Northeast Georgia Animal Shelter offers tips to Keep Pets Safe this Holiday Weekend

The Northeast Georgia Animal Shelter in Lavonia is augmenting its hours of operation over the July 4th holiday weekend.

Shelter director Sheri Lockhart the change is due to the holiday falling on a Saturday this year.

“That’s correct, on Friday we will be only be open from 11:00am until 12:00 noon. We will be in taking animals that day so if you have stray only, so we invite people if you have a stray to bring it in or call us to let us know. Saturday July 4th and Sunday, July 5th, we will be closed.”

And while the shelter will be closed Saturday and Sunday, the staff is providing for those pets who may get lost or found over the holiday weekend.
“We will be open on July 6th from 8:00am until 12:00 for people who have found strays from the fireworks and things like that to bring in. So we are here open to the public so you can bring the strays and owners can come into the shelter and look for their pets that have been lost. We know that lots of pets are lost during the 4th of July, so we want to offer this to the public to be able to bring in and look for you animals that may be lost.”

Last weekend, during the pre-4th fireworks at Big Oaks Recreation area, a dog that was brought to the event by its owners ran off into the night, frightened by the sound of the fireworks exploding in the evening sky.

Posters were put out and a reward was offered.

But the dog was found dead the next day.

It had drowned in Lake Hartwell.

This weekend promises to have more activity and more local fireworks going off all over the area pretty much every night.

That’s why Lockhart advises you leave your pets at home and keep them in the house or dog pen this weekend – especially at night.

“We see lots of animals lost during 4th of July and they are either lost permanently because they don’t know how to get back home, or they’ve ran away from the sound, or something tragic happens, like they get hit by a car because they are scared or we had one drown. It’s a bad sitituation, so please put your animals in your home during this time, don’t take them out into the public. Any animal can slip a leash, it happens, my personal dogs have slipped leashes before. Collars can come over the head so easy, so highly, highly recommend you keep your pets at home.”

For more information on the shelter hours this weekend you can contact them at 706-356-5363.