Nooze Hounds: Melissa Knicely with Char-Meck Animal Care & Control
Episode 103
On episode 103 of the Nooze Hounds podcast, Ryan Pitkin sits down with Melissa Knicely, communications and outreach manager with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Care & Control (AC&C) department.
Nearly 20 years ago, Knicely left her successful career in local TV news to pursue a career in animal welfare, first volunteering with AC&C and then working her way up in the organization. Throughout that time, the past three years have been the toughest as an overcrowding crisis that began in 2023 has yet to subside.
On the podcast, Knicely discusses the work that AC&C has done during her tenure there to improve its live-release rate from 30% to 80%, even as the numbers of pets who come through the shelter continues to rise year over year.
In the Fiscal Year 2026 budget, Animal Care & Control was removed from under the CMPD umbrella and now exists under General Services, which Knicely says helps with the onboarding process for volunteers, among other benefits
She talks about how that dedicated team of volunteers and staff members work through extreme emotional distress to help keep things operating at crisis capacity levels day after day and where the process to build a new AC&C shelter facility currently stands.
Read more: CMPD Animal Care & Control Opens Satellite Shelter Amidst Crisis (2023)
On May 30, AC&C will host its second annual Steps for Shelter Pets event, an awareness and fundraising event during which supporters walk 10,800 laps — one for each pet that came through the shelter in 2025 — around Pearl Park in Midtown.
Learn how you can help in any of the myriad ways Knicely describes on the podcast at the AC&C website.
Remember you can catch us on Spotify and other places where you find podcasts and be sure to check out Queen City Podcast Network for a slew of other great Charlotte podcasts that aren’t quite as good as ours but pretty damn close. Find past Nooze Hounds episodes here.
