Leigh's Lost and Found: Check out the found animals at Republic animal control, do you recognize any of them?

Our Leigh's Lost and Found effort is a partner with Springfield's animal control to reunite lost pets. But that's not the only pound in town working to get pets back home.

Republic animal control works every day to reunite lost pets and if an owner doesn't turn up, to get them adopted out into new homes.

The responsiblity for doing all that is on the shoulders of Christina Elmore, the only animal control officer in Republic.

"I've been doing this for about six years now"

Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm, she feeds, walks and gives medication to the dozens of cats and dogs.

"We have 10 runs altogether, so if we have dogs that get along and can be in the same cage, we can hold up to possibly 20. We have 11 cat cages too and we can put mamas and litters together or siblings together."

She gets some help with the cleaning but Christina is on her own in the field, responding to calls about loose animals and doing pet welfare checks.

republic AC holds stray animals for 7 days and animals with a known owner for 10 days. Outfitting your pet with tags or a microchip helps Christina get those pets home quickly. But chipping them sometimes isn't enough.

"Make sure you register your microchip. We get dogs that come in all the time with that. We have one in right now that isn't registered so we have no way of knowing who the owner is."

Unclaimed animals go up for adoption at the shelter or they get sent to the Joplin Humane Society.

The fee if your animal gets picked up is $15 the first day, then $5 every day after that.

Animal control is trying to raise funds to build a new shelter since their current one was built in the 1970's. They're in need of monetary donations and also can always use supplies, like food, litter, towels and cleaning supplies.

If you'd like to help them out, click on the link included in this story.