It’s been two weeks since Eva Commons’ dog died. But on Friday morning, a tri-colored puppy named Bruin was filling a small part of the hole left in her heart.
“You are just a love-bug, aren’t you?” Commons said as the dog snuggled into her arms outside Cumberland County Animal Services.
The puppy was the second dog Commons took for a jog as part of the department’s new volunteer program, Mutts on the Move. The program is a walking and running group dedicated to getting the county’s shelter dogs outside of their kennels for exercise and socialization.
Run out of animal services at 4704 Corporation Drive, volunteers walk, jog or run a mile or a half-mile loop around the department’s campus with dogs selected by staff.
“It’s so important to get them outside, socializing with people, with other dogs,” Commons said. “And out getting exercise so they’re not stuck in kennels all day.”
Friday was the second Mutts on the Move meetup since the group was created by Anna Hill, county animal services rescue and foster coordinator, in August. The number of volunteers doubled, from nine to 18.
Hill said she started the group because of the stress the animal services’ overcrowded shelter was putting on dogs and staff alike.
The county’s animal shelter is almost always at its capacity of 99 large dogs, Hill said. It’s clear why: Local Facebook pages like Watch Out Cumberland County NC are filled with posts about found and unclaimed dogs, and dogs spotted loose in neighborhoods.
A video by Cumberland County Animal Services detailed why many of the dogs walked by Mutts on the Move volunteers ended up in their care: The owners of a caramel pit bull mix named Ace lost their house. Dooley, a mutt with brown fur, was surrendered after his owners died. Wilson, a tan colored dog with amber brown eyes, was found tied to a pole and abandoned on Murchison Road.
No matter how many times animal services offers free adoptions — which are being provided until Oct. 15 through a donation from the vacuum company BISSELL — Hill said the shelter is inundated.
“The dogs keep coming in,” she said. “They’re going in faster than we can get them out the door.”
Near constant barking and low levels of human interaction lead some dogs in the shelter to decline, particularly the working and high-energy breeds, Hill explained. With 50 animal services employees, 13 of whom are shelter attendants, Hill said the staff’s workload doesn’t allow for more than quickly letting dogs outside in the shelter’s yard.
“We stay pretty short-staffed here,” she said. “We just don’t have the time in a day to walk every dog, spend enough time with a dog for what the dog actually needs.”
In August, Courtney Swartz, a former animal services officer responsible for responding to calls about strays and animal abuse and neglect, spoke out about the workload and how it led to burnout. She told the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners that the entire department was understaffed, overworked, and underpaid at their Aug. 25 meeting.
Thanks to Mutts on the Move volunteers, 32 dogs were walked for at least 30 minutes on Oct. 10. The number represents every adoptable dog in the county shelter safe for volunteers to walk, meaning they weren’t known to be dog aggressive and didn’t require training to be handled.
“It’s giving those dogs some kind of normalcy,” Hill said. “It’s letting them have a normal day where they get to go on a walk, because we don’t get to do that here.”
Eva Carreras plays with Amira, a 7-year-old black Labrador mix, as a volunteer for Mutts on the Move, a program created by Cumberland County Animal Services to help exercise and socialize their shelter dogs. Credit: Morgan Casey / CityView 
Patricia Fisher pets the shelter dog she was given to walk as a volunteer with Mutts on the Move on Oct. 10, 2025. Credit: Morgan Casey / CityView 
Brewer, a brown brindle pit bull terrier mix, was one of the adoptable dogs walked by Mutts on the Move volunteers on Oct. 10, 2025. Credit: Morgan Casey / CityView 
Eva Commons jogs with one of the two dogs she walked as a volunteer for Mutts on the Move, Cumberland County Animal Services’ newest volunteer program to help get its shelter dogs out of their kennels. Credit: Morgan Casey / CityView
As Mutts on the Move grows, Hill wants it to become a completely volunteer-run group with weekday and Saturday meet-up options on the animal services campus and in the community. Group leaders would be trained volunteers, so they could pull dogs from kennels rather than animal service staff running back and forth, bringing dogs out and swapping them out for ones that haven’t yet been walked.
Hill also hopes the group will help get dogs adopted, whether by volunteers or by one of their acquaintances. Volunteers are encouraged to take photos with the dogs and post them to their social media.
“People have an idea in their head that shelter dogs are broken, or shelter dogs have issues, and that’s why they’re here,” Hill said. “That’s not always the case. A lot of them are near perfect. They’re just in a bad situation.”
A handful of volunteers joked about how torn they were to hand their dogs back to staff at the end of their walks. Eva Carreras’ friends point out how the dog she was given — Amira, a black Labrador-looking pup wearing a white, orange, and yellow Halloween sweater with “Boo” written in sequins — was similar to one of her own.
“You have to adopt her,” Carreras’ friends said as she gave Amira a belly rub. “I mean, what’s a third dog?”
CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the News Foundation of Greater Fayetteville.