By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
Bailey Falls, Director of the Tucker County Animal Shelter, updated the Tucker County Commission, in regular session, on the results of a trip two staff members took to the WV Animal Sheltering Summit in Charleston. “The West Virginia Animal Sheltering Summit, the Best Friends had gotten us and covered the cost of it for us and got lots of helpful information,” Falls said. “They were asking questions. There were shelters from all over the state and they were asking questions like, ‘Do you have a program for this?’ and a couple of people raised their hands and, ‘Do you have this?’ And they were like, ‘Alright Tucker County you need to stop responding cause you guys are doing everything.’”
Falls thanked the Commission for all their continued support to the animal shelter. Falls said, “That’s again because of the support of the Commission, because of the support of the community we’re able to really stay – even though we’re tiny, we’re mighty and we’re trying to stay on the cutting edge of where we’re going. The focus is the animal – human bond and keeping people together so things like the voucher program, that’s awesome. So, again, we really appreciate the support of the Commission.”
Falls also updated the Commission on the success of the Shelter’s voucher program. According to Falls, the program has had nothing but positive feedback from the community. “The vouchers which that was through our grant that we received with your support and the feedback from the public on that has been really, really positive,” Falls said. “We’ve issued 90 vouchers and that is for animals owned by Tucker County residents or community cats that Tucker County residents are feeding in Tucker County. We’ve gotten nothing but positive responses from folks. Also, its kitten season and I got six litters of kittens in foster homes right now, but only one of the moms have to be adopted out because through the voucher program the ones are keeping the mom cats and keeping the kittens until they can be adopted out. So that’s been really helpful and it’s minimized our intakes and has put a little bit of the responsibility back onto the person that has the animal, but has also helped them out a lot. We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on that and we are very grateful for the Commission helping us out with the matching funds for that grant. That was the West Virginia Spay/Neuter Assistance Program through the Department of Agriculture.”
Falls also informed the Commission that the Friends of the Tucker County Animal Shelter “Putts Fore Pets” raised over $2,500 for the new shelter construction project. “All the players had a really good time and were asking about next year,” Falls said.
“That’s just an example of how Tucker County works together,” Tucker County Commission Mike Rosenau said. “The park board knew the need of the shelter. So, the park board says, ‘We’ll organize a golf tournament. You can have it free of charge to help you organization. That to me is a proud example of Tucker County.”
The next meeting of the Tucker County Commission will be Wednesday, June 14th at 9am at the Tucker County Courthouse Old Courtroom.