Special to IFN

Iredell County Animal Services has received a $30,000 grant investment from national nonprofit Petco Love in support of their lifesaving work for pets in Iredell County.

Iredell County Animal Services provides a wide variety of services intended to promote responsible pet ownership, protect the public from diseased and dangerous animals, and to treat all citizens and animals fairly and compassionately, serving Iredell County. Since 2022 Iredell County Animal Services has worked cohesively to spay and neuter 167 community cats in addition to in-house TNR efforts offering 30 slots a month to the public to help trap, neuter, and return their community cats.

“This grant would help the county effectively and humanely address the community cat issue. We are looking at a collaborative team approach to handle the community cats in Iredell county. Our long-term target is to cooperatively spay and neuter over 550 cats per a year,” said Kristian Hernandez, Iredell County Animal Services director. 

“This continued targeted number will have long term positive impacts for the community cats. This would allow the shelter to focus on in taking younger kittens instead of the adult cats who have a high percentage of euthanasia.”

Petco Love is a national nonprofit leading change for pets by harnessing the power of love to make communities and pet families closer, stronger, and healthier. Since its founding in 1999, Petco Love has invested nearly $400 million in adoption and other lifesaving efforts. And Petco Love helps find loving homes for pets in partnership with Petco and more than 4,000 organizations — like ours — across North America, with more than 6.9 million pets adopted and counting.

“Our investment in Iredell County Animal Services is part of more than $12 million in investments recently announced by Petco Love to power local organizations across the country as part of our commitment to create a future in which no pet is unnecessarily euthanized,” said Susanne Kogut, president of Petco Love. “Our local investments are only part of our strategy to empower animal lovers to drive lifesaving change right alongside us. We launched Petco Love Lost, a free national lost and found database that uses patented photo-matching technology to simplify the search for lost pets.”

LEARN MORE

For more information about Iredell County Animal Services, visit https://www.iredellcountync.gov/149/Animal-Services-Control. Learn more about Petco Love at petcolove.org.

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