(Pitkin County, CO) March 2024 – For anyone residing in unincorporated Pitkin County or the town of Snowmass Village, licensing your pets just got a whole lot easier.
The Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office recently simplified its pet licensing program through a collaboration with DocuPet, a pet profile, lost pet, and licensing platform. Now, licensing a pet can even be performed online from the comfort of your home.
According to Chief Deputy of Operations Parker Lathrop, the partnership is primarily aimed at streamlining the pet licensing experience for pet owners and prioritizes the safety and well-being of pets in Pitkin County. He said DocuPet was ultimately selected for being the most user-friendly of the programs sampled by the county.
“It was just time to break into the modern era of getting those registrations off both paper in triplicate form and into something that was an online digital record, something that was just more current with where the world is,” he said. “Although (licensing) it’s required, it’s really hard to gain compliance, and so if we can make the process easier, that’s the goal, and I think DocuPet is really going to help with that.”
The new system allows Pitkin County residents to gain access to a robust pet identification and re-unification system. Community Response Officer Emily Casebeer said that while the county’s old system was still functioning, it was antiquated. She said one of the advantages of a newer system will be lessening the burden on the local shelter while allocating resources toward pets in need of care.
“I’m super excited for it. I think it modernizes the process of pet licensing, specifically dog licensing, in our county, which is required by county codes,” she said. “The main goal is to make it more accessible with the hopes of increasing compliance with the county code, and by increasing compliance with counting code, getting more pets licensed, then in turn, it helps us re-unite lost pets with their owners.”
She said with not all dogs wearing collars or not having tags or being microchipped, re-uniting lost pets can be tricky. She said that reports of missing pets do come in regularly, so with DocuPet tags being equipped with a free HomeSafe 24/7 lost pet service, the hope is that shorter timeframes for how long your pet goes missing will be the eventual end result.
“It really also puts the tool in citizen’s hands, too, because if a dog is found with a DocuPet tag on it, there’s a unique number on that tag with the website,” she said. “Anybody who finds a dog with this tag can plug that number into the website and pull up the owner information for the dog. The complaint might not even make it to us; it might get handled by someone who happens to find the dog, which is great. It’s all about getting dogs back home that much quicker.”
Seth Sachson has been the director of the Aspen Animal Shelter for the past 32 years and works closely with Casebeer and the county. He said that while dog licensing has always been offered in the past, there’s never been what he would call a clear and concise program until now.
“For the previous three decades I’ve been here, it’s been more sort of old-fashioned in the sense that if a dog comes in and doesn’t have a microchip or a tag, that doesn’t even matter because we say like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s John Doe’s dog, he lives on McLain Flats, call him.’ It’s like very old school, half the dogs that come in here we know anyway,” he said. “But as the community grows, it’s going to be really nice to have a better program in place.”
DocuPet designer tags are available with 20% of the proceeds going back to the Aspen Animal Shelter.
Casebeer would like to remind everyone that pet licenses are mandatory for all dogs residing in unincorporated Pitkin County. To obtain a license, visit pitkincounty.docupet.com. For additional information on dog licensing, the benefits of licensing, and fees/policies in Pitkin County, visit pitkincounty.com/173/Dog-Licenses.