Annual CHS meeting addresses animal welfare concerns
BY JOHN BRICE
FOR THE LAFAYETTE SUN
LANETT — The Chattahoochee Humane Society held its annual board meeting Tuesday, July 21, at City Hall in Lanett. Local residents gathered to hear the humane society discuss details of its operations over the past year.
“Our bylaws require us to have an annual meeting where we invite the public,” said CHS President Dantz Frazer. “ We go through our board meeting as we typically do. I led off with a brief history of how the state requires the counties and all cities with populations over 5,000 to have shelter services. We contract with those entities to provide that service.”
Frazer reviewed highlights from the presentation he made at the meeting.
“A brief history of what has happened over the last year included an expansion of the hill kennels,” Frazer said. “Further than that, we have got a concrete pad with our temporary kennels, which we intended to be just for intakes to set them out there, until we can get them into the interior kennels. With the volume of animals that we have gotten, we are hesitant to say that they are full-time kennels, but they are always occupied now it seems. There is shelter, they do have a roof over them, and we have got fans set up trying to keep them cool during the summer. During the winter we are putting the big shaggies out there.”
Keeping animals active at the shelter was another topic that Frazer touched on.
“We have also added four new fences and playgrounds where we can get dogs out for longer periods,” Frazer said. “I was out there [last week], four of the playgrounds had two dogs in them, and they were just having a ball playing with each other. We have these little kiddie pools set up, and they were just splashing with balls. I pulled up there, and there were 14 vehicles out there from volunteers walking dogs everywhere.”
Frazer also highlighted recent technology upgrades as another key area of progress at the shelter.
“We have upgraded our security systems and our computers with our internet systems out there,” Frazer said. “We are thankful to Ra-Larms for that. Gary Fincher with Windjammer Technologies did the computers along with the internet, getting everything situated. We have got iPads for the kennel techs as they are walking, they can keep everybody updated.”
Changes in leadership at CHS this year included Vice President John Radford retiring from the board after 10 years of leadership serving the community, as well as new members being elected.
“We had our board election the prior month,” Radford said. “We are down to eight members right now, we are interviewing potential members to fill in the ninth. The board is supposed to be nine folks. We have got two new board members from the prior year, Christy Jowers and Cinda Lott have joined our board replacing Sara Crutchfield and Dale Frazer.”
Maximizing adoption opportunities for every pet remains a top operational priority, Frazer noted.
“Over the last year we have moved roughly 170 dogs up north,” Frazer said. “We try to keep cats down at Petco in Opelika. I think we had three adoptions at Petco [last week]. We have had great success in local adoptions as well. We still need to keep pushing that because over the past several years we have been averaging [more than] 700 animals.”
Putting everything in perspective, Frazer concluded by assessing the immense challenges that the shelter faces due to large volumes of unwanted animals being abandoned on roadsides.
“People keep on dumping,” Frazer said. “I think some of this issue is due to veterinary fees increasing so much that folks just can’t afford to keep them. They don’t want to spay or neuter so they keep on having these unwanted litters and to solve it they just dump them.”
