Gimme Shelter Hamden held its second annual ‘Gathering of the Paws’ event on Oct. 19 and Hamden Mayor, Lauren Garret was there to announce the location of the town’s first animal shelter.
Mayor Garrett announced that the animal shelter site will be on the corner of Putnam Ave. and Gallagher Rd., just off of Dixwell Ave.
Gimme Shelter Hamden held the event to raise awareness for animal abuse and abandonment and to collect donations to build the town’s shelter.
Many vendors and local artists attended the event. Twelve Percent Brewery & Coffee Bar is donating 20% of their sales to the cause as part of the event.
True Love Pet Care was also in attendance providing free nail trimmings for pets.
Cheryl Castellano, the treasurer of Gimme Shelter Hamden, explained why having an animal shelter in town is important.
“People kind of need a place, whether they want to adopt an animal or they have an animal that they can’t keep anymore, we just really need a place that we can go to bring our animals to,” said Castellano.
Hamden received an annual budget of $90,000 from the police department for kennel rentals because the town didn’t have its own animal shelter. Because of the lack of animal shelters, kennels in neighboring towns often reached maximum capacity. Hamden then had to pay additional costs to place animals elsewhere. Currently, Hamden uses space at North Haven Animal Shelter. When those spaces fill up, places such as animal hospitals become of use.
With a new shelter, more animals in these situations will have places to go without the town worrying about extra costs.
“It’s over three acres and it is where our fire station is going to be. The site is big enough to have both firefighters and animals on the site,” said Garrett
The site is also located next to the Farmington Canal. This means that volunteers can walk the animals in a safe space.
There isn’t a current timeline for this project and donations continue to be collected. However, students and staff in Hamden are working on site plans and preliminary designs over the year. This is also part of the student’s capstone project.
To donate, people can bring their contributions directly to the Hamden Police Department located at 2900 Dixwell Ave. Or, they can donate online by visiting the town’s website at www.hamden.org and selecting Animal Shelter Building/Facility Donations under the donate tab.
