Habersham County Animal Care and Control participated in a transport Friday that sent more than 100 animals to rescue groups up north to find their forever homes.
The transport was part of a rescue initiative called the Georgia Transport Alliance, which is organized by volunteer coordinators and Northeast Georgia animal shelter teams. Since the organization was founded by Gail Connor of Metro Atlanta in 2018, more than 10,000 Northeast Georgia animals have gone to northern rescue organizations to find their forever homes.
Connor, a native New Yorker, spent more than 15 years in animal rescue. One of the things she’s seen during her time in Georgia is that the number of homeless animals far outweighs the number of adopters, something that isn’t the case up north.
“In the north, they have more adopters than they have animals, which is something that we can only dream about Georgia,” Connor says. “I have about 115 rescues in the Northeast and Midwest that we transport to.”
The Habersham County Animal Shelter, led by Animal Care and Control Director Madi Nix, has participated in 77 animal transports and sent around 806 animals to rescue organizations with the Georgia Transport Alliance.
“For a lot of animal control [groups], their job is to rid the town of unwanted or lost animals . . . I’m so thankful that some of the shelters do take on a rescue mentality so that they are looking for answers to save lives,” Connor says. “In Georgia, we just don’t have enough adopters for all the homeless animals. Many [animal control groups] from my experience don’t even try hard to find solutions for their animals, whereas Madi will do whatever it takes.”
A group effort
Northeast Georgia animal shelters, from Madison-Oglethorpe Animal Shelter in Danielsville to Forsyth County Animal Shelter in Cumming, come together to make these transports happen. Through the cooperation of these shelters, transports happen almost weekly, but not always of the magnitude of Friday’s transport.
Habersham County sent 37 animals on the transport, while Madison-Oglethorpe sent 28. Shelters like the Athens-Clarke County Shelter, Hall County Animal Shelter, DeKalb County Shelter and a slew of others also sent animals on the transport to get them into forever homes.
The transporting of animals isn’t free— but it is a group effort between Northeast Georgia’s shelters and the rescues that take those animals in to make sure financial burdens don’t fall on one group or organization.
During transports, the shelters trade off who pays for gas money, and the rescues up north help take care of vet bills. For Habersham’s share of transport costs, Nix says that donations have helped cover those expenses. But she says that even with transports up the coast costing around $400 in gas, it’s a better allocation of tax dollars to transport animals to rescues.
“It’s costing us less to get these animals out of here than it is to pay to feed them, to pay to take care of them, to have the space to house them, all that kind of stuff,” Nix says. “There’s no point in these animals sitting here for no reason. It’s not like we don’t have to put money into them the longer they sit there.”
Nix estimates that each animal at the shelter costs about $10 a day to feed, house and provide veterinary care for.
Finding Fur-ever
Transports work when it comes to getting homeless animals adopted, according to Nix. She tells Now Habersham that the animals they send on transports have been waiting at the shelter hoping for homes for months. Several of the animals that went out on Friday’s transport had been at the shelter since September.
Kensington, a female terrier/pit mix who came to the shelter at the beginning of September, went on a transport to Connecticut earlier this month. Within five days, she’d been adopted by her forever family.
“No one wanted that dog,” Nix said. “[But when] she went up north, she was adopted within five days.”
Kensington joined a family of four, where she has a bed of her own, two children, ages 5 and 7, to play with, a fireplace to warm her belly and an adoring mom.
“We’ve been having a blast with her already,” Mandi Evans, who adopted Kensignton, tells Now Habersham. “She loves snuggling on our beds with us and going for walks to explore the neighborhood. She’s already learned to ‘sit’ and ‘lie down’, so we’re pretty excited about that! She’s super sweet and we just love her so much already!!”
Not only are these transports successful, but Connor says they are the best way for Georgia to decrease their homeless animal population. The best defense against homeless animals and euthanasia is, according to Nix, Connor and animal rescue groups around the country, spaying and neutering.
“The answer to getting our [pet] population under control— there are three things you have,” Connor says. “You’ve got Georgia adoptions, which are never going to solve the problem, you’ve got spay-neuter, which is very important to get these populations under control and then we have transport— or you have euthanasia, take your pick.”
