Yellowstone Valley Animal Shelter stopped taking lost and stray animals from inside Billings city limits on Thursday, after the city said it intends to move sheltering work to another provider.
The shelter’s announcement said city staff notified YVAS on Wednesday night. That recommendation still needs City Council approval. Until a new arrangement is in place, residents who find a lost pet inside the city have fewer places to turn.
YVAS will keep serving animals from Yellowstone County outside city limits and from Laurel, officials said.
Contract that never quite closed
The city’s prior sheltering contract with YVAS expired at the end of June. In July, Billings Animal Control took over the Monad Road building the shelter had used. The city floated a month-to-month deal; YVAS said it accepted that proposal, but the council never voted it through.
While talks dragged, the shelter kept taking city animals from its smaller Jellison Road site. Staff put the unpaid cost of that stretch at more than $120,000 over about four months.
“We knew continuing to provide these services without compensation was financially unsustainable, but we also knew that our community had spent nearly two decades trusting us to care for their lost animals,” Executive Director Triniti Halverson said in a written statement. “We genuinely believed we could find a path forward with the City, and we did everything we reasonably could to avoid reaching this point. To say we are disappointed by this outcome would be an understatement.”
YVAS left Monad Road after a September 2025 incinerator malfunction sickened staff and forced animals out while law enforcement burned seized methamphetamine on site. The city has since used that building for animal control and has advertised temporary attendant jobs to staff empty kennels.
What the council still has to decide
At a Nov. 3 work session, council members directed staff to put a month-to-month sheltering agreement with YVAS on the Nov. 23 consent agenda while longer proposals are reviewed. YVAS has submitted multiple proposals. K9 Hope Broker in Shepherd has also applied.
Council members have also talked about rewriting parts of the animal code, including licensing rules and how quickly officers pick up loose pets. None of that resolves where a dog found on a Billings street goes tonight.
YVAS asked people worried about the gap to email council members at Council@BillingsMT.gov. Until the Nov. 23 vote, and until whoever wins the longer contract can take animals, the city’s sheltering capacity remains unsettled.
For now, Animal Control is asking people who find loose pets to try neighborhood posts and direct returns home when it is safe. The Monad Road kennels the city staffs are a stopgap, not a full-service shelter with the adoption and foster programs YVAS built over nearly twenty years. How quickly council picks a long-term operator will decide whether that gap stays a few weeks or stretches into winter.
Shelter volunteers and foster homes that partnered with YVAS are watching the Nov. 23 agenda as closely as city staff. If the month-to-month deal fails and no other operator is ready, Billings could enter winter with a patchwork of temporary attendants and Facebook reunion posts — a thin substitute for a full shelter intake desk.
Laurel and county residents who still use YVAS should confirm drop-off rules before driving in; the shelter’s public posts stress that city-limit animals are the ones on hold. Confusion at the gate is likely for a few days. Clear signage and a city webpage that states where Billings animals go next would cut down on that friction while council finishes its vote.
Pet owners inside Billings city limits should not assume the old drop-off routine still works. Until council acts, the safe move is to call Animal Control before driving anywhere with a found animal. YVAS’s county-and-Laurel message is easy to miss in a Facebook scroll; a wrong turn to Jellison Road wastes staff time and delays care.
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