HISTORY

By Martha Quigley
January 2023

A midwife named Ann Cundle, from Liverpool, England came to Leslie County in 1956. Cundle, along with Kate Ireland, who arrived in Leslie County in 1950 to volunteer for the midwifery program at the Frontier Nursing Service, both had the desire to implement awareness for the humane treatment of domesticated animals. These women organized the community and began to create a management program for feral dogs in the area. They created the Leslie County Humane Society. 

Armed with the knowledge of the state laws passed in 1954 and 1955 that every county has an animal control officer and a facility authorized to maintain sheltering and animal control services that had long been ignored by most of the southeastern counties with small budgets, the initiative for an established shelter began.

Through the 60s and 70s over in Perry County Jean Craft and some others were deeply involved to try to solve the wild dog problems and the dangers they were causing. With help from the animal welfare workers in northern Kentucky Miss Cundle, Miss Ireland, Mrs. Craft and others came together to organize the Leslie/Perry County Humane Society. They elected two Perry Countians Mrs. Craft as chairperson, Martha Quigley as vice chairperson, Kate Ireland from Leslie County served as treasurer, and Ann Cundle, as secretary.

On the evening of June 20, 1985, the Leslie/Perry County Humane Society (LPCHS) and other interested members of the community gathered at the home of Vernon Cooper for dinner and to hear the speaker John Graham, president of the Blue Grass Humane Society from Lexington. He came to Hazard to encourage the two counties to discuss the need for the construction of a shelter for stray, abandoned, neglected, and feral cats and dogs.

The LPCHS had been using a small piece of land in Leslie County to take dogs and cats that were rescued or surrendered. It was a small enclosure on the riverbank close to Hyden that was crowded and insufficient for the number of animals that had been coming in. The four volunteers who made up the executive committee of the organization were the main animal rescuers that answered abuse and neglect calls in both counties. A small amount of money was raised to hire a manager for the less-than-adequate animal shelter outside of Hyden.

That evening in the summer of 1985 the dinner was held to incentivize leaders of the community to build an animal shelter large enough to take care of housing the stray animal population and to enforce ordinances already in place. The Commonwealth of Kentucky had passed statutes to regulate the domesticated animal population by requiring every county to build an animal shelter, but there remained little enforcement in the eastern section of the state.

Fortunately, Kate Ireland was the past president of the Board of Directors of the Kentucky River Area Development District. She along with Vernon Cooper, also on that board, began the discussion for the establishment of an animal shelter.  

With their influence, the board and staff began a project to provide a facility to serve the eight counties of KRADD. Ann Cundle saw the critical need and pushed for it. Vernon Cooper as well as Kate Ireland got the entire KRADD board involved.

The movement was organized with help from the staff of KRADD and coordinated by Linda Gayheart. They were able to get funds from coal severance funds to build the new shelter.

The base complex was incorporated in April of 1989 as the Kentucky River Regional Humane Society. It was designed around the plan of serving multiple counties in KRADD which were Breathitt, Letcher, Knott, and Leslie, with satellite shelters built by each county's fiscal court and a large shelter as a central hub in Perry County for housing the overflow of dogs and cats.

In 1999 the name was changed to Kentucky River Regional Animal Shelter established to serve Perry, Breathitt, Knott, and Letcher counties. For a while, the counties' fiscal courts covered operational funds.

One little-known fact is that the return of wildlife to East Kentucky was made possible by this shelter when it was built in 1989. In the early and middle twentieth-century roving dog packs made any growth of wild animal populations impossible in this section of the state. Kate Ireland, an avid hunter, gained the attention of a local hunter's association that strongly supported this multi-county shelter established as a state corporation and a 501 (c) (3) federal non-profit association in that year.

The first animal shelter manager was Randy Combs. Others that succeeded him were Rick Johnson, Merrill Collins, John Skeens, and Tom Caudill whose assistant was Randall Vanover. During these first years, animals with adoption rates around between five and ten percent, tens of hundreds of dogs and cats were euthanized and cremated in the incinerator on the property of the shelter annually. Board members were Jean Craft, Denise Redd, Revenna Bowling, Martha Quigley, Vernon Cooper, Doug Hensley, Cordell Gayheart, Ann Cundle, and Kate Ireland.

In approximately 2011 Tammy and Thomas Kilburn became involved with the shelter and Tammy was elected President of the Board. Her energy and involvement brought good organization, fundraising, and partnerships with other non-profits and corporations around Kentucky and out into the country. Euthanasia numbers were reduced to only 15 percent within a year.

In the absence of government inspection, the best hope for abused animals is intervention by law enforcement or private citizens. The state's attorney ruled in 2015 that a county may contract with a nonprofit entity to provide an animal shelter which was the manner of administration that was adopted by Kentucky River Regional Animal Shelter (KRRAS).

Breathitt, Perry, Knott, and Letcher Fiscal Courts have fostered the growth of the Kentucky River Regional Animal Shelter (KRRAS) for more than three decades as of this writing. The Fiscal Courts have fulfilled their mandate and commitment by making monthly contributions for the care and welfare of animals — including strays, throwaways, abandoned and surrendered cats, dogs, and livestock. The animal shelter board has representatives from each service county.

During 2023 the Board of KRRAS, under the new Presidential leadership of Perry County resident Tony Vaughn, continues to face the crisis of overpopulation and cruelty of domesticated and pet animals within our borders. KRRAS not only houses animals in our facility, but we also perform many other services for communities in the four-county area.

• A volunteer board member manages a low-cost spay/neuter program which is a tried-and-true method to reduce the overpopulation of dogs and cats. Spay It Forward was organized in 2016 by Pam Blair. No animal is adopted without getting spayed or neutered.

• We have periodically had an education program in schools that reaches approximately 1,000 students on subjects of animal care and welfare presented by a board member volunteer.

• Every dog or cat that is brought into the shelter is vaccinated.

• Transports are conducted to move unadopted animals to other shelters we partner with.

• All these projects have helped us maintain our status as a no-kill shelter reducing the euthanasia rate from 95% in 2011 to a recent year’s euthanasia rate as low as 2.4%.

• Whenever possible we provide dog houses for concerned owners who need them.

• A strong partnership has been established with Starfish Animal Rescue in Geneva, Illinois which receives hundreds of our animals every two weeks.

We will be glad to provide information that you might require to ensure that we have an extraordinary operation compared to the support of other shelters in Kentucky, as we run on minimal funds because of our collaborative construct. We have an experienced board that reaches out on all planes of animal welfare and a devoted staff that performs above and beyond. We depend on a lot of volunteer hours for full-time operations.