Montgomery County Animal Shelter’s intake rate has increased by nearly 50 percent since Aug. 26, when Hurricane Harvey made landfall on the Texas coast, according to MCAS Director Aaron Johnson.
In the weeks following Hurricane Harvey, the shelter has taken in approximately 1,000 owned and stray cats and dogs. Johnson said about 187 of those animals have been returned to their owners and 27 of those were listed as strays on intake.
MCAS partnered with other organizations, such as Best Friends Animal Society and American Humane to handle the influx in intake.
“During the hurricane, we set up an additional shelter at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds, so between that makeshift shelter and our regular shelter, we were able to hold animals for two weeks,” Johnson said. “After that, BFAS and American Humane were able to transport those animals to NRG Stadium to finish out their 30 days.”
Although BFAS Public Relations Director Aaron Rayvid said disaster relief is not their organization’s primary purpose, the program began with Hurricane Katrina in 2006. During the nine months following Hurricane Katrina, Rayvid said BFAS was able to save 6,000 animals that became displaced due to the storm.
As of mid-September, Rayvid said there were still 500 animals at NRG Stadium, with a ratio of approximately three dogs for every one cat.
“We just couldn’t sit by and let this happen without doing something to help,” Rayvid said. “We have a small, but very mighty disaster response team and we will be here until every animal is either returned to its family or is adopted by a loving family. We just want everyone to get to change to find his or her family member.”
Rayvid said the organization will likely be caring for animals at NRG Stadium for several months following Hurricane Harvey and is in need of volunteers to assist with dog walking and cat care at the stadium.
Those partnerships, combined with aid from rescue organizations and neighboring animal shelters have kept MCAS from becoming overcrowded and helped to provide quality care for animals, Johnson said.
“We are not over capacity because during the storm, a lot of rescue groups and other shelter organizations came to the Greater Houston area and transported some of the animals that were already here to other organizations across the country,” he said. “There was a lot of discussion and collaboration amongst all the shelters in the area and that really helped.”
The shelter also saw an outpouring of supplies and food donations for their animals in the days following Hurricane Harvey, allowing MCAS to help animals in need in neighboring communities.
“We had overwhelming support in terms of donations and were actually able to send a lot of those excess supplies and food to shelters in Fort Bend County, Wharton County and Beaumont that were hit harder than we were,” Johnson said.
Although the shelter has been able to weather the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, the natural disaster did shed a light on a pet service lacking in Montgomery County.
“Through all of this, I didn’t see as many animals with microchips as I had hoped to see,” Johnson said. “Some of these pets we probably could’ve gotten home a lot sooner than it has taken us to get some of them home, had they been microchipped. Collars can come off your pets, but having a microchip is, at the very least, a last line of defense for us to reunite pets with their owners.”
In response, Johnson said he is hoping to start a mircrochipping initiative beginning in October, which would allow local pet owners to receive microchip services for free through the MCAS.
“We’re hoping to do it several days of the week during certain times,” Johnson said. “Hopefully, it doesn’t get overwhelming for us but we’re going to continue to do it for awhile so people don’t feel like they have to all rush here at once to get it done.”
Johnson said the biggest challenge for the shelter now will be care for animals without known owners and whose owners who lost their homes due to flooding.
“The biggest issue for us is trying to juggle our intake, while also trying to care for and house animals for people who want their animals, but don’t have a place to take their animals at the present time,” he said. “We’re just trying to work with them as best as we can but we may need to foster some of these animals out until their owners have a place to bring them home to.”
Johnson said he also hopes to roll out a mobile spay/neuter initiative and establish an onsite low-cost wellness clinic in the future.
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