K2 taking over animal shelter operations as a ‘community service,’ CEO says

ROCKINGHAM — K2 Solutions will conduct a “comprehensive” review of the Richmond County Animal Shelter’s policies over the coming weeks as part of phase one of its transition into full control over the shelter, but won’t alter its core mission, according to the company’s CEO and founder, Lane Kjellsen.

Last month, the Richmond County Board of Commissioners in a special meeting approved a deal to allow K2 to take over the shelter, allowing the county to get out of the “animal shelter business,” as Chairman Jeff Smart put it. Kjellsen said that K2 wasn’t looking for this added role, but rather the county reached out earlier this year to see if the company could submit a proposal to manage the facility.

“The community was experiencing some turmoil, some of the commissioners felt that we could help,” Kjellsen said in an interview last week. “We thought it was a civic responsibility as residents of this county to help with an issue in an area where we have some expertise so we responded and said we would take this on and try to help. So that’s what we’re doing, we’re trying to help.”

The shelter has been a headache for the county over recent years, being issued penalties from the state Department of Agriculture in October 2019 and January 2021 for mishandling care of animals another other violations. While Kjellsen has been encouraged by the shelter’s response to these penalties, much is subject to change about the day-to-day, including staffing. The CEO confirmed that all current staff will have to reapply for their positions in order to become K2 employees, and he said, “We hope they do [apply].”

“Over the course of the next three months we will reevaluate and affirm or deny every policy and put very deliberate guidance in place for how we’re going to manage things,” Kjellsen said. “We do not intend to change the mission of the Richmond County Animal Shelter at all, so the mission with remain the same and we will evaluate every policy, procedure … during the transition and take a deliberate approach to establishing clear guidance for all employees to follow.”

County Manager Bryan Land, in a statement after the deal was finalized, defined that mission as being to “provide a destination for the stray and unwanted animals in our community and to facilitate their placement into desirable homes.” Land added at this week’s meeting of the Board of Commissioners that K2 won’t be “reinventing the wheel” immediately at the shelter, but that it’s likely some changes will be made.

Completing administrative requirements

K2 has never been a licensed boarding facility, and its licenses for performing this aspect are currently pending, thus the company is not running the facility at this stage and all employees remain county employees. Despite not having had this license — and never needing it because their primary interaction with dogs is training dozens, up to hundreds, per day — Kjellsen is confident that K2 is prepared to take on this new role. He said his only concern over the license is the time it takes to go through the administrative process.

“We’ve been caring for animals on a mass scale for more than a decade, we’ve been doing it right here in Richmond County,” the CEO said, referring to their facility near Derby. “We are very accustomed to government oversight, we do a lot of federal contracts. We are very accustomed to response under the national Animal Welfare Act and the subject matter experts that provide oversight. So we feel like we can provide leadership and guidance, and … most importantly, provide community service to hopefully put some of these issues behind all of us.”

K2 is also a research facility, and this research also falls under the Animal Welfare Act and the International Animal Care and Use Committee which governs how animals used in research can be humanely cared for. Kjellsen said that meeting these requirements goes “over and above” the requirements to obtain a license for boarding.

K2’s Jackson Spring location has a capacity of 320 animals, compared to the shelter’s 137. Kjellsen said that K2’s own facilities could “potentially” be used to house animals accepted into the shelter’s care if there is overflow.

“[The shelter] is a significantly more condensed facility than we have,” Kjellsen said. “They do a lot with what they have there and that will be part of the phase-in as well — to evaluate that to see if anything different can or should be done there.”

The dark side of caring for animals is the question of euthanasia. Kjellsen said definitively that dangerous animals will be put down, but that the company will review the shelter’s policies on euthanasia done based on an animal’s health.

Asked if any of the animals that come into the shelter would become part of K2’s training process to become security, law enforcement or service animals, Kjellsen said that is unlikely. K2 hasn’t been in the service animal business for at least five years, instead supporting a Moore County nonprofit that trains service animals, and the dogs that make it into their training programs are hard to find.

“It’s unlikely dogs in shelter are going to have the innate drives and trainability that’s required to be one of our working dogs,” he said. “If we see that potential in a dog we’ll do an assessment to see if that’s possible but that’s not likely and not part of our goal here really. Our goal is to provide a service to the community.”

The current staff of the shelter underwent two state-led trainings in March following the January penalty for failing to provide pain medication to a dog that had suffered “paralyzing injuries.” Kjellsen said K2 could potentially seek additional state trainings, adding that “we will use every resource available to train, to educate, to learn, to get better.”

“We will be an organization that is focused on constantly improving,” he said.

Engaging with the public

K2 will review the shelter’s policies on transparency with the public during phase two of the transition, Kjellsen said. Asked if the public would have an opportunity to weight in on certain policies, he said he has no doubt that the public will share their feelings with the company through social media and any other avenue they can. He also encouraged the public to volunteer and support them in any way they can during this period.

The long-term problem of stray animals will come down to “community education and accountability,” Kjellsen said. K2 will evaluate the shelter’s efforts to spay and neuter animals to see what else can be done, but they will need the public’s help regardless.

“If they want to ease the burden on the shelter, if we want the shelter to be more successful at adoptions, one of the things we can do best is to limit the number of animals that they have to take on,” he said. “That’s one of the areas that the public can help a lot is public education, public accountability.”

The company is doing this not to make money but as a “community service,” Kjellsen said, and its contract is meant to embody that. The CEO explained that if their veterinary costs reach a certain level, the county has agreed to reimburse them, but any donation K2 receives will go towards reducing the amount the county must pay to the company.

“Every penny donated will go to diminish the amount of reimbursement we ask for from the county. We truly tried to structure this contract to be community focused,” he said. “We are not focused here on making money, we’re focused on the animals and we’re focused on the community and the more we can work together the better we can perform for the animals and the more cost-effectively we can perform for the taxpayers.”