LAWRENCEVILLE -- If the animal shelter in neighboring Gwinnett County were a Great Dane, then Forsyth County’s would be a Chihuahua.Forsyth’s shelter committee took a tour of the 47,000-square-foot facility in Lawrenceville last week in hopes of gathering ideas for opening a local shelter.Since the start of the year, the five-member Forsyth County Animal Control & Shelter Advisory Committee has agreed there's a need for a new facility and has recommended that it be county-run.The county currently pays the NALAA Corporation $40,000 per month to handle its shelter operation.Lanier Orr, who holds the NALAA contract and is a member of the committee, has expressed a desire to step down. He supports building a new shelter.In Gwinnett County, the move to a new shelter in 2005 was a welcome and much-needed change, shelter supervisor Jason Cannon told the visitors from Forsyth on Wednesday.“Luckily enough, the county listened to our pleas for a new facility, and it’s done wonderful things for us,” Cannon said.Shelter workers left behind an aging building that had been known for outbreaks of disease among the animals, he said.Controlling sickness was the top priority in designing a new facility, he said, and the best way to achieve that was through separate air-conditioning units.Walking through the facility halls last week, committee members breathed different air than the dogs they viewed through the clear windows. Those dogs had a different air system than the cats, which were in another pod, and separate from the surgery room on the opposite side of the building, and so on.“This facility is so huge and everything is broken up into so many sections,” said County Commissioner Todd Levent, who also serves on the shelter committee.