Inside this Issue:

Shelter Spotlight

Volunteer Spotlight

Easy Ways To Help

Kitten Season

Happy Tails

Shelter Spotlight
Ernie Wilkinson, Director Johnston County Animal Services

Johnston County Animal Services is a freestanding division of Johnston County government. The agency’s prior organization was under the Johnston County Public Health Department and the Johnston County Sheriff’s Department. The agency became a stand-alone agency some 6 years ago with a specific mission in mind: to greater serve, educate and promote animal welfare and control in Johnston County. To that end we embarked on several programs geared to our mission in the County, one of which was animal population control, specifically the promotion of responsible spay/neuter practice by pet owners. We have enjoyed a very successful, and growing, partnership with SNAP-NC for at least the past 6 years. We have seen our monthly adoption numbers go from about 20 animals per month to well over a hundred animals per month in 2009. We can attribute this growth to our efforts to mandate spay/neuter on all of the animals adopted from Johnston County Animal Services and our efforts to educate the population in the county through school programs, civil organizations, a very specific advertising program, and just a sheer commitment from our staff to promote spay/neuter on a daily basis including our staff from the road officers to the shelter attendants. We have been very fortunate in the fact that in Johnston County all of our departments function as a team and we have been able to count on our entire local government team to help us support spay/neuter practices.

As a part of our adoption agreement we require that the adopter have their new family member altered within 30 days of adoption, with exceptions made and documented on their agreement as to age and health status. Here again, we incorporate our county team to assist us in enforcing this compliance requirement. Our County Attorney’s office actually helps us with following through on this requirement, and we have stiff measures in place that help us make sure the requirement is made. Our compliance rate on our adopted animals is currently running better than 95%. We are very proud of this accomplishment, not only from a population control issue, but from an efficiency of operation as well. In time, with successful spay/neuter practices in place we can generate huge savings for the taxpayers of Johnston County in the number of calls we have to make and the cost incurred in our daily operations.

SNAP-NC has played a vital part in our mission. By virtue of their partnership, we have been able to offer a low cost alternative to many of our citizens that adopt from the agency as well as to promote the SNAP program throughout the county. With economic conditions the way they are now, the SNAP program is an affordable and safe way for the people to comply and improve the health and safety of the county’s animals. We have enjoyed our partnership with SNAP-NC, and look forward to watching it grow. We are currently working on a low cost, in-county program that will work with SNAP and other local vets to use a self-funded voucher program to grow the program even more.