Take a tour with our own animal care technician who will provide you with a ‘Behind the Scenes’ look at our Eastside Pet Adoption Center located inside Petco in Kirkland. Learn what it’s like to be an animal care tech, cat condos, and get a chance to see what adoptable furry friends we have waiting for you!

For more information, visit us at: http://www.kingcounty.gov/pets

Transcript:

Hi everyone, my name is Adryan, and I am an Animal Care Technician. I work for Regional Animal Services of King County. I am going to be showing you around this adoption center today which is located inside of Petco in Kirkland. This is called the Eastside Pet Adoption Center.

Welcome to the kitty condo residence:
Alright, this is one of our cat adoption rooms and this here is “Tums”. He is going to be helping me out showing you his cat condo. So, he gets a ton of space. He gets this area here, he is able to go to his bathroom, he’s able to grab a quick bite in his kitchen, and if he wants he is able to spend time in his living room as well, and he does this excellently. Our volunteers help out in the morning. They will help out cleaning up after these guys, help feed them and everything like that. We really rely on them a lot to keep this place running along with staff that comes up. They also help during the day just to pet the ones that need attention, kind of socialize the slightly shyer ones and encourage people who are just shopping in Petco to visit these cats as well and maybe even take one home.

Cat Aquarium
So this is our cat aquarium!

Welcome to a dog’s life
First things first, when I come in, I make sure everyone gets a walk. It’s important for them to get fresh air, be able to do their business outside. So they get a pretty good walk in the morning and then get to come back. Everybody gets a meal for the morning, which I think might be their favorite part, and then they just get to play with each other during the day. So they’ll run around in here. We have another little side room as well in case there’s ones that don’t necessarily like to play with the other ones. They have an option of having some quiet time….and then they’ll just meet people throughout the day. So guests will come in, they’ll be able to hang out with them, be able to do exactly what I’m doing here which is just sit on the floor and get some puppy lovin’. Then in the evening we’ll take them for another walk, make sure they’ve got everything out of their system before they go to sleep for the night. They have kennels here so we don’t have to transport them back and forth every single day. It really reduces the stress on them to be able to just house them here over night. They are housed individually unless they came in together. So they’ll get a p.m. meal as well which again, might be their favorite part of the day.

Tell us about Otis:
So Otis here, I feel, is the embodiment of just what we do, the work that we put in day after day for these animals, and really it’s ones like Otis that you get to see it with. When he came in to us he was super, super terrified. He wouldn’t walk on leash with us, he didn’t even want to approach us, at best he would bark and growl, and at worst he would actually go to the bathroom on himself whenever we came by. So it was me and a couple other people, a couple other animal care technicians that really sort of decided we needed to do something for this guy…we needed to help him out, and we just spent time with him. We sat down with him, we fed him a TON of treats, which he loves, and he started to trust us, started to enjoy being around us….. but it was not just us doing all the work it was definitely him. He had to be willing to trust us and the other dogs here as well. So having this environment to let him learn from other dogs, let him grow, in the last month he has learned how to play. He’s always playing with his toys as well as with other dogs, and he loves going on walks now. You’ll get to see some footage of that. He is a delight to have around, and really one of those dogs that you get to really feel encouraged by and that the reason why he’s doing so great is because we put in the work, and the volunteers as well.
Thoughts on being an Animal Care Technician:
It’s a lot of work, it’s definitely not an easy job physically or emotionally but again, it’s worth it. I have been doing this for about 4 years now and there’s some nights you’re tired and you’re exhausted emotionally or physically but it’s the animals that keep bringing you back. It’s really just that passion for what you do. There’s other ways to show that passion too. I’m always telling people, donate, donate, donate, but it doesn’t just have to be money, it can also be your time. We have a lot of volunteers, and like I said before, we rely on them to help socialize these animals, to help talk to people. It could also be items, like, I know there’s a ton of cats that you buy really nice things for and then they don’t care about them at all, but our cats will care about them. If you have a really nice cat tree or cat scratchers, things like that, we are always looking for things like that to help the animals.