BEATRICE - The past year hasn’t been without challenges for animal shelters…so a little fun with the dogs and their owners is okay....with the close of a community’s water park for the season.


The annual Doggie Dip fundraiser of the Beatrice Humane Society was Tuesday night,o at the Big Blue Water Park in Beatrice.  "Every year we see new faces, and one of the best parts is because a lot of them are animals adopted from us, and so getting to see them come back and be part of the community."


Carlee Fiddes, Executive Director of the Humane Society…says the organization continues to meet challenges thanks to a supportive community.
"Animal sheltering across the country has been battling the past couple of years with big dogs, in particular. We are definitely challenged, but we fortunate in that we have an amazing community supporting us. While other shelters are considering things like behavior euthanasia, we're still figuring things out. We're still taking great care of our animals in our care. It's because of events like this that we keep getting to do those things and keep helping our animals. As far as cats go, we're actually rocking our cat adoptions. We're going to break last year's adoption numbers courtesy of our cats. It's the give and take....and this year happens to be a cat year."


Two shifts of dogs and their owners came to the water park…..larger dogs for the first hour…..the smaller pooches for the second hour…..all for a donation of ten-dollars.


Two of the newest Humane Society efforts are a clinic for spaying and neutering, along with a trap, spay and neuter program for feral cats, trying to control the population.  Fiddes says 25-hundred dogs and cats have now been spayed or neutered through the clinic, and the organization is working hard on the community cat issue.


"We've been working really hard on building our outdoor cat and feral cat program, to be able to get a lot of those outdoor cats taken care of...and we're starting to see less and less cats, kittens specifically, coming to our shelter."


The trap program started about a year ago, and since then, Fiddes said over 550 outdoor feral cats have been trapped, spayed or neutered…then released.
"Those are cats that have no interest in living with us. Those are cats that have no interest in being near us. But, they can go and have fantastic lives being out."


But…last night was for the dogs…chasing each other, splashing about. and retrieving tennis balls.