SANFORD, Fla. – Seminole County Animal Services have moved dogs back into its shelter after the facility went through renovations in hopes of getting results for the animals.
The shelter, located in Sanford, is buzzing with the all-too-familiar sound of barks again.
“It does kind of make you walk in and smile,” said Diane Gagliano, the shelter’s program coordinator. “Because before it really needed painting, the floors were terrible… It wasn’t as pleasant as it is now.”
Gagliano said the renovations on the shelter, which now houses around 160 dogs, were well overdue.
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“It needed to be done. Not only did it need to be done, the floors had gotten so slick that they became dangerous when they were wet. The staff would slip on them or the dogs would slip on them,” Gagliano said.
Taking a deeper look inside, Gagliano showed off the new space, from the floors to the gutter systems, a sight she said was welcoming to the dogs.
“When the dogs got to go back into the indoor-outdoor kennels, we had some dogs we thought, ‘We don’t really know with the personality on these dogs,’ and then we moved them to the indoor-outdoor kennels, they just became free spirits again,” she said.
While Seminole County Animal Services said it’s happy with the improvements, the shelter is not done getting results yet.
Shelter officials said their next focus is on its cat community and they are already making plans to expand.
“So what they are doing is taking this whole structure down and that structure down and then doing a wraparound structure with outdoors so that customers can walk all the way around,” Gagliano said.
The program coordinator said this would allow better flow through the cat areas. Gagliano said she hopes these improvements will further get results for all the animals the shelter houses.
“Here in a shelter situation, the biggest fear is overcrowding,” said Gagliano, adding this could cause the facility to euthanize an animal or turn people away.
She said that is not why the shelter is here, though.
“We don’t like to do that... we are here for the benefit of the animal,” Gagliano said. “We do (have) great animals and the staff is ready to help and find you the right dog or cat.”
Seminole Animal County Services said it wants to remind people about its specials running until the end of the month, including $10 adoptions for any animal over 7 months.
For more information on the shelter, click here.
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