Space Constraints an Issue at Current Animal Facility

From the outside, the Toms River Animal Facility looks like any normal house off of Whitesville road. A large chain-link fence surrounds the property, there is a large shed in the backyard and plenty of parking space for a handful of cars.

For the animals living under its roof, the facility is hopefully the final – albeit small - stop before finding a family.

“We're just trying to find them all 'forever homes',” said Toms River Animal Facility Division Manager Jim Bowen. “(We aim to) get each and every animal adopted and that's always a challenge. We're trying to keep the euthanasia numbers low.”

Built in the 1970s, the facility was originally a residential property. The house was turned into the animal facility by local residents and township veterinarians in an effort to provide care to wayward pets.

With the steady increase of population in Toms River, the number of lost and abandoned animals has also been on the rise. While that population has ballooned in recent years, the size of the facility has not. Walking through the handful of rooms within the building, it becomes clear that the adaptability of each room is something the staff relies upon.

For example, the pantry and food preparation room is also a small break room for the staff and nearly 30 volunteers. The small reception room next to the lobby acts as the office for all three full-time officers, a part-time typist and Bowen.

“Each room here has multiple purposes,” said Bowen, as he stood in the part lobby/part cat room. “There are also cages in the hallway and it gets very tight.”

Most of the installations on the building are out of date. Walking down a long corridor lined with 24 dog pens, the loud hum of 24 heating units makes normal conversation difficult. The guillotine-style doors used to allow the dogs to leave their pen pose a major energy problem, as they allow warm or cool air to escape the kennels – one of the issues that will be solved with the new facility.

“The new kennels in the facility will help conserve energy because they will all be indoors,” said Bowen. “With the glass fronted kennels and lower windows, the dogs are still going to have visibility and the fresh air when we can open the windows but still, it will keep costs down and conserve resources.”

Despite the problems the building poses, the unforeseeable hurdles from major storms like those in January also proved troublesome.

"We have 25-30 volunteers that come in seven days a week, 365 days a year," said Bowen. “Through those snowstorms, they came and shoveled a pathway to the back area and had these dogs out in all kinds of weather.”

The new animal facility, scheduled for completion this fall, will be four times the size of the current building at 7,000 square feet. Built directly next to the Toms River Police Station on Oak Avenue, its projected proximity to Winding River and Castle Park, as well as the Ocean County Mall and Hooper Avenue puts the facility in a more central location in Toms River.

“Just the visibility factor alone, we should certainly increase our adoption rate,” said Bowen. “Also, from an animal control standpoint, (the new shelter) will be more of a hub to get to other areas of the town versus where we are on the outskirts of town right now. We'll be closer and quicker on the response time as well.”

As it stands, the Toms River Animal Facility is just one of four remaining shelters run by a New Jersey municipality.

“I think that having nearly three times the amount of space is going to work out wonderfully for us – especially in the area of cats,” said Bowen. “We're going to have large cat rooms, a quarantine area, as well as a free-roaming cat area.”

For information on how you can donate to the Toms River Animal Facility, call 732-367-5044 or e-mail Jim Bowen at jbowen@tomsrivertownship.com.