Animal Alliance Rescue to officially close in July

The Red Oak community will soon be losing its local animal shelter.
Tracy Hill, the owner of Animal Alliance Rescue at 2047 Fernwood Drive will close its doors for good in July. Onwer Tracy Hill said there were several factors that contributed to the shelter’s closure.
“Since COVID, the monetary donations have been drastically reduced. At one time we had $20,000 in our accounts for expenses and treatment for the animals. We’re down to our last $4,000 or $5,000, and that’s how it’s been for the last year. Plus, while we have great volunteers, none of them are young, and everyone is getting busy in life, and there’s just not enough of them to go around for our hours. We’ve had some other conflicts as well. Our overhead with rent, electric, water, and gas is probably $2,600. That’s not including heartworm positive dogs, and that’s about $700 to $1,000 right off the beginning of treatment,” explained Hill. “The tough economy means people don’t have a lot of extra money, and in addition to reduced donations, adoptions are down. We live on donations and adoptions.”
Still, Hill said she’s happy with the time she was able to spend operating animal shelters.
“We did three years here, and we did eight years in Mount Air. So we have a total of 11 years, which is okay. We’re just slightly over 4,300 animals that have come through and that we’ve adopted. We had to stop taking my mom, who works at the shelter with me, had such bad allergies. So of the 4,000 animals, we’ve adopted around 500 cats over the years and the rest were dogs,” Hill stated. “Most shelters take the cute little poodles. We take the bigger dogs because nobody wants them, and they are harder to place, especially black dogs are hardest. While we get our fair share of Pitbulls, we can usually adopt them out right away. We have a border collie lab. He’s been sitting there for almost a year. Sometimes it’s tough to adopt the dogs that aren’t unique.”
Hill stressed that while the shelter is closing permanently, it will remain in operation for another few months.
“I’m doing limited sheltering right now. When we started here, we had 12 kennels and an isolation room. Right now we’re down to six kennels and an isolation room, but I’ll be reducing that to five kennels as of last week. I’m taking it step-by-step. May 15, I’ll take down another cage. That’ll leave us four. I’m going to stop taking dogs altogether, except for city strays and stop pulling them from other shelters, I’m going to guess, between May 15 to May 30,” Hill commented “Then all June and into July we’ll take the city strays whose time is up at the vet’s office. We will take them and help place them. We’ve talked to city administrator Lisa Kotter about those plans.”
While the shelter’s doors will be closing, there will be limited options for collecting strays.
“The City of Red Oak is going to take one of our kennels from us. My mom has a kennel up at her yard, so if there’s a stray that comes through and their time is up, and the city doesn’t have their area set up yet, my mom is going to be holding it. That means we still will work with the city in trying to get it adopted. Dogs aren’t being claimed like they used to be,” explained Hill.
The official closing day will be July 31. Up until that time, Hill said they’ll be doing special promotions.
“Right now instead of $250, our adoption fees are $150. Even though some of the costs to get them fixed are much higher, right now our main concern is to get the animals placed, and we’re just sheltering the local strays until July 31.”
Hill said her heart has always been set on animals and being able to help them has been very rewarding.
“I was a vet tech for 10 years and animal control officer for three years at Ames. It’s so rewarding to find dogs, especially the ones that aren’t perfect, the ones with special needs, or those that are amputees, the perfect home. I especially love getting feedback years later on how the dog is doing. We have some cases that really tug at our hearts. Sometimes we have dogs stay with us for close to a year due to medical issues. We get close to them, and they become our animals. To see them four or five years down the road, with their owners sending us pictures, letting us know they’re still doing great, I just find that very rewarding.”
When she closes the doors permanently in July, Hill said she’s going to miss everything about what she’s done.
“I’ve done this pretty much most of my life. I absolutely love placing them into good homes. I’m going to miss that. The tails wag, the ears come up. It’s like they know. When certain people come in, they know they’re going home. That’s just very emotional for me. I really enjoy that connection that dogs have with the people that adopt them.”
Once she’s back to peak health, Hill said she plans to seek out other shelters that may be in need. She also offered a special message to those who have provided support to her over the years.
“I really appreciate everything they’ve done. We’ve had a few in town that are always there. If we put a call out on our website that we need toilet paper, dish soap, we would have boxes and boxes delivered the next week. If we asked, we received from them. And I love that we have great followers. If people want to keep other shelters from closing down, please support them and please spay and neuter your pets.”