St. Francis Animal Shelter was formed in January of 1997. The City of Buffalo had no animal shelter and the city maintained a pound where lost, strayed and unwanted animals ended up with only 72 hours to find their owners or a new home. Each year, over 200 dogs were destroyed along with an untold number of cats and kittens.

In October of 1997, we signed an agreement with the City of Buffalo to run the City Pound as a shelter, and have operated it since that time. The facilities were bare minimum with only four indoor/outdoor kennels. We added outdoor kennels with some protection, but these were not functional in extreme cold weather. There was no space for cats. Consequently, we had the expense of boarding all of our cats and kittens with local veterinarians. We have more than 30 wonderful and caring volunteers who operate the shelter on a schedule. Over the years our volunteers have donated thousands of hours of work to this cause.

We also hold Spay-Neuter Clinics and provide half-price spay-neuter certificates to those in need. All of our dogs and cats are spayed or neutered before adoption. If they are too young when they're adopted, we provide the adopting people with a free spay-neuter certificate.

The new shelter opened, it seems, just in time to meet a fast growing need in the community. And it has been filled to capacity several times this summer.

While the new permanent facility has been a blessing, our organization continues to struggle to meet operational and maintenance costs as well as fund the spay/neuter clinics and certificates. We have found that animal abuse is best approached by reducing the number unwanted litters of puppies and kittens through public education and the efforts to encourage spay and neuter of all pets.

This web page, and cooperation with such programs as “PetFinder.com” has helped our organization find new homes for those unfortunate dogs and cats which have been abandoned.

The City of Buffalo has an animal control officer as well as ordinances requiring pet owners to be responsible.

With the growth of rural subdivisions around Buffalo, we hope to encourage the Johnson County Commissioners to consider a county animal control regulations in cooperation with the City of Buffalo.  We believe this could be cost effective and most beneficial to the citizen of Johnson County if done in cooperation with St. Fancis Animal Shelter, Inc.

We encourage people to visit the new facility. If you would like to volunteer to assist this program in any way, please contact the shelter at 684-1738 or stop by the shelter.

If you care to donate to this most worthy cause, donations can be sent to:

St. Francis Animal Shelter
P.O. Box 221
Buffalo, WY 82834