The animals at Ames Animal Shelter receive more than 17,516 visitors a year – and it’s hard for the visitors to leave empty-handed.

Adopting a pet can provide many advantages for a person, if the owner is willing to care for it properly.

Although one of the shelter’s goals is to make adoptions possible to as many people as possible, Lorna Lavender, director of the animal control and shelter, said owners must be informed to ensure success.

“The human-animal relationship is real,” she said. “Our society has advanced so we’re less dependent on animals for [tasks] but more for companionship.”

When owners are uninformed or the pets are neglected, the pets often run away, causing problems for everyone in the community, she said.

“While we encourage adoption of pets, not being a pet owner isn’t necessarily bad,” Lavender said. “It’s far worse to have a neglected pet.”

There are about 20 dogs for every human in the United States, she said.

That astonishing number reveals a problem – too many pets and not enough homes for them.

According to the Animal Protection Society of Iowa, if two uncontrolled breeding cats produced two litters each year, with only 2.8 kittens surviving per litter, there would be a total of 12,680 cats in five years from only the original two cats. By the ninth year, the numbers would hit 13,958,290.

The shelter officials circulate newsletters, operate a Web site and give public and televised talks to educate the public, Lavender said. Making the public more compliant with spaying and neutering would help curb the reproduction problem, she said.

“Education is very important in this line of work,” Lavender said. “When people realize that they are part of the problems, good people want to help.”

Ames Animal Shelter, located at 325 Billy Sunday Road, has been in existence for more than 30 years, she said. Shelter officials pride themselves in taking in every animal, regardless of adoptability.

While some facilities are “no-kill” shelters – meaning that they don’t put any adoptable animals to sleep – they are limited in space and also have to refuse street strays, Lavender said.

The Ames Animal Shelter, however, accepts all animals and puts to sleep only the badly-injured, dangerous or behaviorally-unsound animals, she said.

For Lavender, being able to say the shelter doesn’t destroy animals is not as important as the safety of others in the area.

“It’s more important to take something off the street before it reproduces or hurts someone,” she said.

The facility also is unique because of its practice of euthanasia – humanely putting an animal to sleep, Lavender said. They put to sleep about 10 percent of animals in 2001, she said.

To adopt a pet, one must fill out an application and sign a contract. Spaying is enforced and the adopter pays nominal fees for the preparation of the animal to be taken home.

Lavender said they have denied applications before.

“In one case, the [applicant] had a history of many pets lost in a short period of time, yet there were no records of them with the police,” she said.

Sometimes people are so set on adopting a pet that they don’t listen to care instructions for animals, Lavender said.

“We just hope that the message sinks in,” she said.

The workers at the shelter strongly discourage impulse adoptions, Lavender said, so potential owners can spend time with the animals and prepare for them.

Shopping for the pet and preparing a family, if applicable, would be necessary before bringing a pet home, she said.

“Owning a pet is a lifetime commitment,” Lavender said. “You have to keep in mind, do you have time to provide the pet with care, spaying, veterinary visits and so forth.

“But we’ve had terrific adopters and large numbers of success.”