By Justin Fedich | The Selma Times-Journal

The Selma Animal Shelter has been seeing an increase in adoptions over the past few months. Saturday’s adoption event continued the upward trend.

By noon, the Humane Society of Central Alabama had adopted out two dogs and two cats Saturday at the Selma Animal Shelter. After a slow start to 2015, the shelter has adopted out nearly 40 dogs and cats since April.

The shelter has averaged eight pet adoptions per month for the last five months, which is on par with the other animal shelters around Alabama.

“We’re proud of what we do. We’re doing really good,” said Humane Society of Central Alabama vice president Lynn Sanders.

The shelter, which is normally open only on weekdays, hosted its Saturday adoption event in hopes of getting people who work during weekdays to come out and adopt a dog or cat.

Ann Elizabeth Wells and Michael Ward were one of the couples who came to the shelter Saturday to adopt.

They adopted a dog which they called Remington named after the hunting company.

Humane Society of Central Alabama president Kaye Knight said getting the word out through flyers, advertising and the Internet has given the animal shelter an noticeable rise in the number of people interested in adoption.

“Since we’ve taken it over the 22nd of April, with the pictures and we put out flyers and all that kind of stuff, we’ve got a Facebook page, we’ve adopted out 38 or 39. It’s really helped,’” Knight said.

Knight and other volunteers at the shelter put in the effort to make sure the dogs are ready to be adopted.

“We try to put them out, let them exercise,” Knight said. “I take them to the cemetery to walk that way we assure they can be crated in a car with no problems.”

Shannon Lynch, who lives in Tuscaloosa, volunteers her time at the shelter twice a month. She said that while the adoption rates have increased, the adoption rate for the amount of dogs and cats that come into the shelter is still low.

Lynch said the low adoption rate is due to the fact that many cats and dogs are not spayed and neutered early enough. As a result, there ends up being more cats and dogs than people are willing to adopt.

While it’s not easy finding enough people who want to adopt pets in Selma, Lynch said that reaching out through social media has expanded amount of people the shelter can reach.

“With Facebook, we’ve really opened the doors,” Lynch said. “Somebody from Florida just took one back the other day and two of them just went to Montgomery.”

For those interested in adopting a dog or cat from the Selma Animal Shelter, the doors are open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Cats are $50 and dogs are $100.