Las Cruces animal shelter unveils new small breed room

By Alexia Severson

aseverson@lcsun-news.com

@AlexiaMSeverson on Twitter

Cindy McKinney of Las Cruces and a foster parent for dogs, looks at a few puppies on Thursday during the ribbon cutting ceremony for the small breed room at the Animal Service Center of the Mesilla Valley. (Robin Zielinski Sun-News)

LAS CRUCES >> The sound of dogs barking could be heard as the orange ribbon spanning across the doors of the new Small Breed Room was cut during ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday at the Animal Service Center of the Mesilla Valley, 3551 Bataan Memorial West.

The newly remodeled room, formerly known as the puppy room, is about a $200,000 project, started about three months ago to provide a clean environment for small breed dogs and to help make the dogs more accessible and presentable to visitors looking to adopt.

The new room now expands into what was once the shelter entrance and more cages have been added to allow the dogs to be seen at eye level.

"So many people call us the pound and we're not a pound," Dr. Beth Vesco-Mock, ASCMV executive director said. "We work very hard on adopting and getting animals out to the community and we want to promote pet ownership responsibility and this really helps the image (of the shelter) and it's also much better for the animals ... and it's much easier for the staff to do proper cleaning."

The former room consisted of smaller pens situated on the floor, forcing the smaller dogs to stand on their hind feet just to see out and get attention.

"It was extremely stressful, extremely hard to clean, there was no drainage in each pen and it looked horrible," Vesco-Mock said.

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Las Cruces animal shelter unveils new small breed room