Rex, a Labrador retriever, stands at attention for his photo with Animal Services Officer Nathan Mercer and Animal Services Director David Weatherford.
By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
Two dogs that love people and want a forever home are among the animals up for adoption Saturday at Levy County Animal Services.
This will be the first-ever opening of animal services on a Saturday. The hours of operation are from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the county landfill.
Animal services will open only on the first and third Saturdays until the department can replace an employee who recently transferred to the county commission office.
Commission Chairman Matt Brooks said as soon as the employee is replaced, animal services will operate four Saturdays a month for a half a day as planned.
“I don’t think that’s going to last very long (with two Saturdays). We’ve got a requisition out to replace the employee we lost at animal services. I don’t think that’s going to stand for more than a month. We’ll probably fill the position fairly quick,” he said.
Animal Services Director David Weatherford confirmed the loss of the employee resulted in the schedule change from four Saturdays to two. He said he will use the two-per-month Saturday schedule to evaluate how well it works.
“Depending on how the Saturdays do and how busy we are every other Saturday; we’re not going to put a staff member out there if we’re not that busy,” he said.
Weatherford said he also wants to keep an eye on how many people drop off animals on Saturdays.
“As long as we don’t get more in on weekends; we’re not just opening to make it convenient for people to dump their animals off on Saturday. I feel if your animal is important enough to you, you can find a way here; that’s just my opinion,” Weatherford said. “We have a lot of people who have busy schedules who make plans to come out here if they’re interested in an animal to adopt.”
Weatherford has created a sign-in sheet for Saturday visitors. The sheet asks them to provide their name and give the reason they came out on Saturday. The options they can choose from are adoption, owner release, or dropping off a stray.
Brooks said the board made a commitment to open every Saturday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. The first Saturday was to be Sept. 5. Brooks said he has every intention of following that schedule of opening on four Saturdays a month once the vacant position is filled at animal services.
“We’ll go right back to the earlier schedule that commission planned for,” Brooks said.
Asked if he was going to keep an eye on the process of hiring another animal services employee in order to get back to four Saturdays per month, Brooks confirmed it was a front-burner issue for him.
“Oh, a thousand percent, absolutely,” Brooks said. “Every week I’m staying on Wilbur (County Coordinator Wilbur Dean) like white on rice. We got some other positions we’re filling too. We’re making headway. We got two paramedics coming on next week for EMS and we just hired an EMT/firefighter.”
The two dogs pictured in this story are typical of the many stories associated with dogs and cats brought to animal services by owners or other members of the public.
The male Labrador retriever named Rex obviously loves people. He was looking for affection when Animal Services Officer Nathan Mercer brought him out for his photo opportunity. His owner told animal services she was moving to another location that didn’t have a fenced yard to keep him. She gave him up. Rex had been her dog for three years.
The second dog, a spotted Healer mix, clearly loves people. She was found along 160th Ave., the county line road near Fanning Springs. She had no identification or electronic chip. She was picked up by a Good Samaritan. The woman who found the nameless dog kept her overnight in her home and fell in love with the dog but couldn’t keep her. She came to animal services hoping to give it a good home.
“People don’t realize how hard this job is at times,” Weatherford said.
For cat lovers, there are plenty of cats that can be adopted at animal services. Visitors interested in adopting a cat may find just what they want on Saturday morning. There are plenty of cats looking for a forever home too.
Other beautiful dogs are housed in the air-conditioned kennel that can be adopted Saturday. Walking past the dogs on Thursday, each dog came to this reporter in a friendly way looking as though hoping to find a new owner.
Weatherford said animal services euthanized less than 30 dogs this year. All the adoptable dogs are given local homes or they are given to rescue groups that find homes for them.
Feral cats are being sterilized through the Trap, Neuter, and Release (TNR) program at animal services. In the past nearly two years animal services have sterilized 395 cats through TNR. Residents borrow traps from animal services and bring the cats to the department on a set day of the month. Residents release the sterilized cats where they were found. The TNR program is intended to control the feral cat population. The program is free to residents.
When the program first started Weatherford said it wasn’t uncommon to receive 20 to 22 cats a week. The number of feral cats brought to animal services lately has been reduced to about half that number, either because people don’t want to take the time to trap them, they have no interest in the TNR program or perhaps they have forgotten about the program. Weatherford said he believes it has made an impact on the feral cat population.
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For more information go Levy Animal Services web page: https://www.levycounty.org/department/animal_services/index.php
Enterprise Reporting Terry Witt September 3, 2020; Posted September 4, 2020
