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Hello. My name is Chip Fitz, I’m the Director for Tangipahoa Parish Animal Services and oversee animal control and the animal shelter for parish government.
Animal services have been put in place for two things. One was to control the overpopulation of unwanted pets, which is created by irresponsible pet ownership. The other side is the animal shelter, so the animals that come into animal control, we do everything in our power to either get them rescued, returned to their owners, or adopted. So it’s a kind of a twofold operation in one under animal services. We also work on investigating cruelty cases, dog fighting cases.
We have a great group of dedicated employees there who go out of their way to counsel and work with people. One of our goals is to keep animals at home and not in our facility. In doing that, we respond a lot and spend a lot of extra time on calls to try to counsel people and to workout indifference’s between neighbors and in community so that we take in fewer animals at animal control.
We are very pleased that we run about a 93% live animal release rate out of our animal shelter, a very successful program. We’re saving 1200 to 1400 animals a year by getting them back to their owners, getting them rescued, or getting them adopted. I would like to encourage you that if you’re looking for a pet, shop with us first. The other thing I’d like to encourage you on is that if you’re looking for a particular breed, just be a little patient because pretty much we’ll get one through there within 30 days or so.
Two things that could happen at Tangipahoa Parish Animal Services that would greatly change the workload for us would be to have people in Tangipahoa Parish to understand, spay and neuter is important, healthy animals are important, but keeping your animal on a leash helps the entire community.
