DERIDDER, La. (AP) — A relationship that started with a former volunteer’s message the day Hurricane Laura slammed southwest Louisiana is bringing a $250,000 animal shelter to a parish that has gone through hurricanes and Deep South heat with roofed chain-link outdoor kennels.
Construction is expected to begin this summer on a temperature-controlled building with ample space for quarantined animals and for medical care, said Beauregard Parish Sheriff Mark Herford.
“Our animal control deputies have worked for years doing the best they could with what they had. Because of budgets, we have been constrained to one animal control deputy and one animal control truck for the entire parish, and Deputy Krista West has accomplished some incredible things despite the lack of resources,” he told The American Press.
Money for the shelter came from the family-owned floor care company Bissell Inc. through Cathy Bissell, founder of the Bissell Pet Foundation.
She said the text message that got her interested in the shelter came Aug. 27, 2020, from a woman she knows only as Natasha. It didn’t mention the hurricane or the outdoor kennels but was about a dog that desperately needed medical help, she said.
Natasha, who is German, had volunteered at the shelter while her husband was stationed at Fort Polk, but they had been transferred to Texas, Bissell told The Associated Press.
Bissell said she and a team from the foundation came to the shelter in 2021 to help move dogs to a place they could more easily find homes.
“I saw the shelter. I was like, ‘Wow, this is very sad,’” she said.
The group moved all 21 dogs then at the shelter to Baton Rouge, she said.
This year, Bissell offered to pay for a new shelter. The foundation doesn’t have money for big capital projects, she said.
“Our foundation 100% supports animals in shelters,” Bissell said. “When I need extra money I can go to Bissell and say, `We need this.’”
The expansion will be on parish-owned land next to the current kennels, the newspaper reported.
The parish police jury and sheriff’s office will split the $5,000 costs of engineering prep work, land survey and soil sample testing.
“This will not cost the taxpayers anything, which makes this even better for our parish,” Herford said.