapolis Animal Care Services was part of another city agency. Now, Hogsett made it its own department, which comes with extra responsibilities for Diamond. She’s in charge of finances until a CFO is hired, and she’s making decisions about the construction on the new shelter building set to open in 2026. The larger shelter will have more space for dogs and a bigger medical room.
Public can speak at Feb. 19 committee meeting
A group of about 15 volunteers showed up to the council’s Feb. 3 meeting. Several plan to speak during the public comment period at the Community Affairs Committee’s next meeting, 5:30 p.m. Feb. 19 at the City-County Building, 200 E. Washington St.
Lauren Wyatt, the shelter’s former volunteer coordinator, who resigned Jan. 17, shared a Facebook post encouraging the public to show up to the meeting.
Training new volunteers is on hold. Meanwhile, volunteers are worried they’ll lose help from people with full-time jobs who don’t get off until 5 p.m. or later and can no longer make it to the shelter for evening shifts.
Colleen Walker, a spokesperson for the shelter, said, “IACS’s top priority is the well-being of animals. We do not believe the change will affect IACS’s ability to care for animals.”
Before the new policy, volunteers could stay until 9 p.m. Monica Griffin, who has been volunteering at the shelter since 2017, said she used to stay until 11 p.m. to make sure the dogs got time outside.
“It’s pretty much in the evening and the weekends, when staff and management are not there, that’s when the bulk of the hours are,” Griffin said. “Most of us have full-time jobs, family or personal obligations, and we do this because of our love for the animals.”
After the City-County Council made its decision, Waters said she was “very excited, but I also know there’s still work to be done.
“I’m just hoping they will be watching IACS more closely and paying attention to the policies Kelly puts into place,” she said.
Mirror Indy reporter Sophie Young covers services and resources. Contact her at sophie.young@mirrorindy.org.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
