The animals at the Tangipahoa Parish Animal Services are also experiencing the cons of being on lockdown.

Just like every other business, the local shelter has reevaluated its protocol and everyday routine due to the outbreak of COVID-19. Changes have been made outside of the shelter in reference to employees’ health and trying to stay within the guidelines of social distancing.

Charles “Chip” Fitz, director of TPAS, says the entire staff is currently still working their normal shifts, but are limiting any outside runs.

“The staff is still mainly coming in as normal, we just have limited our other services to emergency services only,” said Fitz. “Like if a human gets bitten by a vicious animal, we may go out for that, but we are not working every day strays.”

Fitz explained how he wanted to keep the schedule as normal as possible and how everything has fallen into place so far.

“It’s going pretty good,” said Fitz. “We wanted to stay on task because we do not like putting animals’ health on hold, of course. We are just taking it all day by day as normal as we can. We have our regular feeding routine, regular cleaning routine, so not much has changed.”

However, the shelter has restricted all normal drop-in adoptions and made Monday, April 20, the only designated day that people can adopt.

In order to adopt, customers had to call the shelter the day before or early that Monday morning and schedule an appointment for a specific time. The appointment was set to view and choose the animal if they found one to their liking, and the process with paperwork proceeded as normal.

The shelter has also suspended all volunteer programs until further notice.

Anyone seeking more information or updates on the shelter can visit their website or call the center at 985-543-0215 during their normal business hours.