Animal shelter goes online

MAT-SU -- Lost a pet? Looking for a new cat or dog to join your family? Finding lost or new pets through the Mat-Su Borough just got easier.

The Mat-Su Borough Animal Care and Regulation shelter now has an online Web site, located at www.petharbor.com. Staff went through a three-day training update recently, where they learned how to make the shelter more accessible to the public, and the new Web site is one of the fruits of that training session.

Mat-Su Borough Chief Animal Care officer Dave Allison said each animal brought into the shelter, as part of its entry paperwork, is photographed. The photos and new information are updated by the site hourly between the hours of 7 a.m. and 6 p.m.

"Unless the animal is brought in at night, it should be there," Allison said.

The site also allows people to sign up for notification if a particular breed is listed on the site. Although the requests must be re-registered every 30 days, it may help pair up people looking for a particular pet with a pound animal who may not otherwise get adopted.

The new site is a clearinghouse for shelters across the nation, so there are a few extra steps needed to take when accessing the site. Simply select a type of search (all pets, pets available for adoption or lost or stray pets) and type in the zip code. Pick a search radius -- Wasilla residents and those who live more than 10 miles from the shelter should change their search miles accordingly -- and click on "next" and the shelter will be displayed. Follow through a few succeeding links and the pet pages will be displayed.

Allison said he's glad to have a site up and running, although he hopes to create a site specifically for the borough shelter in the near future. In the meantime, if you realize your pet's missing and it's after shelter hours, now there's a way to check online if he or she has been found.