Gilmer County Animal Control: Play Yard Renovation Grant Report
How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?
Gilmer County Shelter is located in rural Ellijay, GA, and has a very limited budget. In 2021, a group of volunteers partnered with the shelter to start providing additional activities and programs to socialize our dogs and increase their adoption chances. In 2023, we added our enrichment program to supplement our walking and playgroups programs and it has proven to be extremely beneficial in our dogs' emotional development.
The main arena for enrichment is our play yards, and with the rainy season and extreme heat in the summer, the dogs were just not enjoying yard time. It became clear we needed a roof to tackle that challenge.
This amazing Petfinder Foundation Play Yard Renovation Grant helped subsidize the addition of a roof so that, no matter what the weather, we can continue our efforts to improve the dogs' well-being.
How many pets did this grant help?
While we are on track to see about 400-500 dogs and puppies pass through our shelter this year who will benefit from this roof covering over our play yards, it will provide decades of protection and help us enrich thousands of dogs. What an amazing gift to our community and homeless pets!
Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.
We’d like to share these four special boys — some of our volunteer favorites — who came to us as strays and are still searching for their forever homes. It’s hard to believe no one is missing them but that’s ok — we got ya!
They spend time in our programs and play yards every day, as do all of our dogs, and they have come so far. They all sit patiently in their kennels waiting for their turns to come out and play. Such gentlemen, with amazing manners! They know sit, down, fetch, shake, and kiss; they are great on car rides, love the swimming pools in the summer, and are just all-around happy boys waiting for their chance to prove their devotion! This grant for our play yards’ roof covering has helped provide us with the tools to continue to better their lives.
Meet the boys:
Preacher (first photo): loves fetch and sitting in the driver’s seat of our transport van
Big Mac (second photo): a.k.a. our velvet gray hippo
Big John (third photo): the best kisser in town, he loves his emotional support rubber chicken
Zeke (fourth photo): has the best smile ever and loves belly rubs
