New Southampton Animal Shelter Director Discusses Challenges, Rewards of Saving Animals

The Southampton Animal Shelter Foundation (SASF) has been providing compassionate care for homeless animals across 25 hamlets and villages since 2010. It has a storied history in the community, as it originated as a municipal shelter but threatened to close down due to funding and was saved by residents pooling money.

SASF offers essential services including housing, food, medical treatment, training and rehabilitation for animals in need. Beyond serving the local community, the foundation rescues dogs from kill shelters and challenging situations nationwide and in the Caribbean. Thanks to initiatives like its low-cost veterinary clinic, spay and neuter services, TNR programs for cats, microchipping and behavior training programs, SASF has significantly increased its adoption rate, finding loving homes for hundreds of animals each year.

SASF welcomed a new executive director, Anthony Sabia, in April. Sabia sat down with Dan’s Papers to discuss his tenure at SASF, and what he hopes will happen next.

How did you wind up at SASF?

I’ve been in social services my whole life, and my shelter orientation was working with homeless youth at Covenant House at many different levels, from being a fundraiser to a housing developer to associate executive director of the largest transitional living shelter for homeless youth in the country. I just thought it was sort of a good time for me to move on and try something new. And the Southampton Animal Shelter Foundation approached me for the executive director position. Considering that I had roots in Southampton, because my father had a summer place here, and had great memories there, I thought it was the right time to move on and try something completely new.

You’ve now overseen the shelter through both the summer – high season – and the offseason of the Hamptons. What has it been like?

It’s been an exhilarating experience, incredibly challenging. You sort of realize very quickly that these dogs and cats and other animals, they really have no other place to go. So it’s just kind of amazing to me to see the care that our staff gives these animals, in terms of medical care, in terms of training,  in terms of, you know, bonding with them within the kennel – making sure that they get fed, and they get three nice walks a day. On top of that, the whole process of getting them adopted is really a major endeavor. That’s really the most important part of the process. We have to do a lot of marketing. We have to post on social media, we do word of mouth, and it’s obviously really important to us. Because one of the things that you realize is that although they get wonderful care here, there’s nothing like a forever home. Everything that we do here revolves around getting these animals adopted. That’s a clear marker for success.

What are the challenges to getting these animals to their forever homes?

The thing about our shelter is that we basically take in any dog, a lot of dogs that many other shelters won’t take. We take the older dogs, we take the bigger dogs, we take in a lot of pit bulls and a lot of breeds that people are wary of. Because of that, it becomes ever more challenging for us to get them adopted. All the processes in place have to be that much more finely tuned, especially training. We want to make sure that when a potential adopter has an interaction with one of our dogs that they are well poised, they’re well behaved and that the potential adopter feels that this dog is going to make a wonderful house pet for them. We really have to do a good job at doing that. Then there is a marketing job as well. We have to make sure that we present our dogs in the best possible light to entice someone to come and adopt them. And one of the nice things that we have is we have a, really, we have a young staff that is very creative in creating social media content, and they’ve created some fun videos, many of which have gone viral, and it’s been a great draw to get people to the shelter and adopt.

You mentioned pit bulls. Are there any breed-specific challenges to adoption?

Yeah, we put content out on social media about pit bulls and, you know, extolling their virtues constantly. We talk about their intelligence, their warmth, their loyalty and their trainability. We’re putting out content like that all the time, and little missives in the comments that we make and the comments that we share on social media. We certainly make a concerted effort to do that.

What do you think makes Southampton Animal Shelter special compared to the other shelters on the East End?

Hearkening back to my tenure at Covenant House, Covenant House prided itself on taking in any kid, no matter what their background was. A lot of similar shelters put great restrictions on kids that had long behavioral histories – gang affiliations, instances of domestic violence that many other shelters would not take in, that we would take in, and that’s how we distinguished ourselves. And I have the same feeling with the Southampton Animal Shelter, and I think, it just goes to what I was talking about before, in that we take in basically every animal that comes our way within the Southampton town jurisdiction. And it’s certainly the more difficult route to take, but it’s also the most gratifying route to take. And I’m very proud of that. I’m proud to be a part of that, and I want to continue that as an executive director of this agency.

What advice would you give to someone who’s looking to adopt a dog from your shelter?

My advice is that, in my short experience – and I get the privilege of taking home a different dog every week to my house – every single one of them is incredibly special and loving and caring and will make you laugh your socks off if you just give them a chance. Puppies are great. Pure breeds are great. But I find you know that the older dogs, the bigger dogs and the pit bulls as well, there’s just something about their personality and disposition that’s really special and makes them great pets.

The Southampton Animal Shelter Foundation is located at 102 Old Riverhead Road W. in Hampton Bays and can be reached at 631-728-7387 or by visiting southamptonanimalshelter.com.