The Tallahassee-Leon County Animal Services is soon to undergo a much-needed renovation. This is great news to all of us who have supported this institution, its mission, and the devotion of its employees.
The problem with this renovation is lack of planning concerning the number of temporary kennels that will adequately replace those that are currently housing animals. The current number of kennels in the dog adoption area is 50 with the ability to house pairs- on any given day there may be 60 or 65 dogs housed in the dog adoption area.
The plan is to have only 36 kennels to temporarily house the canines from the dog adoption area during the nine-month-long (minimum) renovation. And the temporary kennels can only house one dog. In other words they cannot accommodate pairs. This is the crux of the problem, a mathematical nightmare especially for the dogs who don’t make the cut.
City staff indicated the ‘extra’ dogs would be handled partially by putting more dogs into foster homes. Animal Services has always worked to get dogs into foster homes with an active foster program going back decades. But with the large number of intakes and fewer large dog adoptions, this is an unrealistic solution and certainly no kind of fix. Believing that all the ‘extra’ dogs will be fostered out in the short time before construction is set to begin is clutching at straws. This will not solve the problem.