Burlington’s animal services director appeared before the city’s elected leaders this week to address changes at the city’s animal shelter that have left some area residents howling in protest.
Jessica Arias acknowledged that she’s well aware of the pushback to these new intake procedures, which were the centerpiece of her report to Burlington’s city council on Monday. Arias nevertheless stressed that there are good reasons for these policy adjustments at the shelter, which serves not only Burlington but Alamance County and all of its constituent cities and towns.
Arias recalled that since the late 1970s, Burlington’s animal shelter has served as the go-to location for lost and unwanted pets from every corner of the county. Since that time, the shelter has expanded its operations to include a pet adoption center next to the pound and a subsidized spay-and-neuter clinic at the juncture of South Church Street and Alamance Road.
Arias insists that these two subsidiary operations have helped lower the shelter’s euthanasia rate to less than 10 percent, allowing it to claim the mantle of a no-kill facility for the past several years. For a while, the shelter also witnessed a dropoff in its admissions, which fell from more than 8,000 in 2008 to just over 4,000 in 2020.
Since then, the shelter’s intake has rebounded somewhat, with 6,400 pets appearing on the facility’s admission rolls for 2025. Arias conceded that this increase would’ve overwhelmed the shelter’s capacity in spite of a multimillion-dollar renovation and expansion that took place five years ago.
In order to better manage admissions, Arias said that she and her colleagues have adopted a “triage model” which is used by thousands of other animal shelters across the U.S.
“Some shelters use it poorly,” Arias conceded. “They say ‘we’re full; we’re closing our doors’…But it’s been my commitment to keep our doors open always and manage peak intake.”
Arias noted that, under this triage model, the shelter gives first dibs to cases of cruelty or neglect, animals with medical emergencies, and those that pose a potential threat to the public.
In more mundane situations, however, the shelter’s staff looks for other ways to accommodate the animals that may come their way.
In cases when pet owners simply want to unload their unwanted animals, the shelter’s staff no longer provide on-demand intake but schedule surrender dates that are set far enough in the future to ensure the facility’s capacity isn’t overwhelmed.
Meanwhile, people who find lost or stray pets are encouraged to foster these animals until they’re either adopted or returned to their original owner.
According to Arias, this foster/finder initiative allows adoptable pets to live in a homier setting while they remain wards of the city. But this program has also been a source of consternation for people who thought they had done their good deed for the day when they turned in a stray – only to find themselves pressed into service as the animal’s new caretaker.
This unexpected imposition proved too much for area resident Laurie Arnold when she discovered a young male pitbull cavorting down Front Street in April.
Unable to get the shelter to take the dog off her hands, Arnold tried, without success, to track down the animal’s owner before she confronted the council about the untenable situation that she had found herself in.
“I was told that the Burlington animal shelter was full,” she recalled during the council’s designated public comment period on April 21. “So, now I have a dog – an unneutered male pitbull – and I don’t know who it belongs to. He’s a sweet dog, but we can’t keep him.”
Arnold received a surprise lifeline that evening from a reporter with The Alamance News, who volunteered to take in the dog and went on to adopt it once it was neutered. Arias pointed to this case as a foster/finder success story when she addressed the council on Monday. Even so, not every lost puppy gets this sort of deux ex machina ending – as other city officials have been quick to point out.
During Arnold’s appearance before the council in April, councilman Ian Baltutis alluded to other people who’ve run up against the proverbial wall when they’ve tried to bring stray dogs or cats to the shelter.
“I’ve heard the same narrative from multiple folks,” Baltutis said at the time, “and I had hoped it wasn’t recurring, but it appears that it is.”
In his response to Arnold’s concerns, Baltutis didn’t identify himself as one of these other reluctant foster/finders. He nevertheless alluded his own difficulties with strays during the animal services director’s report to the council on Monday.
Arias, for her part, hailed the councilman’s experience as another example of a foster/finder success. In the meantime, she assured the rest of the city’s leaders that she and her colleagues are continuously working to hone their triage procedures to get the best results for pets, people, and the community.
“Do we do it seamlessly at all times? No we don’t,” she confessed. “Sometimes it’s a little rough around the edges…But we continuously work to improve, and when there are missteps, we try to correct those.”
