The Animal Shelter Manager software caught my eye on Gnomefiles this morning for a couple of reasons. For one, I’ve got a great dog and we picked her up from a shelter back in March (they in turn rescued her from animal control last year), and I like what shelters do. Second, I think non-profit orgs like shelters are the best beneficiaries for free/open software, and it’s great that people have donated their time to something like Animal Shelter Manager.

Shelter Manager is available under the GPL, and is designed to replace most (if not all) of the paperwork involved in managing a shelter, sanctuary, or clinic. It’s built on GTK+ but is available for Windows and Mac OS X as well as Linux, so shelters whose staff are more familiar with those proprietary GUIs will not have to spend additional funds on expensive management packages.

If you work for or know of a local shelter that may benefit from a package like this, pass it along! Or, if you’re looking for a new animal companion, check out Petfinder.com; they have an extensive list of animals looking for homes, and it’s been my experience that nearly all local shelters submit their pets to the database.