Guilford County Animal Shelter

Guilford County Animal Shelter has now partnered with neighboring Animal Control Agencies to provide joint rabies clinics #thankstomaddie. The first clinic was highly successful and the second one is in the planning stages. We have also partnered with the City of Greensboro Parks and Recreation to provide rabies clinics and education at various parks. These partnerships were never developed in the history of Guilford County, so we are excited about forming and strengthening these new relationships.

Guilford County Animal Services (Director, Jorge Ortega) have partnered with two local low cost spay/neuter clinics who are working to help their community pet owners in keeping their pets safe and healthy in the homes. These pet owners also have received food, litter, and pet beds through their Gate City Pet Project. To date, 30 owned pets and 90 community cats have been spayed and neutered. 

On December 5th, Cone Health System’s Home Team Advantage joined our Meal on Wheels Pet Program to help distribute pet food and pet goody bags for over 30 homebound seniors and over 50 pets in the program. Cone Health and Guilford County Animal Services have joined efforts for the holidays and have received donations of over 7,000 lbs of pet food, to date, to sustain our program into 2021. We are really excited about our partnership, and the support of our community, to continue this very important service for our senior pet owners.

Guilford County Animal Services has partnered with Cone Health System, and other local partners, for a pet food donation drive to support our Meals on Wheels Pet Partnership. For Giving Tuesday we are striving to reach at least 5000 lbs of donated food for the program (see attached). In addition, in the month of October we signed a lease in a local church where we have been providing pet supply resources to an under-served, focus community. In our new office, we are not only providing pet supplies, but spay/neuter and wellness services through our Gate City Pet Project / Best Friends Grant, in collaboration with the Humane Society of the Piedmont. Our grant has allowed us to hire a part-time coordinator to combine efforts with Meals on Wheels and our spay / neuter efforts.

GCAS has partnered with Meals on Wheels to develop a pet food/supplies program. Last month we delivered over 800 lbs of supplies to homebound seniors, and in October we have already added five (5) additional seniors with multiple pets. We have also signed a lease at a local church, today, and are establishing a pet resource office in a local community to help with food, supplies, spay/neuter and humane education.

Guilford County Animal Services has stepped up our community outreach efforts to keep pet and families together by collaborating with Meals On Wheels to provide pet food and other resources to homebound seniors on a monthly basis. The program has been increasing each month with additional seniors and pets identified. We have also established a presence in a local community with a high percentage of animal control calls, attending their People’s Market weekly to provide pet food and supplies to pet owners in need. We are in the process of renting office space in the church where the market takes place, in order to establish an animal resource center. We created a collaboration of local non-profits with us to provide those resources under their own entity such as spay/neuter, fence building, low cost vet care, community cats, child pet responsibility, etc. (We have successfully spayed/neutered 33 cats since June from this community.)

Animal Control is empowered to work with pet owners in the field, and they direct any resources requested to our community engagement. We have held numerous free rabies clinics over the summer months and have held very successful turnouts. Operations have continued with adoptions by appointment only with a curbside approach. This has proven to provide better adoption counseling with a decrease in returns to the shelter.