BUCKHANNON – The Lewis-Upshur Animal Control Facility invites the community to an open house this month to learn more about adoption, volunteering and their general operations.
The open house will be held Sunday, June 26 from noon to 2 p.m. Come enjoy a hot dog, chips and cake while learning all about pets.
“You get to meet both animal control officers — we’re going to have both their vehicles up here, so you can look at their vehicles — and we’re going to have face painting from Paint Misbehaving from Lewis County,” said Jan Cochran, director of the Lewis-Upshur Animal Control Facility.
Cochran encourages the public to attend the open house to see how to the facility works.
“We’re just trying to encourage the public to come up to meet staff, meet volunteers, check out our animals, talk to the animal control officers and talk to volunteers,” Cochran said. “Come learn what you need to do if you have a lost pet or you find a pet. We want people to know who we are and what we really do up here.”
The facility is typically closed on Sundays, but Cochran hopes having the event that day will motivate more people to attend.
“We’re hoping to encourage people to adopt,” she said. “We chose noon to 2 p.m. because we figured churches would be out, we chose a Sunday because there’s not as much to do on Sundays. We’re hoping all these aspects will help pull people in. If you don’t adopt, just come up and meet us, see how the place is run, and ask questions that you might have.”
Cochran said people frequently discover new rules and regulations about animals they did not know before coming to LUAC.
“We just had a person pick up their cat this week, and we were telling her your cat cannot be outside in the city limits,” she said. “She was lucky the trapper didn’t bring it in — it was an individual — or she would have had to go to city hall and pay a fine before coming here. She said she wasn’t aware of that. We want people to ask questions so we can warn people about stuff like that.”
Cochran also hopes to recruit new volunteers during the open house.
“Maybe we’ll gain some volunteers from this too,” she said. “I will have volunteer applications here, and if people want to sign up and fill them out that day, I’ll notarize it for them.”
She also wants to use the open house to thank all the people that help LUAC on a regular basis.
“It’s also for the families that come up here all the time,” Cochran said. “There are a lot of people in the community that support us — we have great people that come and bring us stuff all the time. We have people call us to see if we need anything, we have school organizations that are doing things for us right now, and Holbrooks as well.”
A cat at LUAC can be adopted for $60 and a dog for $70, but if an animal has already been fixed or is sponsored to be fixed, a cat is $15 and dogs are $30.
