Our Services
Contact Us
250 North Broad Street
Cairo, GA 39828
Office Hours
Monday – Friday
8:00am – 5:00pm
Animal Control
Welcome
Welcome to the new Animal Control Department. The Department, along with Best Friends Dog Rescue, is now a NO-KILL Facility. Animal control still functions in the same manner, responding to calls regarding problems of stray dogs & cats. However, the back end of the operation has changed, with Best Friends now getting vet care, spaying/neutering, shots & dewormed and then finally putting these animals up for adoption or transporting them to other rescues – ultimately finding them good forever homes.
Our goal is to get 90% of the dogs & cats that come in adopted, which will keep us at the NO-KILL status.
Animal Welfare
The United States, the state of Georgia and Grady County all have animal cruelty laws. If you see a domestic animal being abused or neglected, please call the animal control department to report it. If you see something, say something! Even if you’re unsure if an animal is being neglected, give your Animal Control Department a call at 229-377-3070 so they can visit and evaluate the situation. If you see an animal in imminent danger, PLEASE DIAL 911. Both calls can be anonymous.
It is illegal to tether (tie or chain) a dog in Grady County. A dog cannot be tied or chained to a permanent object for any extended period and without supervision. If you see a tethered dog, please make note of the offender’s address upon reporting to animal control. Our officers will contact the offender and help them meet the basic requirements to humanely constrain their dog.
There are leash laws within the city limits of all cities within Grady County. Your dog is not allowed to run free and should be on a leash or contained within a pen or fenced area whenever outdoors. In the rural areas of the county, Grady waives the leash laws that are in effect within the city limits. However, you are still responsible for your dog roaming or wandering onto public or private property, going into the roadways & creating a dangerous situation for drivers, or endangering or molesting any other animal, wild or domestic.
If you have a dog on your property, we encourage you to call Animal Control to resolve the problem without taking matters into your own hands. Often times, that is just someone’s pet that got loose, and Animal Control can simply catch the dog and hold it until the owner claims it. Currently the hold time for stray dogs is 3 business days.
If your dog is missing, we strongly suggest you call the Animal Control Dept. DAILY to see if they have picked up your dog. At the end of the 3-day hold, the dog becomes the property of the County, and Best Friends Dog rescue will begin the vetting and adoption process. If the owner claims the dog within the 3-day hold time, the owner will be required to pay any fees owed for capturing, housing, and feeding the animal for whatever amount of time it is at the shelter. Currently, the daily fee is $8.00 per day plus $20 impoundment fee and can vary depending on the situation. The owner will also be required to contain the animal on its own property from there-on-out. If you have an owner surrender pet the fees are $50 a dog and $35 a cat. The Animal Control Department is NOT open for outside drop offs. You must call for an appointment to owner surrender your pet.
Dogs roam when they are not sterilized. Male dogs will travel up to 2 miles and will wander from the owner’s property in search of a female in heat resulting in becoming lost, stolen or danger of being hit by car. We encourage all Grady County residents to spay or neuter.
Spay & Neuter Program
The only way to keep down the uncontrollable population of cats & dogs is by sterilizing your pet. It is against Georgia state law to breed a dog more than once per year without a Dept. of Agriculture license and annual inspection.
Best Friends Dog Rescue offers income-based assistance to help you get your cats or dogs sterilized. Sterilizing your pet also greatly reduces the risk of testicular cancer in males and ovarian cancer in females.
Best Friends takes hundreds of unwanted puppies annually, which puts a massive strain on the system. We urge all dog and cat owners to help with the severe overpopulation problem in Grady County by getting their animals sterilized. Most dogs picked up by our Animal Control Officers are strays & unwanted.
Feral (wild) cats
Feral cats & kittens are the single biggest animal problem the county has. It’s a cyclical issue, and the cycle goes like this: There’s a stray cat that keeps wandering up around someone’s property. The resident feels sorry for it and starts feeding the cat. Two months later, there’s another cat and a few months later comes the kittens. The one stray cat turns into 8 cats in just a few months, so the resident is of course feeding them all now. A few months later, there’s a bunch more and so on. That’s when people usually call Animal Control and wants the cats “taken care of”.
For many years, Grady County Animal Control policy was to trap & euthanize the feral cats that people wanted removed from their property after reproducing continually. However, there are several large studies available that show this method doesn’t work at bringing down the overall feral cat population. Grady County isn’t the only county in this country with a feral cat problem. That’s why with over 20+ years of trap & euthanize, we still have a huge feral cat problem.
Therefore, Grady County has a new policy on feral cats. Animal Control will offer one service only, which is to trap (or help you trap), sterilize (which will be paid for) and release ALL CATS back to their original location. Only this method has been proven to work to bring down the total population to a manageable level. Animal Control can then educate you on how to get the cats to leave your property. This method offers two solutions to the problem. All the cats are sterilized and can no longer reproduce, and after they are sterilized, they will leave your property.
Animal Control facility is NOT open for outside drop offs. You must call for an appointment to owner surrender your pet.