Texas animal shelter partially closed due to COVID, staff shortage

Texas animal shelter partially shut down due to COVID, staffing shortage

The shelter closing down is a very rare occurance. The only other time in recent years was during the February winter storm.

GEORGETOWN, Texas - COVID-19 cases and a staffing shortage have caused the Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter to partially shut down until the new year. The shelter is also at capacity for large and medium dogs so they are still open for people to adopt or foster, however, to do this they want people to make an appointment online to do so.

"We have a number of open Job positions right now and we have unfortunately experienced a COVID exposure at the shelter and so we have had to close down our services center," said April Peiffer the Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter Community Program Coordinator.

With the shelter partially shut down until next week, they’re asking anyone who comes across a lost pet to try and find the owner themselves. "They can do things like posting to social media, they can walk the animal around the neighborhood that they found it in, knock on doors, post flyers, all that good stuff and do their very best to reunite that animal with the owners themselves," said Peiffer.

This year the shelter said they’ve been struggling to hire both full-time and part-time positions and with them now dealing with COVID they had no choice but to close. "We’ve got to find the best way to make sure that we're able to provide the services in a safe manner for everyone from animals to people and this is the best way that we’ve come up with right now."

They aren't the only county department struggling with hires, earlier this month the county tax office had to close down for a day due to a staffing shortage.

One way people can help the Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter is through adopting. They said getting some of these animals out of the shelter and into homes will help the staff they currently have. To do this they are wanting people to schedule appointments online, this way they can have someone available to do the adoption process on site. "Same for fostering you can do the same thing let them know you would like to foster and you need a foster appointment."

If you do happen to come across a lost pet and are unable to find the owner or it’s too dangerous to hold onto, you can still contact animal control.

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