By Betsy Finklea
An intake area is being constructed at the Dillon County Animal Shelter.
The Dillon County Council approved the addition of an intake area at a recent council meeting upon the recommendation of the council’s building committee, Dr. Robert Hooker, and Dillon County Animal Control Officer Douglas Pernell.
Pernell made the presentation to council. The council was also given a package explaining the project.
According to the material presented to council, “Dr. Hooker has agreed to assist the Dillon County Animal Shelter by providing a Vet Tech 4 hours per day. This provides a licensed Vet Tech to perform tests on animals, administer medicine and document medical charts for the animals. Dr. Hooker will have up-to-date medical information on each animal that is needed to provide a heath certificate for the animals, which allows the animals to be adopted. Also, this will allowed Dillon County Animal Shelter to provide healthier animals up for adoption. Laurie Thompson is also working part-time as a liaison between Dr. Hooker, Douglas Pernell, and Clay Young to assist in organizing the process of work for the shelter. At this time, rescues or no-kill shelters are pulling from Dillon County because Dillon County Animal Shelter cannot provide healthy animals up for adoption.”
The material further states that “Due to the overpopulation, Dillon County Animal Shelter does not have the facilities to separate the animals and must place the healthy animals with unhealthy animals. The result of this is that the unhealthy animals are re-infecting the healthy animals, and [they] are medicating the animals that were previously healthy and adoptable, costing Dillon County money.”
At the time of the presentation, the shelter was housing 137 dogs and 58 cats, but the building is designed to house only 72 dogs and 20 cats, Pernell said.
The goal of this addition is “to provide an area for the unhealthy animals to be housed until they become healthy and reduce the cost of re-medicating the animals. Once they become healthier, they can be moved into the Animal Shelter with other healthy animals and be placed up for adoption or rescue.”
The benefits of the project were listed as follows:
1) Reduce cost to re-medicate animals.
2) Rescues will pull animals for adoption
3) Lower euthanizing of animals
4) Promote better public opinion of the animal shelter and give animals a home.
County Administrator Clay Young said they have some leftover capital sales tax project money, which is now in Fund 45, they could use for the project which totals $23,734.
Councilman Joe Johnson made the motion to approve the project. Councilman T.F. “Buzzy” Finklea, Jr. seconded the motion. The motion was approved.
