Tuesday, November 25, 2008

TAS facilities

When Johanne from caacQ, was down from Montreal over the weekend to drop off some dogs, she had a tour of the Toronto Animal Services South facility and liked the way it was set up and asked me if I could take some photos of the place for reference. So, here you are, Johanne:

Here's the reception area with the first cat showroom on the left. Often, there'll be an armful of kittens playing in there.


Upstairs playroom for a potential adopter to hang out with a dog. Notice the drain. There are drains everywhere - great for rinsing down the floors from leaky dogs.


Lots of handwashing stations. (Did you know that hand sanitizer is also good for removing makeup, lipstick, or ballpoint ink from clothes? Yup, true.)


Raincoats for volunteers. Nice touch, though orange isn't my colour.


Another cat showroom. The long term fat cats usually get to stay in these. A couple of them love attacking the glass at passing dogs and scaring the bejeezus out of them.


Cat room. I think it needs a rubber plant.


Cat cage. I think it needs a rubber plant. Maybe a small one.


Dog adoption room. There are high pressure hoses at every end wall for easier cleaning of kennels and spraying down of unruly mobs.


Kennel with dog descriptions on door.


There is a drain with a removeable grill at the rear of every kennel with the floor slightly sloping towards the grill. The wall and floor surfaces are continuous and epoxy finished to be waterproof. This set up, along with the high pressure water hose, makes for easy clean up - especially appreciated on days like today when the dogs were fed canned food for the first time yesterday and several ended up making a huge mess all over their floors and walls - think poo bombs.


At nights, all the dogs get soft bedding to sleep on. These pads can be picked up and washed in the morning. Sometimes the dogs also use these to practice their yoga.

4 comments:

Lynda said...

Wow, everything is so clean, shiny and new-looking! Spectacular facilities!
Thanks for the pics Fred!

Lynda

Caveat said...

Looks as though somebody's been talking to Bill out in Calgary.

Great facility!

Fred said...

I'm not sure who Bill is but you might be right. I was told that whoever designed this place had been doing this for a while and had built some top notch facilities in the past.

Caveat said...

Bill Bruce, the head of bylaw and the architect of Calgary's amazing, successful animal control program.

He has an unbelievable facility and the beauty of his system is that it's all funded by pet owners through licensing (90%) and fines (10%). Doesn't cost taxpayers dime one but requires seed money to get off the ground.