our pets: ANIMAL RESCUE
Saving Sir George
Local dog gets adopted with help of shelter volunteers
By KRISTINA REILLY
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n 2019, it is estimated that people
in the United States will spend
$72.13 billion on pets. With the
numbers currently rising, the pet
industry is astonishingly resilient,
even when the economy is suffering.
One of the side effects of an
increase in pet spending is an
increase in overall pets, which means
an increase of pets being dropped
off at the shelter. Fortunately for
Parker County, Dustin Deel, of the
Weatherford/Parker County Animal
Shelter and his amazing staff have
taken care of the animals dropped off
at the shelter that have been neglect-
ed, scared, lost, and detached from
their humans. The animals need to
be handled gently so that the shelter
may present well-adjusted animals to
the adopters, an overwhelming task
for a team when the ratio of humans
to pets is 15 to 110. The shelter team
always has happy stories to share.
A dog wandered into the animal
shelter a few months ago. When the
staff performed their standard check-
in, they discovered the dog had a
chip, allowing the owners to be
called. That story had ended happily,
considering the owners of the dog
had just about lost all hope because
the dog was missing for six months.
They came immediately to retrieve
their lost dog.
There are also future pet owners
who use the shelter’s website to
scope out the current pets available,
hoping to find something that might
resemble a new best friend. That
is what happened for Katy Davis
and her best friend, Sir George, in
November of 2018.
“I decided last minute to check
out the Weatherford shelter the day
before Thanksgiving in 2018,” Davis