Animal Shelter News | North Carolina

HAPPY ENDINGS NOW POSSIBLE FOR STRAYS
Charlotte Observer, The (NC)
March 5, 1998
Author: KERRY PRICHARD, Staff Writer

There's good news for stray dogs and cats in Cabarrus County: Getting caught and taken to the animal shelter no longer means an automatic death sentence.

There's also good news for county residents, who now can go to a new clean shelter to adopt a pet.
The new shelter replaces a cramped, unsanitary facility that, since April 5, 1995, had been under a rabies quarantine. That meant all animals housed there and not claimed by their owners (who had to provide proof the animal was vaccinated against rabies) had to be put to death.

The new $600,000, 7,500-square-foot shelter also allows the county, in coordination with the Humane Society, to start an animal adoption program at the shelter for the first time since the quarantine began.

``We're glad to have a countywide alternative to euthanasia,'' said Karin Britt, president of the Humane Society of Concord and Greater Cabarrus County, which has been running its own adoption program out of the homes of volunteers. ``We placed about 150 to 200 animals through adoptions last year, and we hope to at least triple that number in the new program.''

Last year, of the 5,400 animals taken to the county's shelter, only about 400 were claimed by their owners. The rest were euthanized.

``The old shelter didn't have space to adequately segregate the animals, so disease was easily spread,'' said Sheriff Robert Canaday, whose department took over countywide animal control operations from the county health department in March 1996, after a rabies outbreak. ``The rabies quarantine meant that we couldn't adopt out of the old shelter, but now that's changed.''

The old shelter, off Irish Potato Road at the county landfill, was dilapidated and so infested with rats that employees said they couldn't leave their lunches on their desks.

The gas chamber used to euthanize the animals was in clear view of visitors and, some critics say, it didn't always work well. Critics say it killed the animals too slowly or not at all, because of leaks or overcrowding. When an animal was suspected of having rabies, the only place employees could sever that animal's head - a necessary procedure to determine whether the animal had rabies - also was in a public area of the old shelter.

The gas chamber has been reconditioned and moved to the new shelter, which now also has an incinerator for the bodies of euthanized animals. The bodies from the old shelter had been buried at the landfill.

Betsy Carpenter, director of the Cabarrus Animal Protection Association, another local animal protection group, was a vocal critic of the old shelter and its equipment. After inspecting the new facility recently, she said that although animal activists prefer lethal injections for animals that must be put to death, they're mostly satisfied with the changes at the new shelter.

Edition: TWO
Section: CABARRUS NEIGHBORS
Page: 3K

OpenURL Article Bookmark (right click, and copy the link location):
HAPPY ENDINGS NOW POSSIBLE FOR STRAYS