Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Care and Control

Charlotte-Mecklenberg Animal Care and Control has 13 new partner locations now serving as microchip checkpoints. Locations include partnering veterinarians. pet stores, a dog bar, and pet groomers that serve as places to take a lost pet to check for a microchip. Thanks to a generous grant from PetSmart Charities, AC&C has launched a new “Bless Your Heart Clinic” to raise awareness and help fight heartworm disease in dogs. Customers are pre-registered for an appointment where their dog receives a free exam, all vaccines, microchip and a heartworm test. If the heartworm test is negative, they are provided six months of prevention; if the test is positive, they are provided multiple options for treatment.

Charlotte Mecklenburg  (Director, Dr. Josh Fisher) finished the year at a 90% Live Release Rate for 2020. Dr. Fisher credits this to everyone working together to make Charlotte-Mecklenburg a sustainable community for pets and people.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Care & Control (AC&C) has proactively begun work on our cold weather preparations in order to help assist people and their pets when the temperatures start dropping. Field Operations Manager, Bryan Harkey and Community Event Officer David Shrewsbury have developed a plan to build low-cost, warm and sturdy dog houses for our dog house program we offer to the community. After researching the best dog houses, our team has decided to purchase food barrels, that we can turn into cozy, well insulated dog houses that keep the dogs cozy and protected from the elements. We have found a distributor will sell them to us for $10 each and then we will purchase additional wood needed to make the bases from donation funds. Officer Shrewsbury will be leading the team of staff and volunteers to mass produces these houses we are fondly calling the Harkey Houses.

The pet parents will also be provided straw to fill the houses from a generous community donor. AC&C is excited about this project that will keep dogs warm and cozy in our community this Winter. In 2019 AC&C provided 48 dog houses to the community through a Petco grant, and approximately 25 donated dog houses. This year our goal is to double that number.

Officer Katie Caffray was honored at the NFL Carolina Panthers football game on October 29, 2020 with the Frontline Service Award, for her HASS work in the community with a homeless, blind woman and her sister.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Care & Control has fully embraced #theHASSlife! We have incorporated a focus on keeping pets and people together in all aspects of our work and in the words of Gina Knepp are “focusing on both ends of the leash.” We have created a special Field Operations Unit focused on providing additional community support as needed, enhanced our Foster program through the use of a Trello Board that fosters can use to communicate and committee to pets (thanks Pima Animal Care Center for the design), and as of 10/2/2020 we have received our clinic license through the North Carolina Veterinary Medical Board to expand/enhance the medical treatment available to at risk members of our community.