LAKEPORT – When Lake County Animal Care and Control opens its doors for business at 10:30 a.m. Monday, it will mark its first official day in its newly completed shelter. {sidebar id=67}
Late last week and over the weekend, staff were busy moving into the new, 7,800-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility located next to the Lake County Jail on Helbush Drive.
Officials broke ground on the shelter last April. Completed at a cost of a little over $2 million, the new facility is energy efficient, including the use of solar energy, officials reported.
The move brought out both excitement and a little sadness for the department's veterans.
"We're all torn," said Animal Care and Control Director Denise Johnson, who – along with Program Director Paula Werner – have spent most of their Animal Care and Control careers working in the small, cramped, 1940s-era facility, located behind the Agriculture Department on Lakeport Boulevard.
"We're getting really sentimental," Johnson said.
The road that led to building a new shelter has been a long one, said Supervisor Anthony Farrington.
Farrington said that the effort really goes back to 2001, the year he and Supervisor Rob Brown joined the board.
Beginning at about that time the board took a number of actions early on to strengthen Animal Care and Control, Farrington explained. That included creating an advisory committee and making Animal Care and Control its own, standalone department, where previously it had been under the jurisdiction of the county's agriculture department.
“Once we embarked on that path we started becoming more serious about setting aside capital reserves for constructing the animal control shelter,” said Farrington.
It was an effort the county had to complete on its own, with Farrington adding that both he and Brown worked on procuring the building site. “It took quite some time.”
A state-of-the-art facility
Farrington said the board directed staff to look at other facilities as part of the planning process.
Johnson said she spent more than a year visiting shelters around Northern California in order to develop plans for the building's footprint. Yuba City's shelter provided the inspiration for the dark orange-colored plaster on the new shelter's exterior.
The building's impressive appearance is on par with facilities one might visit in larger communities.
Walking into the building, a visitor comes to a front door with a handle shaped like a dog bone. Inside there is a lobby and reception area – with ceiling tiles imprinted with dog paw prints – a public area where the public can visit with adoptable cats.
Areas reserved for staff include an isolation room for sick cats, a room for feral cats, a laundry facility, an area for grooming and treatment, a conference and lunch room, an area for the information technology equipment, dispatch, an outdoor staff picnic area, and work areas for officers, administration staff and volunteers.
There will be an outdoor play area for cats, a walking track where volunteers can walk dogs and a grassy picnic area where people can visit with dogs they would like to adopts, said Johnson. The shelter also plans to have a dog training yard.
A new barn will be located just below the main shelter, Johnson explained, with additional livestock pens stretching out from there. The main building feature a feed room and a covered, lighted sally port for unloading the animals once they're transported to the facility.
A chicken coop will be located in the corner of the property behind the shelter. "We have a lot of birds," said Johnson – from chickens to ducks and geese, even the occasional emu.
There are other birds, too. The shelter's roof eaves have cubbies which already had sparrows nesting in them late last week to Johnson's delight.
With its additional space for animals and staff alike, and its views of rolling hillsides and the lake in the distance, the new shelter is a far cry from the older facility.
The old shelter has 36 kennels for dogs, 38 kennels for cats and 24 kennels for feral cats, said Werner. Actual capacity can be higher if there are litters of kittens or puppies.
In the new shelter's main building there will be roughly the same number of kennels for cats as there were at the old shelter. In a second, detached building at the new shelter there are 16 isolation kennels for dogs – a much larger number than at the old shelter, said Werner – plus 34 dog kennels.
Still to come will be another construction phase, which will add another building the same size as the first, with additional cat kennels, 34 more dog kennels and a clinic that will be used for treatment and spay/neuter services for the shelter's animals.
Farrington said the effort was made to ensure the facility is soundproof so that, if there is growth in the north Lakeport area, new residents won't be impacted by noise.
Success in reducing euthanasia
In the new facility, as there was at the old, there is a room for conducting euthanasia of animals that are not adopted.
Animal Care and Control hopes to use that room very little and, eventually, not at all.
Werner said that euthanasia rates have dropped dramatically across the county in the last four years, numbers that stand up based on statistics the agency has shared with Lake County News.
In the past four years, Werner said she estimates that euthanasia overall has dropped about 50 percent for cats and dogs combined.
Werner attributes that to several factors, including the county and cities' adoption of spay/neuter ordinances.
But Werner suggests that the key factor is clear. "Our significant reduction in euthanasia has been because of staff."
Shelter staffer, she said, have worked hard to market the county's animals – to new homes, rescue organizations, and even other shelters and SPCA groups in the Bay Area.
An example: Last week, the shelter was close to capacity, said Werner. But on Saturday, while shelter employees were moving dogs and cats to the new facility, 16 dogs were instead transported to rescue groups.
Most of the animals – cats and dogs alike – are going out of the county, said Werner, and finding new homes in places like San Francisco, Sonoma, Marin and Napa counties. The shelter's protocols for animal care have helped them establish those relationships, she added. They also continue to receive support from local groups, like Lake County Animal Services.
Thanks to rising awareness of rescue opportunities, Werner said there has been an increasing shift nationwide from people buying dogs from breeders to people seeking new companion animals from rescue groups and shelters.
But, Werner cautions, in no way is Lake County out of the woods when it comes to finding homes for all of the animals that pass through its shelter. Lake County still has an issue when it comes to animal overpopulation.
Shelter statistics for the 2006-07 fiscal year show that 612 dogs were euthanized out of 1,695 impounded; 3,275 cats were brought to the shelter, and 2,648 were euthanized.
Werner said Lake County's shelter is still "reactive" when it comes to dealing with animal issues, and they eventually hope to being proactive.
That means, in a perfect world, the shelter would be able to put itself out of business when it comes to needing to find homes for animals, and instead focus on education for dogs and people alike, said Werner.
More room at the shelter will allow animals to be held longer and disease to be better managed, Johnson and Werner explained.
The new shelter's location – just a stone's throw from the jail – will offer the shelter staff some efficiencies.
Jail trustees – inmates who have been cleared to work outside of the jail with supervision – are an important part of the shelter workforce. Not only will the shelter now be able to draw on more of them, thanks to the close proximity, but it will save staff as much as an hour a day that was previously used for transporting trustees to the older shelter, Werner explained.
Staff, officials make effort possible
Like Werner, Johnson gave a lot of credit to Animal Care and Control staff.
Johnson said that her 19 staffers – 11 full-time, eight part-time – are incredibly hardworking and dedicated to the job they do, which isn't easy.
"I have the best staff on the planet," she said, noting that they helped make the move possible.
The shelter wouldn't have become a reality, said Johnson, if the Board of Supervisors and county Chief Administrative Officer Kelly Cox hadn't committed to spending the money to design and build it, which – in turn – will ultimately improve Animal Care and Control's operations and allow them to better serve the county's animals.
"I cannot stress how supportive they've been and how it enables us to do our job," Johnson said.
Farrington is pleased with the outcome of all the hard work. “It's something to be very proud of,” he said.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
{mos_sb_discuss:2}
How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
