Habersham County Animal Care and Control has come up with an innovative approach to address the county’s stray population. And now, they have the money to put their plan into action.
The national nonprofit Petco Love has awarded HCACC a $30,000 grant to purchase pet tagging and microchipping equipment. Once the equipment is installed, county residents can visit the animal shelter to get their pets microchipped for free or to purchase low-cost pet tags for their collars.
“We’re focusing most of our efforts on people who already have pets who want to take another step toward responsible pet ownership,” explains HCACC Director Madi Nix.
Saving lives and money
In addition, the shelter will use part of the grant money to purchase 40 microchip scanners. HCACC will distribute the scanners to fire stations, police departments, and city halls throughout Habersham so that when people find strays, they can readily identify them and reunite them with their owners.
Nix says these efforts should help cut down on the number of strays that end up in the shelter. That, in turn, will save tax dollars and lives.
“We’re hoping that if we can get animals back to their owners directly, it will cut down on costs here gas, food, and unnecessary overcrowding euthanasia,” she says. “By providing our people with tools, we can work together and not spend as much. We’re always looking for any way possible to save money.”
Another side benefit to the program is it will save pet owners money, too, by bypassing the registration and annual fees some microchipping services charge.
“We would be using the chips that we use through our database here so we can update people’s information at any time at no cost to them,” says Nix.
She hopes to have everything in place to begin providing these new services by July.
New approach to old problem
While there may be other programs like this somewhere, Nix says she’s not aware of any. She believes the innovativeness of the project is what attracted Petco Love’s attention. Since its founding in 1999, Petco Love has invested $350 million in adoption and other lifesaving efforts.
“Our investment in HCACC is part of more than $15 million in investments recently announced by Petco Love to power local organizations across the country as part of our commitment to create a future in which no pet is unnecessarily euthanized,” says Petco Love President Susanne Kogut.
The organization recently launched Petco Love Lost, a national lost and found database that uses pet image technology to simplify the search for lost pets.
