Jay Pennington’s database allows for easy access to animals who are lost, found and adoptable
Animal rescue groups and shelters everywhere share a common goal: to find permanent homes for abandoned and abused dogs and cats and to reunite pet owners with their lost pets — and that job is a little easier, thanks to the efforts of Jay Pennington.
A veteran software/database developer, Pennington put his skill — and his heart — into developing a database that allows animal shelters, rescue groups and the general public to upload photos and descriptions of animals that have been lost — or found — and be cross referenced to increase the odds for a happily ever after. The free site enables people to reconnect with their lost pets and helps people who want to adopt a cat or dog find the perfect addition to the family, said Pennington, a lifelong animal lover.
“Growing up, I always had a variety of dogs and cats,” said Pennington, who shares his life with his wife of 15 years, Sarah, and their German shepherd, Emma. “As an older teen, I fell in love with German shepherds, and I’ve had German shepherds all my adult life.”
For Pennington, the nonprofit project — Pet Search and Rescue — started 11 years ago, when a distracted air conditioning repairman left the front door ajar, and Pennington’s kitten, Jazz Cat, dashed off.
Pennington and his wife began a frantic search to find the missing feline.
“We were looking everywhere and putting up fliers, going door-to-door in the neighborhood. After a couple days, we thought maybe she could have been picked up by the city,” said Pennington, who had worked at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Houston, where he worked on database development related to future Space Station experiments, among other things. “Back then, the city of San Antonio didn’t have a website of the pets at the pound, so you had to drive there, and they were putting down pets two and three days after pickup, so you had to go often.”
They made the trek to the shelter, but Jazz Cat wasn’t there, so they expanded the search and began the painstaking and time-consuming exercise of contacting every rescue animal group in the surrounding area.
“Some of them had websites, but the sites were often out of date or difficult to navigate, and others had no website.”
Pennington’s frustration gave rise to the realization that his expertise could speed up the process and help pet owners — as well as people looking for the perfect pet — a more effective way to beat the cumbersome system.
“It took about nine months in my spare time to design the database tables and write the behind-the- scenes processing that goes on,” said Pennington, who said Jazz Cat, thankfully, reappeared seven days after her disappearance and became the project mascot.
“The city’s animal control services would upload photos and information about animals in its care, and the general public and rescue groups would do the same,” he said. “If someone found a pet in their front yard, they could upload a picture and description, and the rescue/foster organizations could upload photos of the pets they had.”
A decade later, Pennington’s Web-based pet rescue efforts — SApets.com and its associated other websites,www.BoernePets.com www.BulverdePets.com andwww.LostPetFound.com — have saved hundreds of animals from being euthanized and have filled many homes with another happy heartbeat. And now, Kerr County has joined the pack with kerrvillepets.com.
“Utopia Pet Rescue Ranch adoptable pets have been on my BoernePets.com site for a couple years now, but I was ready to gear up with the lost/found/pound/adoptable of Kerrville,” said Pennington, who reached out to Kerr County Animal Services, the Kathleen C. Cailloux Humane Society, Freeman-Fritts Veterinary Clinic & Shelter, The Big Fix and other rescue and foster groups in the area.
“It has all come together very well, very quickly, so that we are ready to do great things to help the pets and pet orgs in Kerrville,” Pennington said.
All for one, and one for all
Ray Garcia, Kerr County health and animal services director, said Pennington has worked closely with Virginia Bronts, the county’s animal services adoption coordinator, to implement the program with the city’s shelter.
“This website is one of many tools that can be used to reduce the number of animals in the shelter by finding ‘forever homes’ locally and to help owners find their missing pet,” Garcia said. “We are very excited to be involved with Jay Pennington and his website.”
Penny Bowman, board president of the Kathleen C. Cailloux Humane Society, said when Pennington reached out to the shelter, they were happy to take his helping hand.
“The more publicity animals get, the more their chances are of getting adopting or returned home,” Bowman said. “The numbers of animals that are euthanized monthly are horrible, and as a community, we should be ashamed. The shelters in Kerrville are desperately trying to help by taking as many as we can, but until one is adopted, another cannot be taken in. Having another avenue to show the animals available in Kerr County will be great. Even if only a few get adopted or find their way back home, it is worth it.”
Bowman said another benefit to the site is that it enables those people who are looking for a particular breed to find it in a shelter instead of turning to a backyard breeder.
“They can check by breed, and the website will pull up where it is available,” Bowman said.
At the Freeman-Fritts Animal Shelter, Sonia Mumma, shelter manager, has been busy uploading photos and descriptions. Mumma said when she first heard from Pennington, she was overjoyed.
“This website is such a wonderful opportunity for the pets of Kerr County and surrounding areas,” Mumma said. “Spreading the word is paramount to saving more lives and reuniting lost and found pets with their owners as well, and working with Jay Pennington has been a wonderful experience. He truly has a passion to save the lives of cats and dogs, and we are so glad to join and be a part of kerrvillepets.com.”
Debbie Yarbrough, president of The Big Fix Homeless Cat Project, said the organization has worked judiciously for the past decade “to help Kerr County with the trap-neuter-release programs and finding great homes for some special rescue cats.
“Jay Pennington’s website project will significantly help the efforts of many caring nonprofit organizations like Big Fix to find homes for homeless cats,” Yarbrough said. “We are excited to have this up-to-date resource available.”
Longtime animal advocate Kinky Friedman, co-founder of the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, called Pennington “a protector of strays. What Jay is doing with his websites is noble and benefits so many people,” said Friedman, who shares his home with five dogs — Winston Randolph Spencer Churchill Friedman, Sophie, Peanut, Willie Nelson and Walter Matthau — and two cats, Blacky and Yellowy. “The fact that he’s doing this out of the goodness of his heart, and not for any monetary gain, speaks highly of the character of the man. He’s one of the good ones.”
What makes Penningon’s system so unique and helpful compared to national pet systems, Friedman said, “is that Jay designed it specifically for a community level and ties the rescue organizations and shelters of one community together to help the pet owners and pet orgs of that community.”
High tech talents at work
Pennington, who owns Pennington Technical Arts in Boerne, graduated from the University of Texas San Antonio in 1979, with a bachelor of science degree in math, computer science and systems design. He worked at Southwest Research Institute developing database systems for Division 17, the nuclear power research development department, and also participated in a National Science Foundation grant research project, developing early robotic software.
After graduation, he accepted a position with Western Electric/Bell Labs doing database development and later worked at Southwest Research.
In the mid-1980s, he segued into aerospace development at Martin Marietta and, by the latter part of the decade, he’d achieved his dream of working at NASA.
It was at NASA in 1986 that his path aligned with that of the crew of seven astronauts of the Space Shuttle Challenger.
“I had met teacher Christa McAuliffe and shown her what we were working on,” Pennington said. “I worked on various software projects — writing software to analyze satellite imagery, designing databases for future space station experiments, writing software for the scientists to help them in their research, and software/database work.”
After the horrific explosion — which was a result of a leak in one of two solid rocket boosters that ignited the main liquid fuel tank and claimed the lives of all on board — Pennington was chosen to be part of the Challenger Accident Investigation Team.
“I was writing software with other associates to analyze the different media of the launch. I wrote database systems to manage all the media sent in by news agencies, government and tourist imagery,” Pennington said. “After the accident, President Reagan came to NASA to speak. I remember that day very well, and now it’s in the school history books.”
After NASA, Pennington returned to San Antonio and eventually formed his own company.
He designed and created a complex Web-based database system — www.scoutsystem.com — for the sports scouting industry in tracking high school players that is used by universities throughout the U.S., and he developed a content management system website for Kendall County about the history of the county primarily driven through its historic photography on dynamic pages and which the website also serves to encourage tourism to the county —www.KendallCountyHistory.com.
Pennington said he’d like to take his passion for helping animals to other areas and use his skills in other ways.
“Being creative is the key. I’d like to continue doing programming that is creative that is clearly beneficial to companies, individuals, or animals and pets,” said Pennington, who makes no money from the pet-related sites. “Being able to make a living helping pets in need across Texas then across the U.S. would be an attainable dream come true.”
There is no charge to upload a lost or found pet and no fee to use the site to kerrvillepets.com or any of its related sites.
➤ Lost pet: If you have lost your pet and have a picture of it on your computer (JPG format only), click on the “Post your lost pet” link and follow the simple prompts. The information and the photo remain on the site for four weeks. Once the pet is returned home, return to the site and remove the listing by clicking “remove uploaded pet,” and follow the prompts.
➤ Found pet: If you found an animal to upload, type the word “found” in the pet name box and the word “found,” along with a detailed description of the dog or cat in the “description of pet” box, and then fill out the rest of the form completely. Also check for your pet on this page in the “found” and “picked up” area.
➤ To search: First scroll down the homepage ofKerrvillePets.com to see if your pet or a pet you want to adopt is listed on this main page. To search throughout Central Texas, select the breed of the cat or dog and it will list all found, pound and adoptable pets of that breed from participating rescue orgs and shelters.
➤ Info: Visit kerrvillepets.com orPenningtonTechnicalArts.com
STORY 2
Jay Pennington: On the road to Tinseltown
Area resident Jay Pennington is a journeyman actor who has appeared in dozens of TV shows, music videos and films, including “Fields Afire,” a recently released film that is getting buzz in the theater festival circuit and already is winning awards. Portions of the film — about a team of misfit kids playing at a baseball park who are caught in a meteorite strike that burns the fields, leaving them unharmed but believing they are endowed with special powers — was shot in the retired historic Boerne jailhouse. Pennington plays the town’s sheriff who works to keep the kids from turning to the dark side.
“Jay is a consummate professional, as well as an extremely talented and versatile actor. His work in our last feature film was amazing,” producer Shannon Jimenez said. “He’s the full package — a team player with excellent craft.”
Pennington said he’s been enamored with films since he was 6 and watched black and white classics on PBS and became more interested in the field while sitting in the Olmos Theater in San Antonio during his teen years.
“For about six years now, I’ve been very seriously pursing acting in films. It’s like any job — you take classes, you build your resume, you gain experience,” said Pennington, a former member of the Texas Wild Bunch Gunslingers. “I haven’t worked with them for a couple years, but they were the first step in the domino effect to the door opening to my acting career.”
Pennington, an experienced equestrian and motorcyclist, is tailor-made for a variety of roles, Jimenez said, and his rugged good looks and impressive stature — he’s 6-foot, 3-inches tall and weighs 205 pounds — have landed him roles as cowboys, Biblical characters, a Gothic Druid monk, gunslingers, bikers, blackmailers and murderers. He’s also played a Saxon king for The History Channel’s “Vikings” promo — and he’s a front-runner to be the model for a life-size bronze sculpture of Buffalo Bill Cody.
He’s also a gourmand and for several years has been cross breeding hot peppers he calls Pennington Peppers.
“They really are unique and hot,” Pennington said. “You can only make so much salsa, so for a couple years now I’ve been making all kinds of flavor variations of hot pepper jellies. I have this killer one that is fresh cherries, pecans, secret spices and my unique peppers.”
But he’s had to ease up on the plan to market the peppers, because his acting career is getting hotter.
“This summer, you’ll see me walk in front and about to get hit by Mark Wahlberg and his pickup early on in ‘Transformers 4,’ and see me causing trouble in the bar in ‘Sin City 2’ and in a couple ‘Revolution’ episodes,” Pennington said of NBC’s science fiction TV series that is set in a post-apocalyptic United States of America, 15 years after the start of a worldwide, permanent electrical-power blackout.
“I just finished being in a pilot episode that I’m hoping so strongly that it will become a television series and they keep me in the story,” he said.
The pilot stars three actors from “The Virginian” — James Drury, Gary Clarke and Roberta Shore and also Buck Taylor from “Gunsmoke.”
“I was certainly awestruck on the inside and enjoyed being around everyone, especially making friends with Buck and his horse Little Man.”
In the course of his acting career, Pennington has appeared in scenes with Jon Favreau, Mark Wahlberg, John Leguizamo, Buck Taylor, James Drury, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Glenn Morshower and Donny Boaz.
“During ‘Transformers,’ (director) Michael Bay picked me to do an intro to a scene, was very nice, calling me ‘sir,’ and cued me on each take,” Pennington said. “During ‘Sin City 2,’ I got my own trailer for the scenes I was in. For me, it’s an honor to be around successful actors.”
Pennington said acting is like anything else: The more you do it, the better it gets.
“I’m determined and keep moving forward in the acting journey,” Pennington said. “My goals are roles in ‘Longmire,’ ‘Dallas,’ ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Hell on Wheels.’ It happens, if you keep at it.”
To find out more, visit www.imdb.me/JayPennington.
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