Champ Needs You To Make His Stay Less Stressful

Boy is it hot! We have been under nearly constant heat advisories lately and that has brought us some new challenges. 

Most of our improvements to make everyone’s stay more comfortable have related to cooling down the facility. Unfortunately, the portion of the buildings where the dog runs are has no air conditioning or insulation and no windows to install window air conditioner units in. However, we have been able to lower the temperatures and increase the comfort level by adding evaporative coolers and misting fans. This not only makes the animals more comfortable, but also gives the employees that clean the runs a little relief as well. 

Things always seem to break at the worst times. Two of the window air conditioner units in our smaller buildings quit working. They are absolutely necessary to keep the adult cats cool on these hot days, so we had to replace them.

Besides working to beat the heat, we have also been thinking of ways to make the cat areas more interesting and engaging. One thing we recently did was add wall shelves with ramps between them in many of the cat rooms to give them more places to relax and play. They absolutely love lying on them from a high vantage point and looking down at everything. 

In addition to improvements, we have also had our usual share of repairs to manage. Over time, some of the kennel doors have come off their posts because the anchor bolts holding the hinge posts worked their way out of the walls from use. We were able to salvage them by installing better anchor bolts into the concrete block walls. Some of our light fixtures have had to be replaced or repaired, but good lighting is important for both employee safety and animal health. 

As if that wasn’t enough to worry about, we also recently came in to find that our twelve foot wide entrance gate was severely damaged when someone apparently hit it with their vehicle and left without letting us know. It had to be straightened back out and a new steel brace was installed to strengthen the weak spot that was created by the damage. It took quite a bit of work to repair it, but we would rather not spend the money to replace the whole gate when it could be fixed.