The county took back the shelter operations from the Humane Society in July 2009, after a painful struggle during which the shelter faced at least one large outbreak of distemper that required dozens of euthanasias and sparked a quarantine at the facility.
But Kelly Bonome, the care center's operations manager, said things have changed quite a bit since then.
"Last year, we focused solely on what's inside these gates," she said of the multibuilding complex that can house animals of all sizes, including horses.
Once again, the shelter runs as a branch of the county's public safety division. That means the people who work there are county employees, and no one has to struggle with fundraising. The care center's annual budget is $850,000 and includes the roadside-litter pickup crews that are also part of the public safety department.
"There is a stability when you don't have to worry about a dedicated funding stream," Whitten said. "You can concentrate on caring for the animals."
He said the care center is evolving in delivering animal-related services, but is doing so slowly and carefully.
"We are not going to jump out there and bite off more than we can chew," he said. "Sometimes it's better to do 10 things well than lots of things halfway."
Public services such as vaccine clinics are part of that growth. Monthly clinics began six months ago and have increased in popularity ever since.
One day a month, the shelter offers low-cost rabies, parvo and other vaccines in the hopes that people will make sure their pets are protected against disease.
When the clinics began in July, the staff administered 44 rabies shots. In November, 86 rabies vaccines were administered. The number of bordetella vaccines doubled from July to November, and the number of pets that got microchips implanted grew from five the first month to 24 in November.
"Every month we want to improve," Bonome said. "Nothing substitutes for regular veterinary care, but through these clinics, we can help make sure people's pets get the basics, even in this economy."
This month's clinic is from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. today at the care center on Industrial Park Road outside Conway.
Eventually, Bonome said, she'd love to be able to offer the service at other locations, along with more public veterinary services and an educational outreach that will help people take better care of their pets so they don't end up at the shelter at all.
"We have to analyze the needs of the community, how we can deliver the services and how it will be funded," Whitten said.
Bonome said she and the staff constantly think about "being good stewards" of taxpayer funds.
For now, it's enough to concentrate on what's already on the shelter's plate. There are still more animals coming in every month than can stay, still people neglecting and abandoning their pets, and still emergencies to deal with.
Whitten credits the staff, under the direction of Gary Gause, for making the care center into what it is today: a facility that is no longer overcrowded and runs smoothly. Gause, he said, has military training, so he understands the need for high standards and efficient service.
Part of the shelter's evolution is becoming greener. Cleanliness is the No. 1 priority, and the county was able to buy a machine from a Little River company that makes an eco-friendly, safe, hospital-grade disinfectant on site.
It kills everything from scabies and ringworm to parvo, Whitten and Bonome said, and has no unpleasant effects.
And the county is ready to break ground on a new $125,000 quarantine facility that will house animals as they come in, so they can be assessed without the chance they could infect the healthy, adoptable animals.
The shelter euthanizes more animals than it wants to, Bonome said.
"It makes us look like the bad guy, but only about 1 [percent] to 2 percent of the animals are put down because of space considerations," she said.
The majority are too sick or injured to recover, have behavior issues that would prevent them from being adopted, or have other problems, Bonome said. The shelter also performs euthanasia services for owners who request it, and she said that's better than having people try to do it themselves.
Over the past year and a half, the number of animals coming into the shelter every month ranged from a low of 585 in February to a high of 1,190 in June. In 2009, the shelter received 9,066 animals and euthanized 7,358.
But the number of adoptions, reclaims and rescues is growing, which Bonome takes as a good sign. She is working with a network of rescue centers across the country to try to find homes for as many animals as possible, and staff members do everything possible to try to reunite lost pets with their owners, including checking websites for missing pet ads.
Recently, the county got a letter from a man whose cat had been missing for six months, and was returned to him after an alert care center worker recognized the cat and matched it to the Craigslist ad.
The man had nothing but praise for the staff who reunited him with his "buddy."
Bonome said if pet-owner education can start in elementary schools, it could change the way shelters have to deal with animals the same way school campaigns like Smokey Bear, Woodsy Owl, and Stop, Drop and Roll have changed the way people think about caring for forests or about how to deal with fire emergencies. It has just become part of the culture.
Her job is a frustrating one, because if everyone who owns an animal took care of it, including spaying and neutering, there would be far fewer animals to euthanize.
For example, there's one dog in the kennel with her litter of puppies. This is the dog's second litter to be surrendered to the shelter, and instead of having the mother spayed, the owner finally surrendered her, too.
The animal care center is beginning to look at next year's budget, and Bonome said she hopes to begin looking at offering more public services, too, like public spay-neuter clinics.
"When I first started here 12 years ago, people looked at this as a dumping ground," she said. "But we have a beautiful facility where we can take good care of the animals that are here."
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