Hundreds of dogs and cats that end up at the North Little Rock Animal Shelter each year from within Pulaski County will instead begin going into a county shelter by early 2019.
The North Little Rock Animal Shelter in Burns Park has for years been the only city-run shelter in the county to accept strays or unwanted animals from Pulaski County's unincorporated areas, taking space away from adoptable animals from within the city.
Pulaski County has an animal services department, 3403 W. 33rd St. in Little Rock, but it hasn't had an animal shelter to place strays or unwanted dogs and cats. Under the shelter plan, county animals will soon become the county's responsibility.
"The needs for the county and the needs for North Little Rock have just grown," said Cozetta Jones, the county's communications director. "We thought that maybe we need to bring animal services under county control.
"We do have a new space that will be converted into a temporary facility" near its animal control offices, she said. "It will probably be able to hold about 12 animals. It will have the capacity to hold more in the summer months because that's when we get more litters. It won't be a traditional facility where you have 20 to 30 dogs that you keep for several months."
The plan for North Little Rock Animal Shelter to keep taking in county animals into the early part of next year is a change from the city's original plan to stop accepting county animals at the start of the new year. Mayor Joe Smith had told City Council members in a November budget meeting that the city would "no longer be taking county animals" in 2019.
The mayor has increased the animal control annual budget from $848,027 this year to $895,909 for 2019. The change would help make up the $100,000 annually that the county has paid for the city to take in its animals.
"It was getting to the point where those animals were filling up our own cages too quickly and not leaving room for our adoptable animals," Smith said in November.
County Judge Barry Hyde has since asked for more time to get the county facilities ready, something Smith said he would accommodate.
"He'd like for us to stretch this out another month and that in 30 days they'd be ready," Smith said recently. "Whatever [time period] is reasonable. We can stretch it another month or so."
Jones said that the county remains under contract with North Little Rock to take in animals "until our facility is up and running."
"We are going to open our own facility," she said. "We'll still work with North Little Rock on a month-to-month basis. So it won't end abruptly on Dec. 31. That's not going to happen."
The county's facility will pick up only animals from unincorporated areas and won't accept owner-surrendered animals, she said. It also won't handle adoptions, partnering with city animal shelters and rescue organizations for adoptions.
The stress of adding hundreds of animals from outside its own jurisdiction and euthanizing such a large percentage of those because they are deemed nonadoptable adds stress to the city's animal control staff, North Little Rock animal control Director David Miles said. Nonadoptable animals are defined as those that are sick, injured, haven't been weaned, are vicious, court-ordered to be euthanized or put down by owner request.
"People who have a county dog, everybody around here tells them, 'Take it to North Little Rock,'" said Miles, who was named director in September 2016 and was an animal control officer for 13 years before the promotion. "We can point to the number of animals coming in from the county just wearing our staff down."
In an average year, 35 percent to 40 percent of animals, mostly dogs, that end up in North Little Rock's shelter are from the county, according to shelter statistics. In 2017, the shelter took in 1,197 county animals, compared with 1,998 North Little Rock dogs and cats. Animals taken in from the county are tagged by green kennel cards, differentiating them from city animals.
Through November, 1,072 animals had been accepted this year from Pulaski County animal control officers. Of those, 726 animals were euthanized.
The number of county animals the shelter has taken in has decreased over the past couple of months, Miles said, once it was decided that the city would stop accepting county animals. But that hasn't been the case for previous months or years.
"Their numbers are not going down," Miles said. "They've been steadily going up."
North Little Rock has taken in county dogs and cats for so long that it will probably take a while for the change to take hold, Miles said. Some residents arrive with strays they've found, and county pet owners will surrender their animals to the shelter to be euthanized to avoid paying a higher price at a veterinary clinic.
"The general public will still bring animals in here," Miles said. "We just won't be able to help them."
Metro on 12/26/2018