Halifax Humane Society

Founded in 1937 by Mrs. Elsie Beatty. Starting with a small contingent of animal lovers, Mrs. Beatty formed a board of directors and later that year, incorporated what is now The Halifax Humane Society. Through Mrs. Beatty's efforts the Halifax Humane Society soon became well known for helping homeless and wild animals in Volusia County, Florida.

As our community grew, so did the need to expand our shelter. A "building expansion plan" was devised to address the needs of the animals at our shelter and the residents in our community. This project was broken into two phases. Phase I would accommodate more animals by doubling the kennel space and build a courtyard for potential adopters. Phase II would expand our spay/neuter clinic and provide a new adoption center for the public to meet and choose a new family member.

Each year, the number of animals entering our shelter increased substantially. The need to start Phase I became urgent. In 1999, we successfully expanded our 64 existing dog kennels to 124 kennels. This bought animals a little more time in our adoption kennels.

Always trying to find new ways to improve the situation for homeless animals in our community, we went to the public and had a survey performed in 2000. This helped to shed light on what direction we needed to go in order to reach the support of the public in spaying and neutering pets. From this survey a Spay/Neuter ad campaign was launched in November 2000 with a strong plea to help us end euthanasia of adoptable animals. This campaign lasted only three months, but was later proven effective in initiating some desperately needed community awareness!

On a lighter note, we had a courtyard dedication to Mary Motley, an outstanding member of our board for many years. This new courtyard in her name has been a tremendous benefit to the animals in our shelter. HHS has become a much friendlier and inviting place for prospective adopters to come and spend quality time getting to choose a new family member.

Currently, The Halifax Humane Society receives over 17,000 animals per year. As always, our goal is to salvage and place into good permanent homes as many of these animals as possible, but the number of homeless and abused animals in our community is too great. Each year during "cat season" we continue to see an average of 1,000 cats came in each month throughout this period (May thru August). To address this growing problem, HHS continues to promote and educate the public about the benefits of spay/neuter surgery for pets.

Note: PO Boxes will not show correctly on the map below.