The Terre Haute Humane Society is dedicated to providing stray and abandoned animals with a safe temporary home until a new loving family or rescue can be found.

Our Mission

Chartered in 1913 by a small group of concerned citizens, the Terre Haute Humane Society's goals are to work toward the prevention of all unnecessary animal suffering and to teach kindness toward all living things through an area-wide education program.

Our mission continues to be to maintain the highest standards of humane care and treatment for our animal friends by providing assistance to owner-surrendered, mistreated, abandoned, and neglected animals.

We strive to assist in the management of the domestic animal population of Terre Haute through spaying and neutering and, ultimately, adoption of all the animals under our care.

Our goals are simple:

1. to educate the public on the importance of proper animal care and responsible pet ownership so that the need for stray & lost animals to be brought into the shelter can be reduced or eliminated; and
2. to ensure that the animals who stay at our shelter are safe, happy, and healthy while they await new homes.

The staff and volunteers of the Terre Haute Humane Society believe that education plays a vital role in the care of animals. Therefore, a variety of Outreach Programs have been instituted throughout the community. These include visits to classrooms, day care facilities, and senior citizen centers. For more information or to arrange an Outreach Program, please visit our Humane Education page. We believe that these goals, when met, will make for a healthier, happier community, not only for our two-legged residents, but our four-legged ones as well.

The Terre Haute Humane Society handles many types of animal-related concerns in Vigo County. Our responsibilities include stray animals, owner-relinquished animals, animals from city and county animal control officers and animal bite quarantines. Our responsibilities do not include animal abuse complaints, stray animal pick-ups, animal rescues and wildlife re-habilitation or relocation, but we try to direct callers to the proper authorities for these needs.

Shelter Activity:
2010: Incoming 2763 / Saved 2579 - 93%
2009: Incoming 3721 / Saved 3426 - 92%
2008: Incoming 3216 / Saved 2881 - 90%
2007: Incoming 2801 / Saved 2470 - 88%

We have 110 kennels at our facility. It requires approximately $35,000 per month or $420,00 per year to maintain the shelter. Our cost of operation today is $10.60 per animal per day. That computes to over $1000 per day. We are not supported in any way by local, state or federal government and with the costs of medicine, utilities, gasoline, insurance and food on the rise we depend solely and heavily on fund raising events and individual donations.

We have a staff of 10 so we rely immensely on volunteers. Our volunteers do everything from fixing newspapers for the kennels, to socializing the animals, to raising money so we can take care of the kids (animals).

If you are interested in more information or would like to become a part of the Terre Haute Humane Society please contact us at adopt@thhs.org