Military families question animal shelter’s policy denying them chance to adopt

PENDER COUNTY, NC (WWAY) — Adopting a pet should be an exciting process, but for one Sneads Ferry couple it’s been the opposite.

Haley Carbaugh said she and her husband were denied the opportunity because her husband is in the military.

“It was really insulting to me that she just assumed that me and my husband were the type of people that would adopt an animal without actually being sure we could take care of it,” Carbaugh said.

Carbaugh said she and her husband fell in love with a beautiful dog at the Pender County Humane Society. But after applying they found out they were not eligible.

“Whenever I called her she informed me that because my husband was a deployable military member that we could not adopt any animal from their shelter,” Carbaugh said.

And the couple is not alone. Out of 14 Google reviews for the Pender County Humane Society three other military families posted frustrations with the same issue.

“If it’s a policy I think they need to make everyone that volunteers and helps at their shelter aware of it, because they really did bring false hope to me and my husband,” Carbaugh said.

WWAY reached out to the organization’s president Gloria Johnson, and she stands by the decision.

Johnson said she has seen many experiences when members of the military get deployed their animals are often abandoned or returned to shelters like the Pender County Humane Society, regardless of the home situation.

“He’s deployable, but I’m not,” Carbaugh said. “Like obviously I stay here. And it just really shocked me.”

Carbaugh said it is frustrating and unfair.

“How many times have they turned down other people that could have given a dog a loving home or any animal a loving home just because, you know, them being in the military,” Carbaugh said.

Johnson said the shelter is not anti-military. It just will not adopt to anyone who could be deployed even though that is not made clear in the society’s adoption application.

As for the Carbaughs, they plan to visit other shelters this weekend.