Friday, February 27, 2015
Improvements Continuing At Animal Control Facility
A recent purchase procured by Lawrenceburg Animal Control Officer Renee Seagraves is just one in a series of improvements at the animal shelter, and more improvements are on the horizon.
Seagraves told members of the Lawrenceburg Board of Mayor and Council Thursday that she did not expect to be the top bidder on two banks of stainless steel animal cages she found on govdeals.com, but that she had been able to purchase around $10,000 worth of equipment for $956.
Seagraves said that she had happened upon the two units of six cages listed for auction on the site by East Tennessee State University. Once she won the bid she decided to leave the next Sunday on her day off, to make the fourteen hour round trip and collect the units.
“They’re in the shelter now and they are fantastic,” she told council members. She said that the units allow sick animals to be isolated without worry of spreading an illness. She said the wheeled units are mobile with automatic watering systems, which she said is a big plus because the animals housed at the facility, “Have a tendency to jump up when they see you coming in and when they jump they knock their water over. Of course now all their bedding is wet so I’ve got to change it out again…” She said that the new units, “Just make for a really professional look in our shelter.”
Seagraves said that many recent improvements combine to make her job a little less complex. She explained, “A donor recently had installed about a quarter of an acre of six-foot fencing. So now I have three yards…I can let everybody out – I can clear that whole shelter of 25, 30, 40 dogs and they’re all outside playing. They’ve got toys, they’ve got little things they can run up and jump over and tunnels they can go through, and they are just so happy to get out and run and play with each other. I can clean the shelter and disinfect everything and don’t have to worry about anybody getting any bleach on them or any kind of chemicals, and let everything dry and put fresh food and water in. And then they’re all sitting at the gate because they know exactly what the schedule is. It’s hilarious to watch them. They all just come running in and go over right to their little spot and I put everybody back in.”
With nearly $4,000 in donations on-hand Seagraves said more improvements are in the works. “We’re not done. As long as these donations keep coming in I’m just going to keep on trying to better it any way I can. When spring comes I want to order two more of the carports and put them out in the big yard area with picnic tables. So if somebody wants to look at a dog they can go out, sit on the picnic table in the shade, and watch the dogs run. They can get a better idea how it interacts with other dogs. We’re also planning on having the floors re-done because they’re just old concrete...”
Seagraves told council members, “We’ve had so many compliments on how the shelter has really just turned around. It’s a place where people want to come to adopt. I adopted out three dogs yesterday – sixteen for the month – and four that the owners have reclaimed. I think we’re going in the right direction. I think we’ve got a facility now we can all be proud of. I’ll tell anybody, ‘you can come when it’s dirty’. Even at its dirtiest it’s the cleanest it’s ever been.”
