Baltimore County, MD Hello Baltimore County, 12 Oct 2016

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From YouTube: New and Improved Animal Services

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Check out the County’s brand new $6.6 million facility and meet some of the cuddly pets you could take home.

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Welcome to hello, baltimore county., I'm your host, ellen kobler.. We are here today at baltimore, county's, brand new animal services facility and we're joined by dr. melissa, jones, veterinarian, who runs the facility and animal services for the county.

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Thank you for taking time out of your day.. Well, thanks for coming out!, how do you like your new digs?.

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We are very excited to be in this new shelter, where we have a lot of features that our old site just didn't. Provide.

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We have these lovely group cat rooms behind us where cats can free roam and you can hang out with them.

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We've got some great outdoor spaces for the dogs and an expanded space to house more pets and also expanded veterinary staff..

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Tell us a little bit about some of the features here at the facility.

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And how they help, for example, with the care and the health of the animals.

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sure! well,. We have both adoptable rooms for our cats and our dogs.

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We also have some isolation rooms for cats or dogs.

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That might need medical care or need to be separate for different reasons..

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So this new building allows us to spread out a bit.

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We also have a great new surgical facility in this building..

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We used to be in a trailer, kind of separate with all of our team under one roof: -- our shelter staff, our office staff,, our field officers,.

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And our veterinary staff can really work together as a team.

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And everything's very modern. tell us about the sanitation system, here.

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We have a great built-in system for our chemical cleaning.

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We can actually lug our power sprayers into the central unit.

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And clean down all the kennels, disinfect, everything.

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It allows our staff to be much more efficient, so we can spend as much time with the animals instead of cleaning.

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and more hygienic than mops and buckets, for sure, yeah..

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Okay, and what about-- you mentioned, the cat socialization room, here.

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We're hoping one of the them will jump up and show-- he's thinking about it.

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but,. This is something you didn't have before., so the cats get their activity room. But how does this help.

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With the services to the public and the adoption and rescue?.

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What it really helps to do is allow potential adopters.

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To interact with a cat much more like a home environment.

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so,, they can jump up on shelves,. They can play with their toys,.

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They can be much more relaxed and themselves so that a family can see true personality of a cat kind of in more the home-like environment.

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As opposed to in the cage or just outside of the cage with other animals, around.

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yeah. plus,, the cats love the space --.

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Being able to be up high, a little exercise on our wheel.

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It's a fun room.

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Yeah. and how does this facility help with services to the public?.

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So, we have expanded our spay/neuter program.

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Like I said,, our surgical facility is now in this building, but we also have a satellite clinic in dundalk.

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With the kind of numbers that we're hoping to do this year,, we could do over 10,000, public and shelter, spay/neuter surgeries,.

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Which is great., we host rabies clinics at this location for the second sunday of every month. Year-Round.

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then seasonally,. We will go out into the community and do clinics at parks and pavilions throughout baltimore county.

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Okay., how does the rabies clinic work?.

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So, we have everything at a flat low cost.

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Of $8.00 for the rabies, vaccine. eight dollars?, eight dollars.

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That's considerably lower than at the vet, right? yep! so,. We have kind of an assembly line.

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We might do 200, 300 animals in a two-hour period.

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Wow! so,, it's very efficient.. You get your rabies vaccine;. We know that everybody's up to date.

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all right,, and why is that so important? rabies is a universally fatal disease. --.

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For humans or pets that are not protected., so protecting your pet is very important and it's very easy with our low cost clinics.

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okay, and let's shift back a little bit.

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To the spay and neuter program.

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explain to our folks that are watching why that's so important --.

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Both for the health of the animal, as well as public safety.

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So an effective spay/neuter program means this:.

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It means that fewer puppies and kittens that are born in baltimore county equals fewer animals that come into a shelter.

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Such as this one. so, from a population standpoint,, it's important to have as many of our pets, spayed and neutered as possible. we've made it extremely cost effective and in most cases, --.

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Or many cases -- free for residents of baltimore county to take advantage of our program., and our package also includes some important vaccinations, including rabies, microchip, with lifetime registration, and a license.

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So, we're encouraging everyone to take advantage.

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and how does being spayed and neutered help the animal.

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And the animal in the household?, what we see with intact dogs and cats is, they may be more likely.

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To escape from their owners, -- so more likely to end up here.

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And there are some behavioral concerns that can be mitigated.

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By removing that hormonal aspect,.

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Which, in a lot of ways,, can make them better pets.

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Okay, and one of the things that you've been very successful with here, --.

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At the old facility, but even more so now, -- is cutting the euthanasia rate of the animals in your care.

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The numbers are pretty striking.. We have absolutely already seen a decrease.

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We reported for the first quarter of 2016, a 93 percent live release rate for dogs.

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and 93 percent is very good..

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It does,, and it actually includes.

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A 33 percent return to owner rate for dogs,, which is very high compared to national averages., and we can thank our spay--, I'm sorry, our lost and found program.

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As well as our low cost microchips,, which are included in every redemption,, every adoption,.

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And for only $2.00 to members of the public.

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okay,, now what should someone know, first of all,.

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We'll just hit on that, if they lose their pet,.

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What should they do in baltimore county?, if you lose your pet in baltimore, county,.

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You should contact us and file a lost report.

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We will ask you to send pictures..

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We also have staff members that check out other lost and found pages.

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Throughout the county, in the baltimore area to match up lost animals from locations by zip, code, and compare pictures..

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Social media has helped with that immensely.

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I'll, bet., all right, and now for the fun part.

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For somebody that wants to adopt an animal,, what do they do?.

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If you want to adopt an animal,.

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You can first check out our website. all of our adoptable animals and our lost animals,, but our adoptable animals are posted on the baltimore county website.

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With a little description about, maybe something about their character,, their personality., you see somebody that looks interesting or if you just want to take a drive up here and check out what we have,.

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Our dogs and cats are available for adoption, tuesday through saturday.

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You can meet your dog,, take him for a walk, outside,.

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Come hang out in one of our group cat rooms..

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We always have some sort of adoption promotion going on or some kind of special to make it more enticing.

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okay, and tell us about the outdoor elements here at the new facility.

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Yes, very different from our old shelter.

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We have some great use of our outdoor space now..

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There is a yard behind our shelter here where pets--.

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Or staff can take dogs for off-leash fun.

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Burn some good energy for some of our residents, here.

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Soon, we'll have some pools and agility equipment.

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Where they can just really enjoy themselves, off-leash.

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There's also a large area for on-leash walking.

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For volunteers and members of the public to take a pretty long stroll around the back.

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and soon, out front, we will have a public dog park.

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Where volunteers or members of the public can have off-leash time with the dogs. okay., well tell us, sort of, a quick overview for anybody.

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That may be just tuning in about this new $6 million facility.

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Up in baldwin, and why it's so much more beneficial that what you had before.

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So I guess, in summary, the big benefits to this building.

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Are a lot of services all in one place,, with enough space for everybody to kind of stretch, out.

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so,, we have the ability to house more dogs and cats, to provide more medical care for the animals that are here, to provide more spay and neuter for members of the public that bring their animals here or microchip or rabies. Vaccine.

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We've expanded our volunteer program., we have a volunteer coordinator. we've expanded our foster and rescue program with a coordinator for that also and we've. Actually, this fiscal year doubled the number of animals that have been sent out to rescue compared to last year.

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All right,- and you mentioned a new facility in dundalk.

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For people who aren't in a position to take the beautiful country drive to get up here.

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But do you also have something in the works.

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For the west side of the county? yep! dundalk will celebrate its one year anniversary in august.

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And soon, at the end of this year,, probably november or december,,.

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We will open a spay and neuter clinic at southwest area park.

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So, on the other side of the county,, we will have a counterpart there and, together with all three locations, we could easily do over 15,000, surgeries.

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and by surgeries you mean the spay and neuter?.

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Yep, just spay and neuter. excellent.. Well, thank you so much for showing us around.

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And you thank you for watching and please take the trip up to baldwin.

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And take a look, around, see the new facility and see if there might just be a new family member for you, here.

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And we will be right back with more of hello, baltimore county.

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