Española Humane – A Small Shelter With A Big Heart

Interview with Kate Baldwin, Executive Director
By Jessica Rath

Their motto is: “We go where the need is greatest”, and if you’ve lived in Rio Arriba for any amount of time you know what this means. When you drive from Abiquiú to Española, for example, chances are that you pass some stray dogs or cats. Or a dead dog or cat, hit by a passing car and simply left by the side of the road.

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That’s why Española Humane is so essential to this region, and that’s why its exceptional development and status is so worthy of recognition. Yesterday, on March 20, they celebrated the groundbreaking of their new animal clinic which is anticipated to open early in 2026. I wanted to learn more, and Executive Director Kate Baldwin graciously agreed to spend some time with me. Actually, the Director of Communications, Mattie Allen, had set this up and was going to join us, but her flight from the Midwest was seriously delayed and she couldn’t make it

Executive Director Kate Baldwin. image credit: Espanola Humane

Kate is relatively new to this area, as she told me. She grew up in Virginia and spent a number of years in Hawaii where she ran her own business and yoga school for about 15 years. This gave her a solid background in the wellness industry, and when she returned to Virginia, she started working at the Virginia Beach SPCA. She loved working for a non-profit agency.  “It's heart-driven work, and I love being around people who want to make a difference in the community,” she told me. “I think the people that work in animal welfare, working for creatures that can't stand up for themselves, are some of the most inspiring people I've ever met. Their determination to go above and beyond for animals in need is truly admirable, and I love being part of that community.”

After five years at the Virginia Beach SPCA Kate took a job with the National Archives Foundation in Washington/DC, the nonprofit arm of the National Archives.  She was there for about a year and a half and enjoyed working for the foundation because of her love of history.  But she missed “hands-on” work,  seeing the immediate effects of what she did. With a  Bachelor's in Literature and Creative Writing, a Master's in Public Administration and Policy, and her love for the Santa Fe area, she applied for the position at Española Humane.  Her background would allow her to be creative and innovative, which is necessary in animal welfare, but also to focus on the organization and administrative work. After a long recruitment process, she was accepted as Española Humane’s new Executive Director.

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“What are some of your duties, what does your job involve?” I asked Kate.

“I’m keeping the system functioning internally, that's a main focus, and then I’m involved with fundraising and keeping our organization sustainable,” Kate answered.  “There's a big internal focus as well as a public focus, to ensure that we're building relationships and we're stewarding our donors' dollars so that they're used effectively in the areas that are the most meaningful to them. The employee experience in our organization has become extremely important to me because it's not a given that it's going to be a positive workplace. When you're dealing with the work that we're doing which is hard and challenging, and which sometimes can break people down, it is essential that we put a significant effort into creating and sustaining a positive work environment. It's very fragile, and a big part of my focus is the organization,  to make sure that we keep a positive workplace culture, that we're taking care of the staff who are doing this commendable work.”

Kate continued: “The people who work for us see a lot of hardship on a day-to-day basis, whether it's an animal coming in from the public that is injured or has been a stray and hasn't had food or water, or we're dealing with animals that have sat in the shelter for a long time for no reason because they're all wonderful animals. It takes a toll on the heart, and I think we need to be taking care of these people.”

 “How many people are working there, and what kind of staff do you have?” I wanted to know.

​“We have 65 staff, mostly full-time,” Kate informed me. “A handful of them are part-time, and that includes our shelter care staff which are dealing with the day-to-day care of the animals. We have our clinic staff, who deal with the public animals that come in for spay, neuter, and vaccine services. That includes vets, vet techs, vet tech assistance, our receptionists, and our leadership on the clinic side.  We have shelter managers and our shelter director, and then we have additional arms of our organization that help us extend our mission.”

“We have a Training- and Enrichment team to help enrich the lives of the animals that are in our shelter so that they don't decline mentally. We have a Paws in the Pen program that allows us to get some of our harder to adopt animals out into the prison program so that they can learn behavior, and it also helps rehabilitate the inmates as well. It's a truly incredible program that I'm so glad we have as part of our organization.” 

“We also have a robust fostering program that allows us to expand our capacity, because anytime somebody takes a fostering animal into their home, they're freeing up space in our shelter. Without our fosters it would be a devastating outcome for so many animals due to the lack of space. Fostering is so important.” 

“And then we have a thriving transfer team, which is something that I'm so proud of. They're on the road multiple days a week, moving animals out of our shelter and into shelters where there's more traffic and more adopters, or they go to rescues that can focus on the breed of a particular animal.”

“It truly is a labor of love seeing the staff, this small but mighty team, continue to go above and beyond, so that these animals have positive outcomes.”

“And I know you have adoption events in Santa Fe because I've seen them,” I mentioned.

“That's our outreach team, a very important arm of our organization” I learned. "They have adoption events every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, to get our animals into Santa Fe because a lot of those folks aren't going to come to Española to look at our shelter. They might not even know we're there. So, we adopt the animals out of those events. Our adoption fees are low and sometimes waived for adult animals. People can adopt those animals right there and then on the spot at PetSmart or Teca Tu or Petco, which also allows us to expand our reach to  people who wouldn't necessarily find us.”

“Something else to mention is our boarding Initiative, where once an animal has been identified to be transferred out, meaning we found a transfer location for them, we often put them into boarding facilities locally.  This gives us space to get the animals out of the shelter. We have a whole team that's working on moving these animals into these different boarding facilities. Some people donate boarding space to us. Some of it we pay for, just to make sure that these animals are going to make it out of the area, and into their transfer locations.”

Next, I had a question that often came up for me when I read that adoption fees are waived. “Are you making sure that whoever adopts them is really a good fit, and isn’t somebody who wants to make experiments on animals or sell them  on eBay?” 

​Kate reassured me. “We have an adoption application, and there’s a process which always includes counseling and conversation with our staff, whoever the adoption applicant is. We are asking about the home, the environment, and the lifestyle to make sure we're not putting a Great Dane puppy in the home of somebody who has a tiny apartment. We're definitely trying to make the right match. Occasionally an animal comes back; maybe the dog has more energy than the person can handle. But, most of the time our adoptions last because we don't want to see an animal return to the shelter. We want them to be healthy and happy in their homes.”

I learned a lot about the shelter’s history from Kate. The organization opened in 1992 and was mainly providing support to the animal control facility that was managing sheltering at that time, to reduce animal suffering and make an impact on the overpopulation issue. Eventually, Española Humane took over the sheltering services and offered free spay and neuter service because of a grant they had received. In 2016 they opened the clinic at the current property. It’s a double-wide trailer of approximately 1,700 square feet. The small team does approximately 40 to 50 surgeries a day, quite remarkable in such a small space. They've done almost 50,000 spay-neuter surgeries since 2016, which is amazing.
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In the same nine-year period over 30,000 animals were housed at the shelter. More than half of them were strays. Kate encouraged me to do a little math: if they had not performed the spay- and neuter surgeries for free during those nine years, the numbers of the cats’ and dogs’ offspring would have been simply astronomical. And yet, they still see large numbers of animals come in. COVID didn't help, because they weren't allowed to do surgeries for an extended period of time due to the PPE equipment that needed to be saved for the hospitals. That definitely impacted the progress they were making with their spay- and neuter initiatives. 
This brought us to the new clinic.
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Kate explained: “We’ll move into a space where we have room for more staff, which would increase our surgical capacity by 30%, so we could potentially do up to 30% more surgeries. We're going to offer our services to more people than just in Rio Arriba County. We're going to expand our wellness and preventative care services to make sure that we are not just spaying and neutering, but we're keeping our pets healthy, which is a public health issue with the number of stray animals that are roaming. If we're not doing our due diligence in trying to vaccinate and protect the health of the animals in our service area, it could potentially be quite dangerous. The new clinic will allow us to make an impact at the root of the problem: animal homelessness and animal sickness. There’s something else that shelters are experiencing right now: they're at capacity, and it's heartbreaking.” 

“So you have some staff who will be working at the new clinic, while you still continue with the one that you have at the current location?” I asked.
“Yes, the shelter that we have now will remain where it is, and we will continue to have a surgery team on-site at the shelter to care for our shelter animals,” Kate replied.  “But all of our public services are going to be moved to the new location. We will have a two-location operation where we're dealing with shelter animals at one location and public animals at another.”

Kate added: “The other really exciting thing about the new clinic is that it has a teaching initiative attached to it, where we're going to be working with local veterinary schools and offer an intern program and tech programs. We can provide both externships and internships to students who can come and get first-hand experience with what we do here, which is very different from what you see in a lot of parts of the country. And we're hoping that some of those folks might want to return and stay in  Española and make it their home. But for those that don't, taking our mission out beyond the borders of New Mexico is also very exciting, so that our work here can help other programs to develop, just like ours.”

“Once I saw  Española Humane’s organization firsthand, I just knew I had to be involved. It really spoke to that part of my heart that wants to make real change. When you think about the prison program and all the other examples of how the team is trying to keep our mission alive, It is truly a reflection of the goodness in humanity. It is truly a reflection of the heart space, which I think is so important. There’s a heart  in our logo, and the organization certainly has it. It has bloomed into something that is really heart-driven, and I love it.” 

I agree wholeheartedly! Over the years, I’ve watched  Española Humane grow into a truly exceptional animal-care facility. Somehow one can sense how hard everybody there strives to better the lives of the animals in their care. Whether you come across one of their frequent adoption events, whether it’s the funny, loving descriptions of adoptable dogs and cats in the Abiquiú News, or whether it’s a visit to their Facebook Page with lots of pictures of happy new pet parents, the love for their work, for the animals in their charge is obvious. 

Above: Dogs: Jellybean is on the ground and Zia is being held by Kate. Jellybean came from a litter of ten pitbulls left at the shelter overnight in a baby pool when they were about a week old. I fostered them and we adopted Jellybean. Zia is a chihuahua who was born to one of the 98 chihuahuas rescued from a hoarding situation; we worked with several organizations to take them in - they all required a significant amount of veterinary care. Zia’s mom is a senior chihuahua who birthed the babies shortly after we took her in, and I fostered mama and babies, then adopted Zia.   ~ Mattie Allen
 
People from L to R: Daniel Lee, TWC construction, Bridget Lindquist, retired former Executive Director of Española Humane, Ben Lujan, Governor of Ohkay Owingeh, Lea Ann Knight, Board President of Española Humane, Kate Baldwin, Executive Director, Dr. Tom Parker, Director of Medicine Española Humane, Tim Parsons, TWC construction

Kate continued: “During COVID veterinary clinics were shutting down, and it really had an impact on veterinary medicine nationwide. There are just not enough vets, and so we're fortunate to be able to have a strong veterinary team now. We're hoping that our services will attract new vets who will want to come and work with us and be part of this. Because of this  trailblazing and innovative part of the program I mentioned, the teaching program, we're hoping that the relationships we build with some of these vet schools will also build a pipeline so that we can have vets that will want to come here and work with us.”

“We all have specialties. Ours is clearly spay neuter. We are a high functioning spay- and neuter organization, and then there are other clinics that can provide some different, focused care. We just want to make sure that we're not overlapping, and we're being mindful of our clinic partners and respect their communities and their clients and the relationships that they've built over the years. So this is definitely a community collaboration and we're making sure that the community as a whole has access to whatever it is that they need.”
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One sentence Kate said stood out for me: “We're helping animals, but animals are reinforcing the qualities in humanity that I think need to be amplified right now.” I couldn’t agree more! Thank you, Kate, for all the work you and your colleagues do. And the best of luck for the new clinic. 

A virtual tour of the new clinic below.   Clinic is tentatively scheduled to open in early 2026.