Budget Cuts Do Not Affect Cobb Animal Control

Public Safety Cpt. Jeff Patellis gave residents an overview of Cobb County Animal Shelter operations at Commissioner JoAnn Birrell's town hall meeting last Thursday.

Patellis described the state-of-the art surgical facility at CCAC where pets are spayed and neutered to help control the animal population. All animals receive a rabies vaccination administered by the veterinarian.

Cobb County is one of the few Georgia counties to have a full-time veterinarian on staff.

Patellis describes shelter operations and the surgical facility in this article's accompanying videos.

Editor's Note: Vicki Hammond, who has covered the happenings and animals at Cobb County Animal Control each and every week since Smyrna-Vinings Patch launched in late November, offered the following comment after viewing the videos:

"The numbers are staggering. One pass through the shelter and you will see how truly wonderful all these animals are. What wasn't mentioned by Cpt. Patellis is the number of owner turn ins (OTI). I would be interested to see how many of the 17,000 are OTIs. I was there yesterday and Lilly, a 14-year-old cat, was turned in by her owner. Sandy, a 16-year-old dog, was dropped off recently too. These are not isolated cases.

"I would like to see money used to help people keep their animals (low cost vet care and food pantry), foster programs established to give some of the animals at the shelter a temporary home, a stronger volunteer program for support, more money from court fines (traffic court, misdemeanor cases, etc.) used to fund programs, and a one time (small) license fee for spay/neutered pets (but yearly registration which would make it easier for CCAC to find owners of stray animals) and for those that choose not to spay/neuter, a substantial annual fee along with yearly registration. Mandatory microchipping might also be a good option.

"Cpt. Patellis and staff do a fine job with the way things are set up at the present time. Are there areas of improvement? Sure. However, they are willing to consider new ways and that's the first step. I believe they are all tired of seeing animals die needlessly. Thank you Julia for covering this topic.''