Not just a pet project — Mosley takes on shelter director position

The Weston County Humane Society has a new shelter director, and she has some big plans for the organization. Jenny Mosley has served in this position since Sept. 1.

Before taking on this role, Mosley held a seat on the humane society’s board of directors. She also has over 15 years of experience in working with animals in one capacity or another.

After the untimely passing of the previous shelter director, Neela Beardsley, Chris Beardsley, then president of the board and sister of Neela, approached Mosley about taking on the directorship. 

Debra Smith, Mosley’s mother and the board’s acting president, was not surprised that her daughter was asked to become director.

“She has been volunteering at the shelter for at least 20 years. She started going up there and walking dogs when she could. And as Neela and Chris saw how dedicated and devoted she was to the animals, they asked her if she wanted to get a little more involved and offered her the job of cleaning up there on the weekends,” she said.

Mosley was also serving as board vice president when she was given the opportunity to become the director, which also happens to be the organization’s only paid position. After contemplating her decision over the weekend, she formally accepted the role at the board’s emergency meeting on Monday, Sept. 1. As a result, she had to resign from her position on the board since the bylaws of the humane society preclude the director from being a board member.

“I think Jenny is going to bring some new ideas to the shelter,” Smith said. “And her goal is to get more of the community aware of the animals up there and aware of the programs that she’d like to get instituted.”

One of Mosley’s plans is to implement a volunteer dog-walking program. She envisions having times when interested individuals could sign up to walk a dog from the shelter.

“Whether you have specific dogs you want to walk or any of them, it’s going to be open so people can come in and see the dogs, interact with them, play with them and walk them so that the dogs can interact with people more,” she said.

Mosley hopes that a consequence of this program will be volunteers “falling for” dogs and deciding to adopt them. She also said that such a program might help in getting the dogs accustomed to a wider variety of people, which is important since animal rescue efforts are oftentimes managed by women and shelter dogs tend to struggle around men as a result, especially tall men or men wearing hats. Moreover, she said that the shelter would not allow anyone under age 16 to volunteer without the presence of a parent.

Another of Mosley’s goals is to institute a foster program at the shelter. This, she said, is the program that has her most excited. The shelter will go about fostering in two ways. First, a potential adopter will be able to pick up the dog after work and keep it at home overnight and then return it to the shelter during the day. This, Mosley said, would be especially beneficial to those with smaller homes and those who do not want to worry about the dog while they are at work.

The second approach would be for the potential adopter to simply foster the dog while the adoption process is being completed. In either case, Mosley sees great promise.

“The dog gets social interaction and a nicer place to sleep than in their kennel, so it helps both people and the dogs,” she said.

Most of all, Mosley desires to build a stronger relationship between the shelter and the community. A big part of this is making the community more aware of what the shelter does. This includes an existing program that Smith highlighted in her
interview with the News Letter Journal: Project LOVED.

Project LOVED is a program done in cooperation with the Wyoming Honor Conservation Camp and involves shelter dogs being trained by inmates at the prison. Fifteen dogs are currently in the program. Audra Dudzinski is the program manager at the prison.

“The inmates train them, so when the dogs come out of Project LOVED, they have some basic skills. They learn to interact with people and with other dogs and are much more socialized. It’s a wonderful program,” Smith said.

While she was motivated to accept the directorship so that she could implement the programs she had in mind, Mosley was also motivated by a more fundamental desire to work with animals.
“My family always had animals, so it’s always been something that has stayed with me since growing up,” she said. “Wanting to keep that aspect of my life, I’ve worked a lot of other jobs (where I worked around animals). Whether it’s working with a vet or just volunteering at shelters, I always try to keep a foot in the animal world to help.”