Profile: Philip Smith, animal shelter manager
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
As manager of PAWS Atlanta, one of the city’s largest no-kill animal shelters, Philip Smith knows how much work it takes to turn abused and abandoned animals back into man’s best friends.
How do most animals find their way to PAWS?
For the most part, we try to get our animals from kill facilities. These places end up with a lot of injured animals, and unless we can bring them in, they’re just sitting there waiting for their time to be killed. We try to do what we can to give them the life they deserve. All together, that probably makes up 75 percent of our animals. Others are dire cases, like the dog we found that was hit by a lawn mower. And about 20 percent are animals that people surrender to us.
We try to help as many people as we can — but unfortunately there are limits to how many animals we can take in, which is why we won’t take in litters of kittens whose owner hasn’t had their mother spayed. We know that the owner will be back here a year later with the same problem.
What condition are most animals in when they first arrive at PAWS?
We get a lot of abused animals. Ninety-nine percent of them are scared out of their minds, and it takes a lot to get them to where they can trust humans again.













