Town of Marana introduces Marana Pets App

Town of Marana unveiled the Marana Pets app at a press conference Tuesday, October 10. Members of the media and Town staff learned more about Marana Animal Services and what the new app can do to for the Marana community. 

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The Town of Marana established the Marana Animal Services Division in July to bring increased customer service to the Marana pet owners. The creation of the Marana Pets App is the latest way the Town is serving both our two-legged and four-legged residents.

"The Marana Pets is not the first original app created by Town of Marana staff," said Vickie Hathaway, Town of Marana Communications Director. "Our Technology Services department has also worked with our special events team to create the Marana Events app, and with Engineering and Development Services to created the Project Ina app. Both of those apps provide innovative ways for our residents to engage with our staff, and the new Marana Pets app is no different. But it does provide one additional opportunity, and that is to leverage the power of our community to reunite pets with their families."

"The primary objective of the app is to reunite Marana's pets with their owners should they wind up lost," said Marana Technology Manager Brian Stein, who headed up the team that designed the app. "The app is designed to harness the powers of community, to allow citizens to engage with one another to help with the reunification process."

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The app is designed to reunite pet owners with their lost pets and will allow people who lose or find animals to post pictures and information, facilitating a quick reunification. Marana Animal Services Animal Control Officers will also be using the app to share any found animals. The app along with the Town's website and social media, are all tools to help lost pets in the Town limits find their way back home. 

"Social Media has been a great avenue for us," said the Town of Marana's Community Development and Neighborhood Services Director Lisa Shafer. "So this is that one next step that we are going to take."

Shafer noted that in the first three months of Marana's Animal Services division in operation, nearly 40 percent of strays picked up by the Town's animal control officers have been reunified with their families immediately, without having to be taken to the Humane Society of Southern Arizona, the Town's partner for sheltering.

Social media and microchips have both been effective ways for the the unification process and the Town offers free microchip clinics.

"With the microchip clinics, as well as this app we are going to see this high rate of return with our animals just skyrocket," Shafer said.