Learn More About Us....

The Humane Society of Barron County (HSBC) began as a dedicated group of people in late 1978. In 1981, we received official non-profit status and shortly thereafter went from a group of private individuals doing all they could out of their homes to an actual brick and mortar animal shelter located in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. As the area grew and times changed, we outgrew our building and relocated to our current location on Guy Avenue in Barron in the late 90s.

Despite the name, HSBC is not owned, operated, or financially assisted by the county in any way. Our entire operating budget consists of the money that we bring in through adoptions, donations, reclaim fees, memberships, and fundraisers.

After being in operation for going on 30 years, we've been through a lot of changes and growing pains. The most recent series of changes occured in May of 2008 - we changed our mission statement and many of our policies. In a nutshell, we went from a shelter that was very limited intake (only taking stray animals from munipalities that had written contracts with the shelter and having a several month waiting list for owners looking to turn their animals over to the shelter) to an open door shelter. Any resident of Barron County can bring in an animal they find or own, regardless of what township they live in or found the animal in and there are no longer any "waiting lists." As part of the policy changes, the words "no kill" were removed from our mission statement and while that sounds like a negative, it has very much been a positive. We have built great relationships with other area shelters and many breed rescue groups and are making every effort possible to never euthanize a healthy animal due to a need for cage space. Animals are now spending days to weeks at the shelter instead of months to years. In 2007, HSBC took in approximiately 620 animals. In the four and a half months since we've become an open door shelter, we've taken in over 700 animals, an obvious sign that this open door policy was needed long ago.

The shelter has a very small but dedicated staff. Lee Lewis, the manager, has been on board since June and has done a great job leading the shelter while it underwent many changes. At the end of August, we also took on a shelter director, Dorothy Quinn, to try to help handle more of the administrative and future planning aspects of the shelter, something that was just too big of a job for one person. The shelter then employees three dedicated employees who work tirelessly day in and day out to keep all 40+ animals fed, cleaned, loved, and cared for on a daily basis, 365 days a year.

Overseeing the shelter staff are our board of directors. Currently, we have seven members on our board and several advisors to the board. David Armstrong and Dari McDonald serve as co-presidents to the board, Carol DuBois as the Vice President, Dawn Franson is the secretary, Marla Koob Treasurer, and Dr. Brenda Tabor, and Sherri Sheldon.
Advisors to the board include honorable Judge Tim Doyle, Dr Brian and Dr Jerry Woods, and Rosmary Tireman.

Hollie Wingate serves as the Volunteer coordinator and currently has over 15 scheduled active weekly volunteers and many more not-as-active volunteers and website updates and design is done by Wendie Johnson.

Please check back soon for updates to this page.

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