DeKalb County wants to stop euthanizing dogs and cats

Dogs shown at the DeKalb County animal shelter in July.

Credit: KENT D. JOHNSON / AJC

Credit: KENT D. JOHNSON / AJC

Dogs shown at the DeKalb County animal shelter in July.

The DeKalb County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a resolution last week laying out a mission for its animal shelter to go “no-kill” by the end of next year.

By doing so, DeKalb became the second county in Georgia and the first in metro Atlanta to pass such a resolution, according to Best Friends Animal Society. The society worked with the county ahead of the vote, which signals DeKalb’s commitment to phase euthanasia down to 10 percent, the national benchmark required to be classified “no-kill.”

Sonali Saindane, president of the DeKalb Animal Services Advisory Board, said in a news release that the shelter has already transformed for the better. She credited the LifeLine Animal Project group, which runs the county’s shelter.

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“Our shelter is already a national model for open admission shelters and this resolution further reinforces that our commissioners are listening and understand what the community wants,” she said.

The resolution is building on progress made in recent years to help homeless pets through adoption and rescue programs, the news release said. Other helpful steps listed were constructing a new state-of-the-art shelter, significantly reducing the kill rate and improving county ordinances related to animals.

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