In 1990, founder Peggy Barnish opened the Hooterville Pet Safehaus, when she noticed a need for a shelter that did not have a euthanasia deadline. During that first year, under the direction of Peggy, 370 cats and dogs found their forever homes.

The organization grew with the help, love, and dedication of volunteers and donors. In 1996, another milestone would be reached – 1,000 animals adopted in a single year.

The following year we made the commitment that all animals helped by the shelter would be spayed/neutered prior to adoption. We believe that spay/neuter is key to eliminating pet homelessness. This belief and practice is still one that is practiced at Homeward Pet today.

In 1998, the shelter moved to Bothell’s Country Village. While cats were able to be housed in the shelter, due to lease restrictions, fosters were still heavily relied on for the care of our dogs. We realized that we needed a larger, and more usable space, as our shelter and need for our services continued to grow.

After 6 years at Bothell’s Country Village, the shelter – now Homeward Pet Adoption Center – moved into a larger location at Clearwater Spa. For the first time in our 13-year history, all cats and dogs were housed in the same building.The Homeward Pet Veterinary Clinic was opened, and our first vet was hired – now we could spay/neuter all animals on site!

Staying true to our roots has always been important. While we worked with building national and state-wide partnerships, we also kept looking for ways to help the Woodinville/Bothell community. In 2010 we opened the Homeward Pet Low-Cost Spay & Neuter Clinic to provide low-cost surgeries to families in need.

In 2011, we moved to our current location. Our new location helped us increase our Spay/Neuter capacity, the number of animals we could help in-shelter, improve our volunteer and adoption experiences, and create a more safe environment for medically compromised cats and dogs.

Later in 2011, we opened the Homeward Pet Food Bank. The Food Bank continues to provide pet food and supplies to families in need of assistance to help keep their pets in their homes.

Just a few short years later, in 2015, we started the Homeward Pet Behavior Program, to provide a more holistic approach for our animals.

The program is in place to help animals currently in the shelter, continued assistance for recently adopted animals, as well as assistance to the community to help keep pets in homes instead of being surrendered due to behavior.

Since 2015, we have been able to treat animals medically, as well as to provide behavior-modification plans for animals that need extra behavioral assistance before and after adoption.

In 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic, the shelter moved all our animals to foster-care. Adoptions still occurred, but by appointment only. After a few months, we were able to start committing to helping more behaviorally challenged animals and started our current focus on Fear-Free sheltering.

“We created the Fear Free Shelter Program to improve the experiences of animals by educating shelter personnel about the emotional needs of dogs and cats,” said Dr. Marty Becker, founder and CEO of Fear Free.

“This program will empower them to apply key concepts, strategies, and techniques designed to reduce the negative emotional states that are commonly experienced by shelter animals, including fear, anxiety, stress, and frustration.”

In 2022, volunteers and staff returned to in-person care and practices. The time away gave us the opportunity to evaluate systems that were working prior to the shut down, and implement new systems with the time to test and put them in place.

Our foster program, in it’s upgraded capacity is still incredibly valuable. We learned over the pandemic years that time in foster care improved the emotional well-being of the animals in our care.

We opened the option for our adopters to do adoptions by appointment or as a walk-up, which has been the perfect to some of the pre-pandemic adoption frenzy that used to be the norm.

In early 2023, we kicked off our most recent exciting change – our dog room remodel. As we have learned more about Fear Free Sheltering, the logical next step in our Fear-Free approach was to create a dog room that was set up to inspire success in each canine guest we invite in. After years of hard work – the funding came through.

As the final layers of paint get added, and beds get placed, and as we dream of where we will improve next, we are so thankful for all of the volunteers, adopters, donors, and staff who have been involved in our continued success during the last 33 years.