Animal 411

Selectmen Divided on Future of Animal Shelter in New Canaan 

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Members of the Board of Selectmen on Tuesday voiced support for two different ways to move forward with the town’s Animal Control shelter, which long has been occupied in a former incinerator building at the dump. That brick structure soon will need a new roof, which two officials say would cost about $75,000 to $80,000 to replace. Selectman Nick Williams raised the issue recently, calling for New Canaan to find better quarters for the lost or abandoned animals that end up in the shelter. During the Board’s special meeting at Town Hall, Selectman Kit Devereaux said response to the issue has generated strong support from concerned residents, and that creation of a new shelter “would be a really great public-private partnership.”

“I want to know if there would be support for that,” Devereaux said. Williams said he agreed, and that he received several calls and emails from residents who want to help.

Board of Selectmen

‘A Dump Within a Dump’: Selectman Williams Calls for Improved Animal Shelter

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The town’s Animal Control shelter—which occupies about 800 square feet in a non-insulated former incinerator building at the dump—is not suitable to house dogs and other animals, Selectman Nick Williams said Tuesday. Given that the shelter soon will need a new roof, which officials estimate will cost $75,000 to $80,000, New Canaan should plan for an improved future facility or to outsource the care of lost or dumped animals, Williams said during the Board of Selectmen’s regular meeting. “To be clear, we are talking about maybe 50, 60, 70 animals a year going in there—it’s not high usage but it’s also not a great place to keep animals,” Williams said. The building’s “only use is as an animal shelter, which is a dump,” he said. “A dump within a dump—I’m sorry, a dump within a ‘Transfer Station,’ ” Williams said.

Animal 411

Failed Heating System Prompts Officials To Close New Canaan Animal Control Shelter

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The New Canaan Animal Control shelter has been closed since Dec. 31, officials say, when they had to shut off the water there because of a failed heat pump at the brick building. The sustained freezing temperatures of the last two weeks essentially rendered the small structure at the dump unusable, according to Bill Oestmann, superintendent of buildings for the Department of Public Works. “When it gets down to these temperatures, it’s an old incinerator building, it’s a non-insulated building that was never designed to have heat in it and the heat they put into it cannot keep up with zero-degree temperatures consistently,” he told NewCanaanite.com when asked about the problem. Mercifully, none of the animals that typically take up residence at the shelter—primarily roaming, injured or “dumped” dogs—have lived there since the heating failed.

Animal 411

‘We Love Animals’: Local Girl Scouts Buy Materials for New Fence at Shelter

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Asked about what spurred Girl Scouts Troop 198 to purchase the materials needed to enclose an area at the New Canaan Animal Shelter with a chain link fence, NCHS freshman Amanda Hill has a ready answer: “We love animals.”

That love drove Hill and her fellow Girl Scouts to purchase a dryer for the shelter last year, so that the dogs and cats could get dried off immediately after returning to the Lakeview Avenue shelter—say, after Kleinschmitt or a member of her staff took them for a quick, leashed walk. But when she’d take them for those walks, Kleinschmitt “always had to take them far around and by the dump and couldn’t really train them, because they always had to be on leashes,” Hill said on a recent afternoon and she and other members of Troop 198 gathered with Kleinschmitt in front of the fence, recently installed at the Lakeview Avenue shelter with the help of the New Canaan Department of Public Works. “So we thought if we gave her an outdoor area, she would be able to walk and train the dogs,” Hill said. For Kleinschmitt, the fence not only delivers new functionality to the shelter, but also enhances its aesthetics—creating an even nicer place for prospective parents to adopt the lost or abandoned pets that end up there. “First of all, we can put plants in front of here and it will look nicer for people who are coming either to pick up their dogs or for people who want to adopt a dog,” said Kleinschmitt, who will retire at the end of September.