Lending a paw

MOSES LAKE — Grant County Animal Outreach recently got some much-needed upgrades.

Moses Lake developer CAD Homes teamed up with several other businesses this spring to build new kennels at the county animal shelter, along with some other much-needed improvements.

“It was a little bit of a happy accident,” said Rachel Scott, office manager for CAD Homes. “We had heard through Blake Rollins, our real estate broker, about a volunteer day that Grant County Animal Outreach was doing. And we had some employees that wanted some overtime, so we said, ‘Hey, what a great opportunity. Let's go out there. We'll all volunteer for the day.’”

There was plenty to be done, Scott said.

“There's so many animals, it's just crazy,” she said. “The staff, of course, is wonderful, and so very helpful and kind. But you know, it's a pretty impossible task, when we have a building that's built in like the 1950s and made to house 30 dogs, and you have close to 90 out there. That was our first time seeing the conditions and hearing what needed to be done.”

“So we ended up spending most of the day out there,” she continued, “using our employees and getting some sunshades up for them, taking some loads to the dump, fixing doorknobs, things like that. And then we realized, you know, we're sitting on a goldmine of resources in terms of our construction connections.”

“They had asked what we needed,” said Kar Vanerstrom, the vice president of Grant County Animal Outreach. “And of course the building is so dilapidated, we were like, well, where do we start?… Rachel and I just were talking like, this needs to be done and this repair and that repair, and she just started calling people to help.”

“We started reaching out,” Scott said, “and we said, I bet we could get some dog kennels … out there, so there's no dogs that need to be in travel crates just because it's crowded.”

Scott’s phone calls paid off. Several businesses donated materials, and a few donated cash toward the expenses. CAD Homes workers did the bulk of the labor, along with some specialized work contributed by Basin Refrigeration, Heating, Plumbing & Electric on fans and lights.

“We put some new lights in and fixed some exhaust fans,” said Eric Clark, a manager with Basin Refrigeration. “The fan (in one room) was in pretty bad shape; it needed an exhaust fan for sure. Because (I’m) not sure what was going on there, but they had a bunch of humidity and, you know, the smell. And then the inside dog kennels, there was lighting in there that wasn't working. So we replaced some LED fixtures in there to light it up.”

Doing electrical work is no picnic on the GCAO building, Vanerstrom said.

“The building was built so long ago that a lot of the wiring is in the concrete,” she said. “It's really hard for electricians to fix stuff when it's so old and the wires are in the walls.”

The shelter’s benefactors are working on finding ways to update the air conditioning, Vanerstrom added.

By the time the work was finished, GCAO had 10 brand-new kennels with concrete pads. Royal Premix Concrete donated materials and Pour Boys Excavation and Concrete donated labor to make the kennel slabs, Scott said. Lowe’s Home Improvement kicked in with dog houses and stainless steel water buckets for the kennels, and then CAD Homes and Lowe’s staff got together, built the kennels and put them up at the back of the shelter, she said.

“We are just so blessed by everything that they did,” Vanerstrom said. “It was just like Christmas for GCAO. It was fabulous. All of us had goosebumps.”

Joel Martin can be reached via email at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.

INFO BOX:

These businesses pitched in to make the improvements at Grant County Animal Outreach:

Frenchman Hills Quarry – donated money towards kennel purchase

Royal Premix Concrete – donated concrete materials for the kennel slabs

Pour Boys Excavation and Concrete – donated labor for kennel slab prep and kennel pour

Lowe’s Home Improvement – donated dog houses and stainless steel water buckets, gave a substantial discount on the kennels and contributed labor for kennel assembly

Lauren and Peter Anderson, K'ntucky Turf – donated money toward the kennel purchase

Basin Refrigeration, Heating, Plumbing & Electric – donated labor for fan and light repairs

CAD Homes – donated labor and paid remaining balance on kennel purchase