Inside Charleston Animal Society: Saving Lives, Building Community w/ Kay Hyman

Shelters don’t have to feel bleak. They can be bright, smartly designed hubs where families learn, kids dream about becoming vets, and animals get a real shot at life. Sitting down with Kay Hyman from Charleston Animal Society, we trace the full journey from intake to adoption and spotlight the systems that make lifesaving scale: free adoptions for dogs one year and older during capacity crunches, a foster network that mirrors the shelter’s headcount, and a medical program built to AAHA standards.

We talk about Angel the puppy, hounds rescued from a cruelty case, and what it takes to prepare each pet for home—vaccines, microchips, spay or neuter—often totaling more than the adoption fee. Kay unpacks Paws Around Town, an initiative that hands you a backpack and a dog-friendly itinerary so you can take a shelter dog out for the day or overnight. That real-world experience de-stresses animals, fuels authentic photos and notes, and dramatically boosts adoptability. Education is everywhere: sold-out vet camps, birthday parties on-site, and even “boredom busters” families can craft at home to enrich kennel time.

We also dig into partnerships and practical help. Sponsors like Crews Subaru fund lifesaving work, while local businesses host adoptable pets to draw crowds and create social buzz. If you can’t adopt, you can foster, donate, sponsor a specific animal, or simply share a profile. And if you’re curious, browse adoptable pets at charlestonanimalsociety.org and toggle between the Charleston and Berkeley campuses to meet your match. From stress-reducing kennel layouts to a five-stall barn ready for unusual guests, this is animal welfare reimagined—evidence-driven, community-powered, and full of heart.

If this conversation moved you, follow the show, share it with a friend who loves animals, and leave a quick review to help more people discover these stories. Your next click might be the one that gets a pet home.

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Presenting Sponsor: Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce

Studio Sponsor: Charleston Media Solutions

Episode Sponsor: Viking Mergers & Acquisitions

Expo Podcast Sponsor: ‪Pollen Social‬

Production Sponsor: RMBO.co

Design Sponsor: DK Design

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Committee:
Kathleen Herrmann | Host | MPCC Past President | Mount Pleasant Towne Centre
Mike Compton | Co-host | Podcast Committee | RMBO.co
Rebecca Imholz | Co-host | MPCC Executive Director 
Amanda Bunting Comen | Co-host | MPCC Marketing & Communications
Benjamin Nesvold | Co-host | MPCC President | Edward Jones

Transcript

Meet Kay And The Mission

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Here we are with Kay Hyman. Say hi Kay. Hey, where are you with?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

I'm with Charlton Animal Society.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Hi. Oh, where's our puppy?

SPEAKER_01 1:20

The puppy's coming. Oh my god. You know, they can break too. I adopted my cat from the Charlton Animal Society. I love that. And you what a deal you got because uh our animals we never charge what we put into them. Right. Because it's about$540 just to get an animal up for adoption. And so we um never charge that. The most we ever charge, the puppy that I'll be holding, is about$300.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

And that's kind of, and right now we're giving away dogs. Oh, okay. So all dogs one year and older are free to adopt because we're packed. We're packed.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Come on and get a dog.

Angel The Puppy And Shelter Stories

SPEAKER_01 2:00

It was it was really a good experience for the club. When I went to the Charleston Animal Society, my daughter was just three. And we sat in the kitten room and tried all the cats, and then we ended up one. Our cat is named Madame Meow Meow. I love that. Yep. And then we sponsored another Angel Kitty. Very good. So that that you know, a person that could come and get that cat for free. Oh that's awesome. And you know, the really good thing about that is when we built our building, um, we're 151 years old. Yeah. So we've been yeah, I I was not there when you weren't there 151 years ago. But I have been there a long time. But um we built our building to she's saying, give me the puppy. I will I'll we built our building to make sure it was people um so that it would be oh, this is Angel. Hi baby! Oh Angel, she's one of many puppies that have been coming in to Charleston Amal Sliding recently. Um this this particular puppy came from a litter. She's beautiful. And her and her um her and her sibling were at yesterday's Mount Pleasant Town Hall wellness um event, and they literally were um fighting the whole day, just like siblings. Oh, so sweet.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

She is so sweet.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

And you may have seen Eugene walking around.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Angel.

Puppy Mills And Foster Fail Tales

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Eugene is an eight-year-old um house, and we recently got in all these hounds from a horrible cruelty case um that was up in Goose Creek. We now are managing the Berkeley County um shelter as well. So we have Charleston campus as well as Berkeley, and um, you know, we just we see it all, and you never know what's gonna come. Do you ever go into puppy mills and that type of thing? We do. We um I actually fostered five from a puppy mill bus that we assisted with in Lawrence County, um, and it was all Chihuahuas, and I I fostered five and ended up keeping two. Oh yeah. That would definitely be a foster failure. Major foster fail. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

In a good way.

Scale Of Care And Foster Network

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Like so, how many animals are you sheltering that in a total? Is there a total? Is that possible?

SPEAKER_01 4:16

On even any given day, it's several thousand. Yeah. Yes. And we have a foster that's a lot, I feel like. And it's they're not all in our building. So we have a foster network that has almost as many animals in it that are actually in our actual building.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

So the foster families who take in puppies, take in kittens, take in adult dogs that have broken legs, or need that extra care. Yeah. Um, and at our Berkeley campus, when we get so packed, um, sometimes we just have animals that are ready for adoption, but we just have people um come in and take them out of the building and into their home.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Yeah.

Paws Around Town And Overnight Outings

Storm Readiness And Education Programs

SPEAKER_01 4:58

And uh there's so many ways people can help. I work with a company that takes uh goes to your shelter and brings an animal to like a week. Oh, Paul's around town. Yes, Paul's around town is such a cool initiative. And there's an overnight, there's an overnight um version as well. So you can come in, take a dog for the day. We give you a backpack with everything you need, we give you a list of um pet-friendly places to go. Dog and duck, which is in Mount Pleasant, yes, is one of on our list. The county parks are on our list. We give you everything you need, and then um you take the dog out. You can go home and watch Netflix and sit on the couch, or you can go out and about with that dog. And then if you want to do it overnight, you can do that as well. No kidding. And it's a great way to get the dog out of the shelter. It's a pretty stressful place to be. I can't even imagine. Now, do you have to deal with flooding? What happens like do we hurt? No, we're near so contained. We built our building. That's one of the things, like we built the um, we have an education room where we have summer camps. Uh-huh. We have um kids in the building all the time. We built our building to be a really great place for people to visit. We also built it to a stand. I I don't think we can do a five, but we could probably do a three or a four hundred. That's amazing. And we always shelter in place. I try to get my daughter into your vet summer camp and it sold out real quick. It sold out in three minutes. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

It's like a rock, it's a rock concert. No, I was one of those moms that was fighting because my daughter wants to be a veterinarian, and I was fighting to get her into this camp. It's incredible. Very hands-on. They watch them like the spayed and surgeries, they get to be there for the week. It's so educational. It's very cool. It's um, and we're and our spay neuter, um, we offer spay neuter for the public as well as the animals from the shelter. And it's AHA certified, which means it's hospital grade. Yes, like it's the highest certification you can get. So the whole building is held to a standard.

Spay Neuter Standards And Summer Camps

SPEAKER_00 7:02

My goodness. You've got so much going on. Let's focus on one thing that our listeners from the Building Business Podcast can help out with. What's the top thing?

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Is it foster adopt? But if you don't have any more room to adopt, there's so many things you can do. Like you can, right now we have Cruise Subaru is a major sponsor. They're also a great sponsor of ours. Um, we have a Subaru um that we're a synth that we're giving away. You can buy a ticket for that. That money goes directly to helping us save lives. Yes.

How Businesses And Donors Can Help

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Can we go to a dot com to see the I'm sorry, but inventory of animals?

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Adoptable pets, thank you. Okay, what is it?

Browse And Sponsor Adoptable Pets Online

SPEAKER_01 7:48

So Charleston Animal Society.org. And um you can find the Pet Leader too. Yep, on Petfinder, but you can see all the animals. Just click on the link that says adopt, yeah, and then go to see adoptable pets. And then we also have you can toggle and go to the ones at the Berkeley campus as well. We just started managing their campus on July 1. But that's been quite the uh wonderful job of telling the stories of all of the dogs on social media. So if you're not following them on social media, I have this thing where I when I can't sleep, I'm just in bed and I'm texting my husband dogs for adoption. He's like, girl, get it together because I'm all about rescuing adopt old shop.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Okay, so if you can't rescue the dog, can we do monetary donations?

Stress-Free Shelter Design And Boredom Busters

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Absolutely. You can do that on the same site or come in and visit and then make a donation. I I always recommend that people come in because somebody's per people's perception of what a shelter is is this gloomy place where it's just not like worried about the animals. We we have state-of-the-art surfaces for our animals. None of the cages are facing each other, so they're not having that stress. Okay. It's just a great place to visit with your kids. With your family. And you know, of course, you can help us. You can sponsor an animal like you did. Pay it forward if you can't adopt. You could uh pick a dog that you want to sponsor. You can make treats at home with your kids to bring in to get out the animals. Yeah, there's if you go to our education page, there's a tab for boredom busters. Okay. And you can see all the cool things you can make at home to bring to us. Oh, I love this. Okay, I'm gonna do this with my daughters for sure. And we're really we're always looking for business partners. Um we we work very closely with many businesses, and we'll come to your business with dogs like this. These are a huge draw. Yeah. We have dogs like this going to events, um, people come over. So it's a great and we advertise on our um our um social media, which we have like 250,000 on our nice.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Good job. Hey, do you have puppies here other than Angel?

SPEAKER_01 10:08

We have this Angel, and then we have a big giant hound. He's walking past us in a minute. Eugene.

unknown 10:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Oh, there he is. I can see him walking. Yeah. Eugene is uh an eight-year-old hound. Um, and after the terrible hound bust that was um just happened recently, we have quite a few hounds. So if you got some property, some horses, you know. He's a love bug, too. That one's really hard. Yeah. And hounds are great dogs. They just have a lot of energy and they follow their nose, so you gotta be careful.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

They're chatting, aren't they? Yeah, oh he has a very distinctive voice. Yes, yes, they do.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

I like I'm all about the animal.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

Oh my gosh, you have you have bunnies?

SPEAKER_01 10:51

We do. As a matter of fact, um, we get bunnies in on a regular basis.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

And fun fact, we spay a new to our bunnies.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Oh, good.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Which, if you went to your veterinarian and tried to get that done, it's like 500 bucks. I did not know that. Wow, okay. I have a bunny. He needs a friend, though. You don't spay people's bunnies, because I don't know if you know. It's a very difficult thing to do.

Parties, Camps, And Community Hub

SPEAKER_00 11:13

I did not know that. Yeah, there's a lot of people. My wife's the bunny expert of the team here.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

Yeah, their respiration, their respiratory rate is doesn't handle anesthesia the same as dogs and cats. But we do do ours because we don't want any more bunnies out there.

unknown 11:27

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Your bunny needs a friend.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

The bunny does need a friend. Yeah. Cinnabon.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Cinnabon. Oh, that's a great one. So you need to bring, is it just you and your wife?

SPEAKER_00 11:36

And my two boys.

Services, Food Bank, And Final Thanks

SPEAKER_01 11:37

You have two boys? You need to come in and ask someone if you could see our education bunnies. Okay. Because we have a um giant um Flemish giant. Oh, you do? Yes. She's like as big as this body. Wow. And then we have another one, and they came from a cruelty case where there were 40 bunnies on the back porch of a lady's house. Wow. But that Flemish giant is to die for. Do you have birthday parties hosted? We do. You can have your kids birthday. We'd actually won awards for that. Okay, me. Yeah, best place to have a birthday party for your kids. I might have to do that.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Is it booked out?

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Oh, yeah. Well, look online. You can see go online and click on the um kids' education page.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

One more time with the dot com and I'll go.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Trustanamalsite.org.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Why do I keep saying dot com? They're not profit.org.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

They do everything for the animals.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Of course, of course. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Anything you need, spay neuter, microchip. If you're having a tough patch and you need food, we have a food bank. There's so much going on. That's amazing. Well, thank you for all you do. Thank you. I love a troll. It's a team effort. Yes. This little one's gonna get adopted this week for sure. She's so she is so sweet. Beautiful color. And we have cats and kittens, bunnies, kine pigs. We get birds in. Anything that's astray in Charleston or Berkeley County comes to us. We just had horses, a mule, many mules. Uh you never you never know. I haven't even seen an emu. Oh, that's cool. We have a five-stall barn in the back. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Well, we gotta go visit. Let's go visit teams.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

I have been there. I'll come back. Please do. Thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

We are live at the uh Mount Pleasant Business and Community Expo.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Yep. Thank you for Paul and Shocial for being our podcast sponsor today.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Right. Thank you to the teams, Larry Montees and Kaz. And thank you to you for doing all you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

And thank you for being here, little sweet baby. It's an easy sell. She is tired. Thanks again.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

We'll see you soon.