DUBLIN, Ga. — Laurens County Animal Control is taking a step in a new direction after they were temporarily given a stop order by the Department of Agriculture about a year ago.
On Thursday, they expanded with a ribbon cutting for a new facility that will house adoptable animals, and separate them from any dangerous animals that aren't adoptable at the moment.
Jeff Shepard is a Laurens County Animal Control Officer who said the idea for a new facility came from the county commissioners.
"The problem with the other facility is mainly room. I mean, we're the third largest county in the state and you had to have a facility in order to hold what we pick up," he said.
Shepard said their surrounding counties don't have animal control, so he thinks people bring animals to the Laurens County line to abandon, which creates even more work for his team of three officers.
Their old facility has 12 kennels, and the new facility has 22. Animals stay in the old facility for ten days before they're moved to the new facility, where they're eligible for adoption through Rosie's Hope Animal Rescue.
"This would help facilitate more adoptions. It would help the rescue get healthier and already vetted animals that they don't have to spend money on cause Laurens County will have already taken care of that process," he said.
Kareen Talbot helped start the nonprofit, Animal Aid USA, and her team began working directly with Laurens County Animal Control about a year and a half ago.
Her team has a facility in Blackshear, Georgia where they pull unadoptable animals from Laurens County Animal Shelter to take to Blackshear where they're adopted out from.
She said her team offered to help Laurens County Animal Control with pulling animals only if they understood that this would be a hand-up and not a hand-out.
Laurens County Animal Control agreed, and they worked together to find a more root solution that included building the new facility.
"The day has been a long time coming and I'm so proud that it has come," Talbot said.
She said she's thankful Laurens County Animal Control put in the effort to build and operate a new facility, because adoptions wouldn't have been possible without it.
"It's very difficult to have an adoption program in an animal control. Because in animal control anywhere, animal control is the intake of animals from all over that county. So in animal control you have vicious dogs, you have bite holds, you have a lot of dogs that are in there for reasons. And it's not a good place to have the public go into to adopt," Talbot said.
Since the Laurens County Animal Control was investigated by the Department of Agriculture, Talbot said they've come a long way in turning things around.
"They ought to be applauded because I have never seen such a change in a county in Georgia," she said.
The new facility is located at 667 Airport Road and will be open Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.