OOn the surface, it appears typical: there is a plain
brick façade and a chorus of barks can be heard from
outside the door. Inside, two women sit behind a glass
counter, answering phone calls, filling out paperwork
and greeting everyone who enters. A woman walks to
the window with a small crate containing an older cat
she’s dropping off. A young couple anxiously waits to see
adoptable dogs, declaring they’re searching for a future
“fur child.”
The building is part of New Hanover County’s
Animal Services Unit, a shelter at 180 Division Drive
in Wilmington. The sheriff ’s office took over the shelter
from the health department in 2012.
Nowhere to be seen is the quintessential view of ani-mal
control — mean-faced men in starchy white shirts
chasing a dog down the street, netting it and tossing it
in the back of a van, likely to never be seen again. This
negative connotation is often associated with animal
control and animal services. Capt. Chuck Wilson, divi-sion
commander of Support Services with the New
Hanover County Sheriff ’s Office, is aware of that.
“There is this cliché about animal shelters being like a
prison, and that the cold-hearted dog catcher is going to
catch a poor helpless dog and they’re going to put them
down,” he says. “There’s all these stereotypes. Nobody
cares about animals in this community more than the
staff here at this shelter.”
The busy shelter operates for the entire county, popu-lation
54
WBM september 2017
of more than 220,000. Five people work at the
front desk Monday through Saturday, taking registration
payments and citation penalties, answering around 300
phone calls and greeting 30 to 50 walk-ins each day.
The workload is heavy. Wilson says they are “over-whelmed,
to say the least.” Yet they belie the stereotype
of uncaring bureaucrats. Like everyone who has a hand
at managing the unit, they convey genuine concern
about what they do, and are focused on the goal to care
for the animals until someone comes in to take them
home.
“It’s all about pets and people, and the quality of
life of both,” Wilson says. “It was a good organization
when we took it over. We extended the hours to increase
adoptions. We’ve shortened the time it takes to adopt a
pet. We’ve reduced euthanasias. We have no expiration
date on an adoptable pet. If it’s a good dog that can be
adopted, we don’t get rid of that dog.”
When the sheriff ’s office took over in 2012, the main
goal was to stop the spread of rabies between animals
and humans. That meant getting all New Hanover
County pets registered. Registrations require rabies
certificates, and have the bonus of identifying a missing
dog if it’s brought to the shelter.
Between 2012 and 2013, there were 1,090 new regis-tered
pets. By March 1, 2017, registrations were up by
almost 35,000. Wilson notes that one-third of all people
are pet owners, and a third of that third own multiple