Freeman-Fritts Animal Shelter: Shyla has been there 134 days. She rolls herself up in a blanket and disappears.

Shyla is 8 years old, weighs 17 pounds, and has a very specific way of handling a cold room: she rolls herself completely inside a blanket until she is invisible.

“Doesn’t matter the temperature,” said Phyllis Allen, Senior Vet Tech and Shelter Manager at Freeman-Fritts. “She loves to roll up in a blanket and cover herself up completely.”

Shyla — an 8-year-old Chihuahua mix described on air as a “passenger princess” — came to Freeman-Fritts on April 9 as an unclaimed stray. She was heartworm positive. Treatment extended her stay. She has been there 134 days. She is potty trained, rides beautifully in the car, loves toys and walks when it isn’t too hot, and would do best as an only dog. She is also, Allen noted, a bed hog.

Allen appeared Friday on Lead Live’s Nonprofit Week alongside shelter care worker Jessica Ficker, who is entering her ninth year at the organization, and Shyla herself — who attended the broadcast in person. Allen is entering her 22nd year.

The Freeman-Fritts Animal Welfare Society has been operating since 1968 and is celebrating its 40th anniversary as a brick-and-mortar shelter. It started, Allen said, as “a bunch of little old ladies running the streets and picking up stray dogs and putting them in their house.” Those women printed flyers for mailboxes, hosted bake sales and spaghetti dinners, and raffled off what Allen described as a “funky Ford rank gremlin” — all to fund construction of the facility that now sits on a five-acre campus with three buildings, nine employees, and approximately 20 active volunteers.

The surgery center — operated four days a week by Medical Director Dr. Key and a two-person technician team — runs 12 to 15 spay and neuter surgeries per day. The clinic performed 1,086 operations last year and has already crossed 1,000 this year. It also performs lump and tumor removals for animals whose owners cannot afford private veterinary surgery. The shelter houses 50 to 60 cats at any given time — always at maximum capacity — and 23 dogs, with a comfortable capacity of 25 to 30. Public boarding and a low-cost vet clinic are open to the community.

The back-to-back floods have hit the shelter in ways that go beyond volume. The organization helped 1,600 animals in all of 2025. This year it has already exceeded 1,900, with more than 700 arriving in July 2026 alone. Flood-displaced cats are particularly challenging — they float downriver on debris and show up in random neighborhoods, sometimes miles from where they started. Incoming animals are increasingly arriving with heartworms and severe fungal infections, both of which are expensive to treat.

The shelter is also bridging a specific gap created by the temporary housing crisis. When displaced families lose access to the Airbnb that accepted their pets and move to one that doesn’t, Freeman-Fritts boards the animals until housing stabilizes.

“We have five cats coming to stay with us for three weeks that have been flood impacted,” Allen said, describing families being pushed from one temporary arrangement to another.

Irresponsible dumping has also increased. Ficker recently spotted and rescued a litter of kittens abandoned at night next to Spur 100. The highway. In the dark.

Ficker, who wanted to be a veterinarian as a child but found the required science and math difficult, described what happened when she first walked into the shelter.

“Once they got me in, I couldn’t leave,” she said. “It’s Hotel California.”

The shelter’s most urgent current needs: towels, blankets, rugs, and food. The Big Give regional fundraising campaign runs Sept. 23-24. The 40th Anniversary Gala is Saturday, Oct. 24, at River Hills Country Club with live and silent auctions. For the last remaining tickets, call board member Leslie Wells-Ramin directly at (954) 562-9134.

And if you want to meet Shyla — the 17-pound blanket burrito who has been waiting 134 days — Freeman-Fritts is open.

Freeman-Fritts Animal Welfare Society: freemanfrittsshelter.org. 40th Anniversary Gala tickets: (954) 562-9134.