The Athens Area Humane Society is 125 years old this year, making it one of, if not the oldest secular charitable organization in the city, according to executive director Cheryl McCormick.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, McCormick took the opportunity to research the history of the Humane Society. “I don’t think people really understand how deeply embedded the then-Athens Humane Society is in this beloved community,” she said during a recent lecture at the Lyndon House Arts Center sponsored by the preservation group Historic Athens.
When she took the job, McCormick said she was surprised to discover that the local group had no affiliation with the national Humane Society of the United States, which was founded in 1954. “With the exception of one small grant from the Department of Agriculture, we don’t receive any government funding,” she said. More than half of the group’s revenue comes from its clinic, with the rest coming from adoption fees, donations and revenue from summer camps.
The first mention McCormick found of the local humane society in the press was an 1899 article in the Athens Banner, she said. That article described how the “indefatigable” socialite Louise DuBose founded the organization to pressure the mayor for an ordinance requiring better treatment of horses. At that time, horses were the main mode of transportation for both people and cargo. But many owners mistreated their horses, and manure in the streets attracted diseases like typhoid fever, which is spread by flies, McCormick said. When an equine flu epidemic struck, some people even left dead horses to rot in the street, she said. The newly formed Athens Humane Society used both a stick, by funding the city’s first animal control officer, and a carrot, by providing feed and shoes for horses. It also pushed back against a proposed ordinance requiring dogs to be muzzled.
After a flurry of activity, the group grew dormant, and there were few mentions in the press until 1973, when the Athens Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals formed. At the time, 20,000 pets a year were being euthanized in Atlanta, McCormick said, and stories about people poisoning their neighbors’ pets were common. Spaying and neutering became a national campaign—many people probably remember game show host Bob Barker reminding viewers about it at the end of every episode of “The Price Is Right.”
The SPCA had a goal of raising $50,000 for a new animal shelter, McCormick said, but by 1983 had only raised $13,000. It wasn’t until 2021 that the AAHS was able to realize the dream, thanks to a $2.6 million bequest from Susan McConnell West—a woman who had never before volunteered for or donated to the organization until she died in 2006.
The Mitchell Bridge Road facility is not a “pet jail,” the way many people think of the pound, McCormick said. “We wanted a place that would really celebrate the bond between people and pets,” she said.
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