Is Maricopa County Animal Shelter No Kill

Head-high stacks of dog beds line the hallways, while row upon row of shelves in storage are packed with pet food.

The barking speedily becomes deafening as hundreds of dogs, one after the other, join the cacophony, the sounds billowy off the grayness concrete walls and the steel kennels that are now their home.

"It's just overwhelming, they never stop coming. The only thing familiar is there are people hither, they get nutrient here, but it is completely confusing to them," said Suzanne Fuqua, who specializes in animal beliefs at the shelter.

It'southward a place where just iii years ago, anywhere from 80 to 100 animals were beingness euthanized every day.

"Correct at present, we're teetering right around the 900 marker as far equally (the full number of) animals are concerned," said Jose Santiago, the public data officeholder for the West Maricopa County Animal Intendance & Control facility, 2500 Southward. 27th Ave.

"We've seen upwards of 1,000, ane,100. I remember when I started, we had one,200 at one indicate. That's not something that we want or can practice."

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Making room for more than animals

However, the need to notice housing and care for these animals is and then enormous, shelter employees find ways to make room for them, even though this location has a chapters of only about 400 animals.

Greg Dunaway, an Arizona Animal Rescue Mission board fellow member, points a finger at the lucrative business concern of selling puppies equally a master cause for shelter overcrowding.

"The breeding in Maricopa County is disgusting," he said angrily. "We meet the parent animals dumped here when the breeders are washed with them. Just dumped like trash.

"They have dogs in the backyard and they're but babe factories," Santiago added. "That'due south merely calculation to the overpopulation in the expanse."

It costs $16 million to run the West Maricopa Animal & Care shelter every year, however the government-run agency receives only $750,000 in taxpayer money. The rest is provided by other rescue organizations and companies they work with, which provide crucial support. These include PetSmart, Petco and Safeway.

"When nosotros're in a situation similar the i we're in right now, nosotros'll accomplish out to some of our partners in the area and tell them, 'We need assist,'" Santiago said.

That's when groups like the Arizona Animal Rescue Mission footstep in.

"What we ended upwards doing is, we said, nosotros're going to take our resources, our money, our time and attempt and help out the canton shelters," Dunaway said. "You have an intake of over thirty,000 animals a yr, the county shelter is going to need all the help they can go."

Keeping the animals comfortable

One way the shelter helps these animals is by making the setting as comfy as possible.

At the West Maricopa shelter, Fuqua is in accuse of making that happen.

"We do assessments of the dogs equally best we can to see what we come across correct today, and then we effort to assist them be OK here," she said. "Information technology'due south just a very hard place for them, so we try to do things to help them cope."

Fuqua, who has been doing behavior work with animals on and off since 1995, said she feels shelter employees have done a good job of keeping virtually dogs adoptable while they're at the shelter.

"Nosotros requite them treats. We give them things to chew on," she said. "Nosotros take something called speed dating, which is they get out of their kennels to visit with a person. Some people can do walks, when the atmospheric condition is not dreadfully hot. We do playgroups."

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Shelter finding more animals homes

This kind of attention to the animals has helped Maricopa Canton Animal Intendance & Control euthanize fewer than in past years. It as well helps that the Arizona Brute Rescue Mission and similar groups go as many dogs adopted as possible.

The rescue mission has donated thousands of dollars to the shelter while also focusing on public education, especially about the positives of adopting breeds that often get overlooked.

"We want to sponsor the dogs that don't get a lot of attention," Dunaway said. "We desire the large dogs, the dogs that have been here a while. Nosotros want people to know that those dogs are wonderful dogs, too."

Some examples include pit bull terrier and Labrador mixes, which brand up a large number of the dogs prepare for adoption on the Maricopa County Animate being Care & Control website.

Dunaway and Santiago agreed that without the kind of partnerships that exist between the government shelters and other local organizations, the number of dogs that would take to exist put down would be much bigger.

"One of the biggest accomplishments that we can tout is that almost 40,000 dogs come up in and 95 percent of them detect homes," Santiago said. "That's almost unheard of in a government-run blazon of shelter. In society to exist considered a 'no-kill shelter,' you have to be at 80 percent, and we've been at 95 percent for almost 2 years."

Despite these improvements, much more can be done to assist save the animals that keep to arrive every day, said Dunaway, who as well volunteers at the shelter.

"Maricopa County has the opportunity to prepare the standard for the residual of the United States in terms of being a turnaround story," he said. "We're already on the way at that place, we're already on the manner there

"The questions is, how quickly will we turn around the story? It's up to us as a community to decide."

For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.

READ MORE:

• When cats and dogs fly: 158 shelter animals sent to Pacific Northwest
• New facial recognition service helps find lost pets in Maricopa Canton
• Jean Valjean the cat and 2 dogs up for adoption in Valley shelters this week

Source: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2019/01/19/maricopa-county-phoenix-shelter-makes-space-growing-number-adoptable-animals/2581628002/

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