Alison Smith is the Shelter manager of Walker County Animal Shelter, Chickamauga, GA - a government run facility that serves the 450 square miles of Walker County in North GA. A new state-of-the-art shelter was opened in June 2006 which can house 100 dogs and 50 cats. This shelter takes in around 100 animals a week and around 5000+ animals annually - and kills 95% of them now.. That works out to 4750 pets, annually at this point of time. Under the leadership of Alison Smith, no photos of the pets are taken and put on the net, no rescues are welcome except a chosen few, very few volunteers are permitted, no adoption events for these shelter-pets and 95% of the pets die without any help.. when the shelter-director does not ask for intake photos and info on pets to be posted on the internet how will the pets ever have a chance of getting rescued or adopted ? 

When Alison Smith took over in June 2006 the Walker County Shelter kill-rate was 70%.. in Jan 2007 the kill-rate rose to 90%, never slackened and is 95% as of today, in 2014. Is this progress and does this show a compassionate leadership?

According to Walker County Coordinator David Ashburn, the $600,000 facility employs three full-time staff and three part-timers. The county provides more than $200,000 in its annual budget for shelter operations, supplies and staff salaries. Under the county police and codes enforcement portion of the budget, three licensed officers and their vehicles are provided for animal control, Ashburn said. Still 95% of the shelter-pets die here every year..

http://www.walkerga.us/Services/Animal-Shelter.aspx

The above link is for the Walker County Animal Shelter from the Walker County website. 

And if you click to go to its website as it asks you to, it goes nowhere.. there is no website for the shelter.

http://www.petfinder.com/shelters/GA348.html

The above link is for Walker County pets on petfinder.com..  as of today if you click on "view our adoptable pets" ..  it says sorry, we can't find any..

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/K9rescueUSA/conversations/topics/55287

The above is the most important link i found which threw more light on the terrible situation at walker County GA..

These few emails written by a very respected animal rescuer Marla Cox, of Petfriends of North Georgia to Bebe Heiskell, Commissioner of walker County at that point of time when Alison Smith had taken over as the Shelter Manager of Walker County Animal Shelter.. ( Marla Cox is still there today and still runs her Rescue in Chickamauga, GA ).. Marla Cox was a reputed rescuer and one of most outspoken critic of the kill-rates and practices at this shelter.. and went on record voicing her opinions and giving references of various people who agreed with her concerns and who stood by her statements.. these emails are public domain and have been available all these years for the public information..

An animal-shelter Director has to be a compassionate person.. they need to give necessary guidance to staff and utilize the available finances for getting the pets more exposure and better chances of getting out alive..

A Rescuer said on terms of anonymity " I gave up years ago since I could get no help.  We went to the media, local police, the governor, the Georgia Dept of AG and anyone else we could find.  No one was interested.  It was just dogs they said.  We got copies of their euth records and saw that they were not using the right dosage or doing IP instead of IV which goes against the Dept of Ag rules, but the Dept of Ag said they did not enforce those rules.  Those rules are based on Georgia law so if they don't who does?  The answer was silence.  They told and laughed at stories of dogs killed three days before tearing out of their garbage bags and coming back to the shelter where they killed them again. Although thousands of rescue people bombarded the commissioner with angry emails no one with the ability to make change was interested." 

This was in  Jan 2007.. Georgia has changed now .. Will things be different now in 2014 for the helpless pets  at Walker County shelter?

"And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him that it is right."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr

These are links which will confirm many of the facts given above -

http://www.northwestgeorgianews.com/new-animal-shelter-manager-urges-pet-owners-to-take-responsibilit/article_460f8d97-23cc-51fb-886b-572e89b3aaa7.html​

http://www.northwestgeorgianews.com/walker-county-animal-shelter-director-says-shelter-community-share-burden/article_20413c02-9667-530e-8a28-d819385ae094.html