The Animal Services Advisory Board met for this first time this year on Wednesday, March 8.
During the meeting, new members Kimberly Hensley, Ashley Weber and Ricky Merideth were introduced. The board elected Bonnie Whittle as chair, Gary Owens as vice-chair and Ricki Dean as secretary.
Shelter Manager Linda Glasscock provided an update. There will be a drive-thru rabies clinic at the animal shelter, 1940 William Few Pkwy. in Grovetown, this Saturday, March 11 from 8 a.m. until the 100 vaccines are gone. The cost is $5, and only cash will be accepted. This clinic is limited to Columbia County residents, and there is a limit of two pets per household. Cats must be in carriers because they are taken inside the building.
“If you’re not familiar with our drive-thru rabies clinic, it’s really unique,” Glasscock said. “We started this about three years ago. Prior to that everybody would line up on the sidewalk with their dogs and cats and the dogs were all tangled up. So we have a sally port, so now what happens, the vet’s on the sally port and they drive around, they pull to the sally port, the vet jumps in the car with the dogs, pops them, jumps back out and bye. It’s so much easier.”
The animal shelter will be at the Fort Gordon Spring Fling on April 15 and will be visiting South Columbia Elementary School on March 24 for career day.
“We’ll be there all day long entertaining the children with Rufus (one of the shelter mascots) and whatever animals we’ll take with us that day,” Glasscock said. “We love the elementary schools because they have the best questions…they are fun, the little kids are.”
Whittle said she loves when the animal shelter visits the schools.
“I love getting in the schools though,” Whittle said. “To me if you start with them it’s like a little fish, and if you teach that little fish when it becomes a big fish it passes it on.”
There have been several upgrades to the shelter and play yards, Glasscock said. These upgrades will give volunteers and adopters more space to clean the animals and meet them.
During February the shelter had 68 adoptions, 23 returned to owner, 16 owner surrenders, and 54 microchip implants. Owens asked that at the next meeting if the shelter could provide all the numbers for the months in-between the meetings.
The next Animal Services Advisory Board meets four times a year. The next meeting will be Wednesday, June 14.
