Lauderdale County Animal Shelter receives $2,500 Petco Love grant
Published 2:48 pm Tuesday, July 8, 2025
- “I do it because it is the right thing to do,” says Rocky Rockette, director of the Lauderdale County Animal Control Shelter and The Meridian Star’s Citizen of the Year. “I do it because the animals of our community cannot speak for themselves, so I am here to make sure they are represented.”
Lauderdale County Animal Control Shelter is set to receive a $2,500 grant from national nonprofit Petco Love to support of the shelter’s lifesaving work for pets in Lauderdale County.
Rocky Rockette, director of the Lauderdale County Animal Control Shelter, said the funds will help provide low-cost spay and neuter services for local residents. Receiving the grant, he said, goes a long way in helping the shelter to continue offering affordable services to the community.
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“This partnership with Petco Love is vital, as the investment enables us to offer affordable spay and neuter services to pet parents in the community. Without this support, our ability to provide low-cost options would be extremely limited,” he said.
Petco Love is a national nonprofit leading change for pets by harnessing the power of love to make communities and pet families closer, stronger, and healthier. Since its founding in 1999, Petco Love has invested nearly $421 million in adoption and other lifesaving efforts. And Petco Love helps find loving homes for pets in partnership with Petco and more than 4,000 organizations — like ours — across North America, with more than 7 million pets adopted and counting.
“Our investment in Lauderdale County Animal Control Shelter is part of more than $12 million in investments recently announced by Petco Love to power local organizations across the country as part of our commitment to create a future in which no pet is unnecessarily euthanized,” said Susanne Kogut, president of Petco Love. “Our local investments are only part of our strategy to empower animal lovers to drive lifesaving change right alongside us. We launched Petco Love Lost, a free national lost and found database that uses photo-matching technology to simplify the search for lost pets.”
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Lauderdale County Animal Control Shelter serves as a law enforcement/adoption agency in Lauderdale County, Mississippi. Since 2001, Lauderdale County Animal Control Shelter has served the community through animal control enforcement and adoptions. Other community outreach experiences include spay/neuter vouchers to support responsible pet ownership, distributing rabies vaccination vouchers to protect community pets, ensuring all adoptable pets are spayed or neutered prior to adoption, partnering with local and out of state rescue organizations to relocate pets and reduce shelter overcrowding, and offering free microchipping to help reunite lost pets with their families.
For more information about Lauderdale County Animal Control Shelter, visit lauderdalecounty.org/county-departments/animalcontrol and follow on Facebook at Lauderdale County Mississippi Adoptable Shelter Animals. Learn more about Petco Love visit petcolove.org.