Dog News

Arkansas Community Bands Together to Clean Up Animal Control Shelter

by Fred

Life With Dogs is reader-supported. We may earn a small commission through products purchased using links on this page.

 

The community of Milton, Arkansas worked very hard to help improve conditions at it’s local animal control shelter.  All of their hard work paid off when the shelter received it’s validation certificates on Sunday.

Mayor Stewart Nelson caused quite a stir when local animal lovers caught wind of the horrible conditions in it’s city animal control shelter.  Being that the job of upkeep of the facilities fell to him, and his total disregard of the place; people were outraged.  When volunteers saw the massive piles of feces the dogs stuck in tiny, overcrowded kennels were forced to live in, they knew something had to be done.

Mayor Nelson tried to defend his lack of care to the facility.  He stated that the shelter is just far too overcrowded with dogs dropped off by locals every day.  He even went one step further, saying that he had at one point agreed to allow volunteers to take shelter dogs home with them, and try to adopt them out themselves.  He also provided keys to the facility to assist volunteers in having better 24 hour access to the place.

When overcrowding was brought up as an issue, people immediately cried foul.  There hasn’t been a case of a dog being euthanized there due to overcrowding since October of 2013.

Volunteers from all over the community showed up to get things back into ship-shape.  Now, the facilities are cleaned, the dogs have space to move about, and the building has once again been validated for use.  There has also been a new spay/neuter awareness program put into place.  These does seem to be a problem with people in the area not doing this, and the shelter does end up a bit cramped for space as more people bring in unwanted dogs.

“If we don’t step up and we don’t show that we’re interested then we can’t expect everybody to either,” volunteer Suzette Geer.