Sunday, October 11, 2009

New pet shelter

Julie and I went out to tour the property and construction for the new Friends of Animals pet shelter. This is the organization from which we got our dog Jasper and our cat Cosette. They have a small "store front" in an outlet mall that they use to show the pets that are up for adoption. At night, the cats can stay there, but the dogs all have to either go to a foster home or a kennel down in Salt Lake.



Through donations and grants, the group now has a 100 acre plot of land out in Brown's Canyon, about 10 miles from Park City. They are making great progress on the building that will be able to house lots of cats and dogs. The upstairs has two small apartments so that there will always be a human on site. It should open this coming spring.

They spent a lot of time planning this facility and I was very impressed at the thought that went into it. How and where do you quarantine new or sick animals so they have no effect on any other animals? That impacts HVAC, cleaning supplies, feeding, bedding, .... How do you load the animals to head over to the retail outlet? You drive the van into the building so no animals escape and you can load in the rain or snow. What do you do if there is a major disaster and you need to house dozens or even hundreds of additional animals? They considered so many things it made me dizzy.

If you support rescue animals, this is about as good as it gets.

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