Welcome to the Jan. 20 issue of Shelter Scoop - news from Pima Animal Care Center

Last week we brought in our first impound at the new Animal Restoration Kennel (ARK) facility. This is the new building we have under lease for the explicit purpose of addressing hoard conditions at sites scattered throughout the county.

This newsletter includes a couple of shots showing parts of the facility.

In total there are 88 kennels, some with both indoor and outdoor access. There is also space on the interior for additional pop-up kennels if that need ever arises.

We began the use of the ARK with a relatively simple impound; a senior who had ‘inherited’ a group of a half dozen large breed dogs that were overwhelming her.  There is no definition in statute of what constitutes a ‘hoard.’ Our standard is where the conditions are such that the animals are not receiving the care they need. In this case it was a half dozen large dogs under the roof of a senior widow.

That owner surrender gave us a chance to touch on some of the logistics of operating the new facility. Those include how our enforcement team gathers up the animals and arrives at the site, which kennels to use, how to record the new animals in our records, what involvement our behavior team will have, and whether there’s any clinic involvement needed.

The ARK was made possible by some significant donations coming from a combination of private foundations, donors and Friends of PACC. It was also made possible by a very generous landlord who saw the need, caught the vision, and has worked with us every step of the way.

We suspect there are over 45 hoard sites sitting out in the community that we have not had the ability to address due to our overcrowded PACC kennels. With the ARK, we now have a space to do an initial impound and get the animals the care they deserve while legal processes work themselves out. The ability to start chipping away at cases of neglect and cruelty that exist in hoards is what the donors stepped towards and have made possible.

We have some much larger impounds being planned for the immediate future. Opening and operating a new site will take some trial, error, and course correction. But we have a strong and committed team who’ll be adding their individual skill sets to the operation as it ramps up.

There’s no blueprint – each site will bring its own unique set of circumstances including type of animal, quantity, health conditions, whether or not any of the animals are socialized when they arrive, legal concerns such as bond and warrants needed to do the impound – lots of moving parts to each. We’re managing this at the same time we’re managing the existing facility.

The single most valuable piece of assistance you can offer is to come and adopt or foster a PACC dog or cat. Reducing census at the shelter will allow us to transition dogs from the ARK more rapidly once they show signs of being adoptable. And it will ease the daily operations burden our staff is already managing.

Thanks for your support of our operation. The ARK is an extension of the life saving work we already perform at PACC.