By Rusty Nixon Correspondent
PLYMOUTH —  Marshall County pets will be stars of the Internet soon.
The Marshall County Humane Society has joined with other animal welfare organizations in the area that list their homeless pets on petfinder.com, the oldest and largest database of adoptable animals on the Internet.

The site currently has more than 317,870 homeless pets listed and it is updated continuously.
More than 12,900 animal welfare organizations in the U.S., Canada and other countries post their pets on the site.
“Our animals are going to be viewed by so many more people now,” said Nancy Cox, director of the Marshall County Humane Society. “Anything we can do to increase our adoptions we’re going to do. We still have hound dogs here from September and hopefully we’ll find some hound dog lovers soon.”
The MCHS actually found out about Petfinder by word of mouth.
“We had a lot of people tell us about it and we looked into getting our pets up there,” Cox said of the site. “At our last board meeting, we decided to start the process and our first set of animals should be on the site this weekend.”
Petfinder does its best to help organizations get their pets adopted, and has a very specific set of guidelines for organizations involved.
“We had to have a letter from a veterinarian stating that they do see and take care of our animals on a regular basis,” said Cox. “Our non-profit 501(c) documentation had to be in order and we were approved.
“I just took all new pictures of all our animals this morning (Wednesday) and they should be able to be viewed soon.”
Marshall County Humane Society, Inc. pets may be viewed at www.petfinder.com/shelters/IN486.html .  A potential adopter enters search criteria for the kind of pet he or she wants, and a list is returned that ranks the pets in proximity to the ZIP code entered.
Adoptions are handled by the animal placement group where the pet is housed, and each group has its own policies.
“You can search for just pets in your area, or even just certain breeds in your area,” said Cox.
Petfinder.com was created in early 1996 as a grassroots project by Jared and Betsy Saul to end the euthanasia of adoptable pets. Since its inception, the site has facilitated approximately 20 million adoptions, making it the most life-saving initiative in animal welfare.
“We’ll try anything we can do to increase adoptions,” said Cox. “The economy has really put a crunch on our adoptions. We’re hoping this will help.”