August 7, 2008

Visitors to the Catawba County Animal Shelter will easily see that it’s a busy place. At any given time, staff may be assisting citizens, handling the arrival

of an average of twenty new animals every day, feeding or exercising the animals already there, or keeping the shelter clean.

Visitors to the area where the animals are housed would also notice that the kennels are very crowded. They have been crowded for an extended period of time and, while that is a sign that Catawba County’s Animal Services staff are holding onto animals for as long as possible while they try to find a new home for the animals, extreme overcrowding can threaten the health of all animals

in the shelter.

With these conditions in mind, the Animal Services staff has been increasing its efforts to find good new homes for the animals at the shelter. The naming of Rachel Johansen as the County’s first Animal Services Coordinator is an important part of this new focus on adoptions.

Johansen began her new duties on July 25 and is focusing on improving the process of posting information on the internet about adoptable animals at the shelter, assisting with a check of all animals arriving at the shelter for general health and health problems, improving the County’s outreach to rescue groups that assist with adoptions, and overseeing the shelter’s volunteer program, which is giving citizens an opportunity to volunteer to work at the shelter.

Rachel Johansen is a Catawba County native and a graduate of St. Stephens High School. Even when working in another field, she knew she wanted to work with animals and sought opportunities to work at the shelter for several years before actually working for Catawba County Animal Services in 2006 and 2007. She left Catawba County Animal Services in 2007 to begin pursuing a degree in the Registered Veterinary Technician program at Gaston College. She is on course to earn that degree next year and serves as Treasurer of the Gaston College Veterinary Technician Club. She and her husband live in the St. Stephens community, and she has two children and two step-children.

“As the County’s Animal Care Coordinator, Rachel’s experience and compassion bring a much needed individual to Animal Services,” said Jay Blatche, Catawba County’s Animal Services Manager. “Her main focus will be on animal health and adoption. She will also focus on public education, on how citizens can be responsible pet owners, and on a spay and neuter program.”

“We can increase the rate of adoption of animals in many ways,” Johansen said. “We plan to better use the internet to post up-to-date information about the adoptable animals we have and use e-mail to send information about animals to rescue groups, instead of waiting for them to contact us. We want to have more Adopt-A-Thon events, at least two per year, to follow up on the success of the first event in May when we found new homes for eighteen animals in a period of only a few hours. And we can increase the number of successful adoptions by better education to the public on simple ways they can keep a new pet safe and happy in a new home.”

The details on Johansen’s duties are as follows:

•   She will oversee the posting of information about adoptable animals at www.catawbacountync.gov. The Animal Services page makes it easy to find adoptable animals by clicking on a large “Adopt Me” button. Animal Services has been working with petfinder.com, which provides an organized platform for listing of photographs and other information about adoptable dogs and cats.

•   She will assist the shelter’s part-time veterinarian in performing simple diagnostic testing on animals as they arrive at the shelter, to insure the shelter has healthier, more adoptable animals. She will also give treatment protocols to animals when prescribed by the veterinarian.

•   She will coordinate presentations on rabies prevention to classroom groups in schools, and will be making many of those presentations.

•   She will oversee the shelter volunteer program, which is open to anyone age 18 and older. Volunteers are needed to help with a number of important activities, including walking animals and playing with them, giving puppies and kittens a bath, talking about the importance of adoption in the community and helping find good new homes for adoptable animals.

“Volunteers can do many things to help with shelter operations and the animals,” Johansen said. “As they play with and interact with animals, we learn things about the animal’s traits, perhaps that a puppy enjoys playing with a ball or that a kitten is a little shy, that we can use to match an animal with compatible people and the right kind of home. The animals in the shelter also benefit from play time, and our staff is able to spend more time on duties that require more specialized training.”

Catawba County Animal Services staff maintains ties with other groups, such as the Catawba County Humane Society, that help them find new homes for animals. Another, more scattered, set of groups are rescue associations specializing in taking in abandoned animals of many different breeds, and then trying to place them in new homes.

“I’m planning for us to work more with rescue groups, by our sending out e-mails to let groups know of an animal we have at our shelter that needs help,” Johansen said. “When we have contacted rescue groups in the past, they’ve often responded and assisted us within just a few days.”

“The experience Rachel received while she was previously with Catawba County Animal Services has given her a clear understanding of the issues that need to be addressed regarding animals and the education of the public on these issues,” Blatche concluded. “As a kennel technician, she was exposed to another side of Animal Services, and she recognizes the importance of a successful adoption program.”