The Guilford County Board of Commissioners has been hearing a whole lot from animal lovers in the county lately regarding major challenges at the Guilford County animal shelter, and, at an afternoon work session on Thursday, Nov. 21, the board heard, for the first time in a long time, from Guilford County Animal Services Director Jorge Ortega, who spoke of some of the challenges – as well as the successes – at the animal shelter.

At a meeting of the Guilford County Animal Services Advisory Board one week earlier – on Thursday, Nov. 14 – board members, shelter staff and volunteers spoke of the immense challenges of handling the large number of animals at the shelter without sufficient funds or staff.

At that meeting, two of the primary concerns expressed were the lack of the shelter being able to use its donations effectively due to county regulations enacted in the spring of 2024, and the fact that a highly prized part-time employee who has successfully run and grown the Dog’s Day Out program was informed that her position had been recategorized as “seasonal” and her job with the county would end in December.

 At that Animal Services Advisory Board meeting, several board members were concerned the end of that position essentially meant the end of the program. They expressed their fears regarding the viability of the program going forward since the woman running it would be gone and there wouldn’t be anyone to train new members.

There was a chance that the woman could reapply to get the same position again at some point in 2025, though that was up in the air.

“It depends on the funding,” one shelter employee said at the November 14 meeting.

At the November 21 work session with county commissioners, Ortega made it clear that, while the program would change, it would not end.  Animal shelter staff now plan to continue to run using already trained Dog’s Day Out volunteers – though several animal lovers after the work session expressed doubt that the program could remain viable since the time of the existing shelter workers is already stretched too thin and there would be no one to train new Dog’s Day Out volunteers.

At the Thursday, afternoon Nov. 21 work session, it was announced that the county did find $100,000 for the shelter, which will help it get through a funding pinch – and, fortunately, now everyone in Guilford County government seems laser-focused on addressing a host of problems at the shelter, including a big one that prevents the shelter from using donations effectively.

At the commissioners’ regular evening meeting held right after the work session, Commissioner Pat Tillman thanked all of the county’s Animal Services workers and and volunteers and said that he wanted them to know that the county commissioners were hearing their pleas.

“This is a serious issue,” Tillman said of the challenges the shelter has been facing in recent months. “We’re taking it seriously and we have a plan. I answered personally all of the emails that came to me directly in the last few days. And it’s important to know that there is an issue and we are all committed to being a part of the solution. I know the [county] manager and everyone is.”

Tillman added that he wanted to be perfectly clear about this: ‘We hear you.”

Some animal lovers had been bending the commissioners’ ears on the problems at the shelter and, in the days leading up to the work session, there were a number of behind-the-scenes meetings between county administrators, shelter staff, shelter volunteers and county commissioners.

Those discussions helped the county manage to find $100,000 in additional money for the shelter in the middle of the 2024-2025 budget year – which will help bridge the gap in services until a more long-term solution can be found.

The Dog’s Day Out program at the Guilford County Animal Shelter has been – and will now continue to be – a terrific program that gives the dogs at the shelter a day of peace and sanity. It gets the animals out of their cages for a day or two and lets them have some love and attention in a quiet environment rather than be stuck in a loud and overcrowded facility.

Dog’s Day Out has been helping reduce instances of euthanasia at the shelter because animals that come into the facility as adoptable often become emotionally damaged after being there for too long – making them unadoptable and a candidate for euthanasia.

One problem with keeping the part-time employee who was running the Dog’s Day Out program is that, if the county hadn’t reclassified her job as “seasonal” and not told her that her employment with the county was ending soon, then she would have too many hours and, by law would need to be reclassified as a full-time employee with benefits.

Ortega said at the November 21 work session that the Dog’s Day Out program would continue despite the departure of the part-time female employee who’s led that program for years and grown it into a big success and attracted a lot of volunteers.

After the meeting, some animal welfare advocates who volunteer at the shelter said one problem was that, even if the shelter keeps the program going with volunteers or by using other shelter staff, the former employee knew the ropes, had the necessary experience and had grown the program – while current shelter staff and volunteers are already exhausted and overworked.

They said they worried that the program would necessarily be conducted on a smaller scale, and they added that, since no one would be training new Dog’s Day Out volunteers, the program would lose people over time without recruiting replacement volunteers.

Another issue that county staff, county commissioners and others have been working on is the fact that current county policy does not allow the shelter to use donations effectively.

The shelter has been using the breakroom and other rooms in the building to store inventoried and donated items while waiting to hear back from the manager’s office as to what to do with the donations.

One possible solution now being discussed is keeping a truck at the shelter that could act as a storage bin.

The county is also looking to work with the Guilford County Division of Social Services and other parts of the government in order to find a rational way to provide donated supplies to pet owners in the community who are in need.

The good news for animal lovers in the county is that the Guilford County commissioners and county administration have now moved animal shelter concerns to the front burner and collectively seem determined to address these problems in a timely manner.

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