By STEPHANIE BRUMFIELD / Staff Writer

COLUMBIANA – The Shelby Humane Society is hoping to give all of its adoptable pets a home for the holidays, and one way it hopes to achieve that goal is through the organization’s annual ornament sale.

Each ornament features a photograph of a ready-to-adopt dog inside a decorative frame, and each ornament sponsors a dog’s trip to an animal shelter in the northeast, where its chances of adoption are often higher because of the lower availability of adoptable dogs.

Ornaments are on sale for $60 at Whole Foods Market in Cahaba Village, Hollywood Feed in Cahaba Village, Hollywood Feed in Lee Branch, the Shelby Humane Society in Columbiana and online at Shelter-partners.org.

Shelby Humane has participated in the Shelter Partners Program, a partnership with near-empty animal shelters in the north, since 2006 and has benefited approximately 7,000 animals within the last six years.

Lacey Bacchus, member of the Best Friends of Shelby Humane fundraising board,  said dogs who have spent two or three months at Shelby Humane are typically adopted within two or three days once they have been transported to northern shelters, and people are often “lined up to adopt when the van shows up.”

“You feel like you are helping a specific dog (when you buy an ornament) because it’s a picture of an actual dog available for adoption,” Bacchus said. “It’s a great gift for yourself or for someone else, and you know you’re helping a great cause.”

Each ornament sale goes to getting the animals ready for transport by helping cover the cost of medical and transportation expenses.

Board president Robin Adams said she would love for all the dogs to be adopted locally, but her second choice is to see them adopted somewhere else.

“We would love to eventually put ourselves out of business, but we keep doing it unfortunately because there is a need,” Adams said. “We’re really fortunate to have partners like Whole Foods and Hollywood Feed that let us have access to their customers, and we’re really fortunate to have partners in the north that love our dogs and are willing to take them.”

For more information, visit Shelter-parters.org.