Animal Welfare Oversight Committee Meeting

Animal Welfare Oversight Committee October 17, 2022 The Norman Animal Welfare Oversight Committee of the City of Norman, Cleveland County, State of Oklahoma, met in the executive room at the Norman City Municipal Building on the 17th day of October 2022 at 6:00 PM. The notice and agenda of the meeting was posted at the City of Norman Municipal Building on 201 West Gray Street on October 15th, 2022. The meeting was also posted on the City of Norman website at www.normanok.gov. CALL TO ORDER Co-Chair Mark Howery called the meeting to order at 6:17PM. ROLL CALL Present Co-Chair Rebecca Bean Co-Chair Mark Howery Rod Hall, D.V.M. Sandy Moore-Furneux APPROVAL OF THE AUGUST MINUTES Motion made by Rod Hall, seconded by Sandy Moore-Furneaux. The minutes were approved. MONTHLY STATISTICS AND UPDATES Shelter Supervisor Ashley Battiest went over the August and September shelter statistics. In August, shelter staff had been able to work on bringing in animals from the owner surrender list, in part because of the dog transport that happened at the end of August. The owner surrender list since then has just continued to rise in number, as the shelter has been operating at or over capacity since then. The shelter also saw a lot of kittens that had come in with panleukopenia in the last two months, leading to a larger than normal amount of animals that had died in care in September. Currently the shelter is over capacity, with many of the ancillary rooms in the shelter holding dogs as a temporarily measure. There are no kennels available to bring in strays or owner surrendered animals. Rebecca Bean asked about the two positions that had been approved by city council in June. Kellee Robertson said that the last she had heard about the positons they were in the works. Rebecca said she would follow up with emails to ask about their status. Kellee Robertson said that the work on the HVAC unit for the multipurpose room had been completed. The shelter currently does not have any HVAC issues at this time, although she is anticipating issues next summer due to the dehumidifying element in our HVAC units and the cost cutting measures that were used when they were first installed. She said that she would like to take the money that had been set aside for the capital improvement project involving changing the cat adoption kennel doors to bars, and use that money instead for video/audio equipment and conference room furniture for the multipurpose room. The temperature in the cat adoption side was helped by tinting the large windows, and the bars had been an idea for helping ventilation, which is no longer needed. DISCUSSION ITEMS Update on Efforts to Move Dogs Through NAWC Kellee Robertson gave a brief overview of the Dog is My Copilot transport that happened on August 29th. The receiving shelter had originally agreed on 45 dogs that would be flown from here to North Dakota by Dog is My Copilot. The day before the flight Kellee received a call from the North Dakota shelter that they were on an intake hold due to an outbreak of brucellosis. The North Dakota shelter director later said that she got approval and they would take the dogs. The morning of the flight, after the dogs had been loaded onto the trailer to take to the airport, Kellee got one last call. The receiving shelter could only take the dogs that they had adopters or fosters already waiting. The final total of dogs that left the shelter was 25. The flight coordinator with dog is my copilot called the next day to find out what happened, because Dog is My Copilot does not want to plan flights that aren’t full. After their conversation, the coordinator was so impressed with how this difficult situation was handled by NAW that she said she would personally work on finding Norman Animal Welfare a different receiving shelter for the next operating season (Dog is My Copilot does not fly from October to March due to weather). We have a potential receiving shelter for next year beginning in March. If this goes into effect next year and Norman Animal Welfare is able to lower the number of animals in care, then we could potentially become a hub for local rural shelters to send their animals on the same monthly transport.