McDuffie County Animal Shelter holding grand re-opening on 3/30
THOMSON, Ga. (WJBF) – After years of ups and downs, the McDuffie County Animal Services shelter is about to fully re-open.
For the past several months, staff at the shelter has been focusing on taking care of the animals and renovating the space. Now, they’re ready to showcase it to the community.
Catherine Bohler took over as Animal Services Manager in December after the former director was let go.
“Then we started re-focusing on operations here, getting the place organized, making sure that all of our animals were healthy,” said McDuffie County Community Development Director Jason Smith.
Bohler has 23 years of experience as a vet tech under her belt.
Since she was hired, the shelter has been allowing adoptions and drop-offs, and a lot of improvements have been made on the building.
“We have completely repainted, we replaced all the ceiling tiles. We have gone in and literally pulled everything out this building and cleaned and re-cleaned and cleaned the floors,” Smith said.
People will be able to adopt a four-legged friend at Saturday’s re-opening event, which is good since the shelter is at capacity.
“We can flex a little bit on that, not a whole lot. We still have to go through regular inspections and those sorts of things, which we regularly do,” Smith said. “But, we certainly are not getting into the business of euthanizing for space sake.”
There will also be food vendors and free microchippings.
“That’s a surefire way most of the time to reunite your animal with you. We’ve had some very good success stories here where we’ve done that,” Smith said.
Smith said this feels like a weight is being lifted off their shoulders after all the shelter has been through.
“It’s really a time for the community to come and see what our animal shelter offers,” he said. “Meet some of our animals of course, and just see that the commitment we have to this community is still there.”
The re-opening event will be Saturday from 10 a.m. till 4 p.m. at 802 White Oak Road in Thomson.
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