I'm so impressed with this animal shelter and how well it is run and loved by the community. We…read morestopped this weekend to drop-off a bit of everything on their wishlist. I was surprised to see so many other cars in the parking lot. There was another family dropping off donations, and a family who was picking-up a new member of their family, a well cared for dog. There were also three teens who were cleaning the cat kennels in a separate room.
The main room is open where there is a couch, fireplace, laundry room and office with cat kennels and four large, dog kennels surrounding the room. The animals all looked relaxed - the small to medium size dogs were excited, the kittens were play fighting and adult cats were either sleeping or chilling. There was also another room that housed 8 large dogs, and they all had a nice, cozy place to sleep, plenty of room to walk around and fresh food and water. On each cage, there were notes about the dogs, like "hard toys only", "keep in kennel, jumped over cage", etc. The third room housed more cats. It was small, and the smell was a bit over-powering, but the teens were busy cleaning each cage. The cats looked content and cared for.
The entire facility is clean and well maintained. There are also kennels outside with tarps covering the tops to protect the dogs from sun and rain when they are let outside while their kennels are being cleaned. From the extra blankets, netting, fencing and wood boards, the care-givers have gone out of their way to keep the dogs from being able to escape or take nips at each other which I image happens when dogs get bored or playful. They all had several toys in their kennels too, as did all the cats. The volunteers at the shelter are very friendly, the board member present gave us a tour, answered all our questions, allowed us to wander the facility freely, and let us adore the animals at our leisure. I admired their system for organizing the food by expiration dates and mixing them to prevent the dogs from getting used to one and getting sick, if introduced to something different. They also have a system for letting the cats out of their cages to play and enjoy the room either during the day or night.
From the amount of good sized kennels, towels, blankets, litter boxes, cat beds, toys and food, the community does its part in chipping in to keep this place going strong. They have a website and facebook profile. The VP on the board who was there that day was very gracious, welcoming, extremely nice and personable and could not thank us enough for our donations. It was also nice to learn that the members of the board are experienced animal rescuers and professionals in the community. We look forwards to working with them in the future.
