SUMMERDALE, Alabama — Shana Stradley is passionate about animal rescue.

It has been just over a year since she and her family started the Rivers of Love Animal Rescue to help rescue dogs and cats in Baldwin County.

Today, Rivers of Love volunteers are providing temporary homes for 31 dogs and cats in the area.

“It’s all volunteer,” she said “We all have jobs and donate our time to this effort.”

Rivers of Love also supports traditional shelters like the Baldwin County Animal Shelter in Summerdale, by taking photos of adoptable pets and placing them on their website, riversoflove.net and on their Facebook page.

The Baldwin County Animal Shelter has 60 kennels just in its adoptable dog area, with many of the kennels housing two, even three dogs, depending on their temperament. Right now, the kennel area is full to capacity, Stradley said.

Recently, Jennifer Holt and Debra Crabtree with 95-KSJ joined Stradley, volunteer photographer Tara Miller and assistant Emilee Cochran to help get many of the pooches ready for their closeup.

“We’ll shoot photos of about 50 dogs in a day,” Stradley said, beginning at 11 a.m. and going through most of the afternoon.

They also host pet adoption and fundraising events. On Saturday, Aug. 4 the organization hosted a pet adoption event at Pet Sense at the Tanger Outlet in Foley. Then on Aug. 11, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., there will be a fish fry and silent auction at S & S Motorcycle Shop on Highway 98 in Foley to raise money for Rivers of Love.

The statistics are staggering.

Every year in the United States 3 to 5 million animals are euthanized in shelters.

At the Baldwin County Animal Shelter alone, 12,000 to 13,000 dogs and cats are housed there every year. Only about 28 percent of those animals get adopted, Stradley said. This year alone (from Jan. 1 until July 27), the Shelter has had to euthanize 785 dogs and 1,185 cats.

“We are literally trying to save these animals from death row,” Stradley said. “It’s not the shelter’s fault. They are doing the best they can with the limited resources they have.”

The problem comes in an uneducated public about a growing problem, she said.

“People think all we do is rescue animals and we do, but it’s really only half of the battle,” she said. “We spend 50 percent of our time educating the public.”

One of the main areas of education is the need for people to spay and neuter their pets.

“If people would just spay and neuter their pets there wouldn’t be such a huge problem,” Stradley said. The other main issue of education comes in overcoming the belief that if an animal is housed in a shelter there has to be something wrong with it.

“Oftentimes these are perfectly good animals that have just dealt a bad hand,” Stradley said. “They just need someone to take a chance on them.”

Adopting a pet from the shelter is easy. It costs $60 for the adoption for all dogs and puppies, $50 for cats and kittens, which covers the cost of microchiping, spay and neutering and the first round of shots for the animal. Required rabies shots, which must be done by a private veterinarian, cost $10.

The Baldwin County Animal Shelter also had adoptable pets available for viewing at petfinder.org.

You can contact the Baldwin County Animal Shelter for more information at 251-972-6834.

For more information on Rivers of Love events or pet adoptions, visit the website or contact Stradley at 251-752-9877.