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What is it like being an Animal Services Director?

Most people would think that the job of being an Animal Services Director is a day filled with playing with pets.  In reality, the job is about preparing for worst-case scenarios:

Owner surrendered Pets:

Due to shelter overcrowding, many shelters make the decision to euthanize owner-surrendered pets upon intake.  This is a big mistake because family fights might lead the most ignorant member of the family (usually the husband) to surrender the family’s pet out of anger.  Usually one of the reasonable family members will go to the shelter to reclaim the pet.  Animal shelters should provide a two or three hold so as to not be faced with telling the family that their pet is dead.

Drop Dead Dates:

After “hounding” a pet owner to reclaiming their pet, many shelters will issue a deadline as to the last day that the owner can reclaim their pet.  It has been my experience that pet owners do not under deadlines and I have had many pet owners coming to reclaim their pet two or three days after being given a deadline.  It is usually a good idea to NOT hold firm to your own deadlines.

Potentially Dangerous Dogs:

Most animal shelter volunteers think that the primary purpose of an animal shelter is adopting dogs.  The primary purpose of an animal shelter is to protect the community.  Shelter staff and volunteers frequently fight over the adoptability of a particular animal.  My motto is that it is better to have a volunteer mad at me than explaining why I adopted a dangerous animal into a family with children.  Public safety should always come first.  Trust me, I have worked with plenty of volunteers that don’t understand that.  It is not uncommon for your own staff to side with the volunteers because they fear social fallout.

Working with Rescue Groups:

A rescue group can be the best thing that ever happens to an animal shelter.  It can also be the worst.  When working with a rescue group, maintain constant vigilance over the group to make sure that they are acting responsibly and are maintaining the correct numbers of animals.  Our seizure of nearly 700 cats in Florida is evidence of a group that had gotten sorely out of control.

Always tell the truth:  

In my career, I have only lied once, by omission.  There are a lot of anti-vaccine pet owners.  I came across one in Portland Oregon that refused to allow his pet to be vaccinated for rabies.  Our ordinance required that dogs and cats had to have a current rabies vaccination prior to being reclaimed by the owner.  Fortunately, like every ordinance, after the stray holding time, his animal became the property of our county.  Once the animal became our animal, I vaccinated it and called the owner to come to reclaim his dog.  I let him believe that I had let him win.  If he had asked me straight out, I would have told him what I had done.  Of course, we didn’t give him a copy of his rabies vaccination certificate, but the record was in our system.  Integrity is one of the most important traits that we must keep.

Always hold the line:

In our business, we are under constant pressure to surrender some of our integrity or put the public at risk.  You have to be prepared to lose your job over your beliefs.  Being fired isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you; giving up some of your integrity is.

At the time, I didn’t feel that getting fired was a badge of honor; but in reflection, getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to me.  I have been fired a few times:

    • I was first fired over disputing a citation quota system demanded by our Finance Director.
    • I was laid off when the Department Director was looking to fill slots for his friends in the Sanitation Department.  Boy was that a big mistake.
    • I was fired when a single long-term employee refused to accept that opening the shelter to rescue groups and volunteers was the next step in the shelter’s evolution.  The Board of Directors didn’t want to impinge on the long relationship that they had had with this employee.
    • And finally, I was fired because my Board of Directors could not face the social media surrounding the euthanizing of two dangerous pitbulls that the volunteers insisted should be adopted.

Being an Animal Services Director is more than just preparing for the worst-case scenario, but it is about doing the right thing.

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Creating Your Own Hazmat Kit

It is not uncommon in our profession to be called upon to enter a house that presents environmental concerns. After visiting your first house, you will quickly decide that you need to prepare for your next.

Your first consideration is clothing. You will want disposable coveralls, shoe covers, and gloves. Most homes that will require your hazmat kit will be rich in fecal matter. You’ll want to get as little of that on your clothing as possible.

You may be going into a methane/ammonia-rich environment and a facemask will become necessary. You’ll need to decide if you want a full facemask that covers your entire face or a half mask that just covers your mouth and nose. It is important that you get the right size mask. You’ll want the methane/ammonia cartridge on your mask. If you find it hard breathing with a facemask, you can opt for a forced air respirator that takes the burden off of your lungs when trying to suck air through your cartridge filter.

You might consider purchasing a methane detector. The detector can give you the probable cause to enter the house and proved the health department the ability to condemn it. Some of the most successful operations I have experienced are working with my local law enforcement and health department. It doesn’t hurt to have your fire department’s hazmat team available. Although, I have been at locations where the hazmat teams refused to enter the home.

The most important item that you’ll want to have is flea spray when you exit the home. You may want flea spray as a regular item in all of your animal control trucks. Maybe two or three cans. You’ll be glad that you did.

Don’t forget the Duct Tape for taping the wrists and ankles of your overalls. And keep garbage bags available so that you have a way to dispose of your disposable garments when you are finished.

Each incident that you become involved with will aid you in deciding what items need to be added to your hazmat kit. The key to your kit is to keep you safe.

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You have to ask…

Several years ago I wrote about the five freedoms that we try to provide the animals in our care; these freedoms provided the minimum standard of care that we should provide.

Recently we are seeing photographs of the conditions in which immigrants are being forced to live in.  Although this is an animal welfare blog, humans are animals too.  There is a reason that President Biden doesn’t allow the media in to see the conditions these people are living in.  It reminds me of how an animal shelter looks every morning before staff has started cleaning.  We too, prefer to have the media come in after we’ve cleaned.

Whether our President accepts his responsibility or not, he invited these people to come to our country and failed to prepare for their arrival.  He can blame this on the previous President all he wants, but this is HIS CRISIS!

When you have to call in FEMA, you know that you have a disaster on your hands.  When you have to bring in volunteers to provide support for FEMA, then you are in real trouble.  It seems that everyone, except the President, is coming to terms recognizing the problem that we face.

Without getting all political, I believe that we should minimally provide these arriving immigrants with the same care that we provide our shelter animals or send them home; in the shelter business, we call that limited admissions.

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Maintaining Shelter Standards

When I began in the animal welfare profession euthanasia rates were over 90 percent.  35 years later, we are experiencing placement rates at 90 percent.  We have come a long way and there are plenty of people wanting to claim credit for our success.  Many animal shelters have euthanasia rates under 5 percent.

Ten years ago, Delaware created a law that prohibited a shelter from having any empty kennels; I was opposed to Delaware’s law, it created a crisis every time that an Animal Control Officer brought in a stray animal, because there were no empty cages.  Experience teaches every shelter manager to know the number of cages that must be empty to accommodate intakes.  In addition to the number of animals that are delivered by officers, the public is at your front door delivering animals.  No one is going to ask a person to hold on to the animal until someone can go back and “make space.”

Colorado decided to go further, animal shelters cannot euthanize, even if they lack cage space.  Since no  kill has become a moot issue in our shelters as the reach or exceed 90 percent placement rates, politicians are eager to move shelters to the next evolution of animal sheltering:  for the shelter to become a “socially conscious shelter.”   A shelter that does not concern itself with the practical side of animal sheltering but look only to the needs of the animals.  On the surface, this sounds like a great idea.  A socially conscious shelter doesn’t have to worry about cage space.  Whether or not there is cage space, you find a spot for the animal.  And then, try to provide care.

The concept of “just one more animal,” is the premise that starts every animal hoarding situation.  I had to oversee a seizure of 700 cats in which the organization started with just a few and just kept accept “just one more” cat.

The politicians like to get their faces in the media showing their support for saving the animals.  When they are done, they leave one more unfunded mandate and leave the local jurisdictions responsible for administering the mess that they have created. Every community is difference; they allocate different budgets and enjoy different mores.  Due to the uniqueness of communities, they should be allowed to enact their own laws.

What role will the State of Colorado have when they have to deal with shutting down rural animal shelters for either failing to comply with the new law or that they have become hoarders and have insufficient funds and staffing to care for the newfound burden placed on them by the State.

Animal Shelters have a responsibility to care for the animals that come to them.  Forcing them to start hoarding animals is going to diminish the general care that they can provide.  Under the right circumstances, this new law will have unintended inhumane consequences as animal shelters are force to hold  animals beyond their capacity of space and staffing.

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The Evolution of Riot Control. When are we going to learn?

This is an odd topic to be found on this blog, but images of the “peaceful protects” that I’ve seen on the nightly news appear similar to watching a dog fight.   As an old cop, I am puzzled as to the current state of police officer tactics in performing crowd control.

I entered the field of law enforcement as a military cop in the early 70s. Crowd (riot) control was administered by pushing crowds using psychology; military personnel put their bayonette on their M-16s and used a technique of “stomp and drag” to maneuver the crowd. Stomp and drag was how the military personnel moved, by stomping their left foot forward and dragging their right foot up to their left foot. The cadence was very effect, but hard on the sole of your right boot. Even sheaving the bayonette, it was an impressive sight.

The next iteration was using shield and batons to physically push crowds where you want them. This is the technique that I think police are attempting to use ineffectively because they are missing the most important element of using water cannons. Modern day looters like to set fires, fire trucks are the perfect solution to today’s crowd control. Water cannons (fire hoses) can be used to push rioters back, while putting out the fires that the looters started. I am sure that politics play into the role, or lack of role, of bringing fire trucks in at the start of riot, but wait until the neighborhood is in flames. I have to say that water cannons were the most effective crowd control device of all times. As a K-9 officer, we and our dogs were pale in the face of the effective use of those cannons. Although, I have seen the effect of turning loose a dog to get the attention of a crowd.

As best as I can tell, the current technique in crowd control is what I would refer to as a “snowball fight.” A snowball fight is where one side lobs over a bunch of “snowballs” and then the other side lobs some back. In the old days, kids would cheat by putting a rock inside a snowball; now  people put gasoline inside bottles. The side with the most snowballs won.

A rule that seems to be forgotten is in the old days, if you showed up at a snowball fight, you were a participant. Today, we have a new term of “innocent bystander.” So, a person can decide at will if they are an active participant or step back from the action and call themselves an innocent bystander. The media seems to think that if they are in the midst of a snowball fight, they are protected. If you stand on one side, you might get tear gassed or hit with a rubber bullet; but, if you stand on the other side, you get hit with gasoline, fireworks and blinded by lasers. Protesters are cleverly disguising themselves as media personnel in hopes of using that as camouflage to get closer to the police lines.

So, politicians have stepped up to determine the rules of engagement, limiting the types of snowballs that the police can use. So you take away all of law enforcement’s snowballs and you are left with a lopsided playing field. The politicians have not even asked that the protesters put down their maultoff cocktails because they don’t want to recognize that the protests have become violent.  As some politicians call it, “A summer of love.”

After we have learned our lesson from the idiot idea to defund our police, I hope that when we restore the police to their rightful place and that we give them the tools to property do their jobs. I suspect that companies that sell riot control vehicles are going to make a lot of money as we look back to our current failure in handling angry mobs. We were ill prepared and the politics worked in favor of mob rule.

If, on the off chance that you came across this blog in a search for your new riot control vehicle.  I have found that the water hoses mounted at bumper level appear to be most effective.  It is like playing pool in which you put the rioter “in the corner pocket.”  These vehicles make is safer for the police and less harmful to the mob.

Since this is my blog, I would like to make some recommendations:  paint ball guns can be used effectively in riot control. Police can “paint” the rioters with permanent dye or skunk oil (or both).  The dye helps identify who attended the riot and the skunk oil helps the rioters decide if they want to come back the following night.  A word of caution, skunk oil will cause the riot area to stink for months, as anyone would know who has driven a country road.

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Covid 19 and Animal Sheltering

Animal shelter personnel have always had to face the danger of passing diseases throughout their shelter.  We know that the most likely transmission of diseases between animals is through human contact.  The worst offenders are our staff and volunteers.  Some of our staff are just predisposed to kissing each animal that they come into contact with.  During the Covid 19 outbreak, this practice has to stop.

We need to remind staff that their duty is to care for the an animal until the animal’s owner comes forward to reclaim the animal.  It would be horrible to find out that shelter staff is the cause of spreading the Covid 19 virus from them, to the animal, and then to the animal’s owners.

Once an animal is made available for adoption, the risk of infection becomes greater in that multiple people will come into contact with the animal as it is presented for adoption.

As we have always concerned ourselves with the spread of disease within our animal shelter, we must now take further measure to in sure that we don’t let our guard down in spreading disease outside our shelter.

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Anger

I’ve noticed that the world has become an angrier place. We see people getting in fights over the most insignificant things.   Fights in fast food lines.  Fights over the wearing of face masks.  Fights over encroachment of one’s personal space.

We are entering a new anger phase in which gun sales are increasing. Some communities are reporting a shortage of bullets.   

It should come as no surprise that guns and anger don’t mix.; and yet, we are seeing an increase of violence in our larger cities. This demonstrates the biggest problem with our 2nd Amendment, it allows for the purchase of guns by crazy people. The percentage of crazy people are increasing. You can spot them on the news every evening.

More guns, More crazy people. Defund the police. We have become a society of idiots. The purpose of this rant is that it is becoming more and more dangerous dealing with pet owners. If you have followed along, for any length of time, in reading this blog, you know that I have mentioned that ours is a very volatile profession. And now, you will be interacting with people who have developed shorter fuses and may be armed.

The best part of being an anima control officer is being able to back away from a situation that is starting to get out of control. Since most animal control officers are not armed, backing away is a good strategy. Due to police shortages, you may be out in the field without police backup. Talk to your police department to make clear when and where they will pull your bacon out of the fire.

More than ever, you must me aware of your surroundings. You need to read the situation and accept the situation when the person clearly isn’t going to listen to you. If you find yourself in a fight, you have failed.

So, everyone fails once in a while, so as you are watching your surroundings, you should always be looking for tools to  help you get out of the situation. Never stand where you become boxed in and become acquainted with the tools that you carry. Tools that you carry to protect your from dogs can be effective on people; but, please don’t use my name when you are talking to the media about putting a catchpole on a person. However, the catchpole, clipboard and cans of Halt might aid you in getting back into your truck. Don’t just sit in the truck, drive a few blocks away to put distance between you and the angry person.

Animal Welfare is a wonderful profession, but it requires that you be constantly aware of your surroundings. Be safe out there.

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The Impact on Animal Welfare in Defunding Police Departments

Many animal control programs are under police department’s management.  in the current efforts to defund police departments, many cities will make token efforts to support taking funds away from their police departments.  Police departments will begin eliminating or reducing staffing in noncritical areas.

Most police departments consider their animal control program as a noncritical area.  It is a strongly held belief that protecting people is more important than protecting pets.  Who can disagree?

As police struggle to meet new funding challenges, they will be force to reassess funding for noncritical services.  Police departments may find it necessary to  stop responding to calls relating to animals and only respond to calls that are an immanent threat to people.

When calls are received about vicious dogs, Police officers may be forced to respond because their trained animal control officers have been fired in the forced reduction in force (RIF).  The untrained police officers will not have the skillset to capture the dog(s) alive.

The reductions to our police departments are going to change the safety of our communities and change the way communities deal with animal welfare issues.  Many communities will lose the buffer that protects them from the elements that would cause them harm.

I have to admit that I have encountered many folks who could not resolve their own problems.  It disturbed me that we have become far removed from our pioneer ancestors.  Many in our communities have become helpless.  If any good comes out of eliminating  services, maybe these people will be force to start to start taking care of themselves and not depend on others to do it for them.

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Giving in to Common Sense

Every week my brother and I get our cardio workout by sharing our thoughts on the state of the world.  We usually have breakfast together, but the stay at home laws limit us not to phone calls.  You could not find two people more opposite  in the expression of our views.  I see the fallacy in his views as he sees them in mine.

Our discussion turned to the people making the news by violating their stay at home orders.  I see these people as exercising their constitutional freedoms and assisting mother nature in shaping our gene pool through natural selection.  My brother, a retired fire fighter, sees these people engaged in activities that place other people at risk. I see his point.

In my eyes, I believe that  stupid people should be allowed to engage in their stupid activities because it is mother nature’s way of removing deleterious genes from our gene pool.   I failed to see the risk that these folks play in their efforts to become sick.  Paramedics, doctors and nurses are placed at risk because people engage in idiotic behavior.  We experience similar issues in the animal welfare profession in dealing with the outcomes of dangerous dogs.

There is always a group of people who get excited when you make a decision to euthanize an animal that you think is too dangerous to be adopted.  Sure, they can find a family to take the dog, but you have to worry about the kind of people who would want to bring an aggressive dog home to live with their children.  We live in a world where people willing agree to get into situations that are well over their heads.

Let’s face it, I may be the only person who is enjoying staying at home.  But, your right to walk about as you wish should not put other people at risk.  Give your first responders a break and do everything you can to keep yourself well and those around you.  That includes bringing home aggressive animals into a neighbor with small children.  Someone in the world has to start making smart decisions.

Give the Constitution a rest and do something for someone other than your self; help protect our first responders by following a few rules.  It is the least that we can do for them.

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Gainesville Florida

A few days ago, I wrote about an incident dealing with a pedophile employee.  Given our profession of dealing with children, we need to keep a constant vigilence.

While working in Gainesville Florida one of my volunteers began sending  scathing letters to the City Council about an incident involving the adoption of a puppy.  You know the type of incident in which all of your employees and volunteers begin fighting over a new puppy that has come in the shelter.  Many shelters opt to deny first adoption rights to staff and volunteers for such scenes that they make.  Anyway, the guy thought that he could force the adoption if he took his case to the City Council.  The guy wasn’t smart enough to realize that we were a county operation and he should have been sending his letters to the County Commission.

The guy was saying such horrible things about me that I decided to check him out.  It didn’t take long for me to discover that the guy was on the State’s sexual preditor website.  I found it funny that given such a designation, that I would want to keep a very low profile.  It is amazing as to how you can destroy a person’s credibility by mentioning that fact.

He turned his energy towards creating a website.  He did an effective job of superimposing my image into a natzy uniform.  Clearly he had spent a lot of time on the website.  Maybe it was therapy for him.  I could accept the anger that he had directed at me, but I got upset over him going after my staff.  I contacted the company that was providing him the free web-space and asked them how much they vetted the folks using their site.  I explained that his triage was unfairly directed to my staff.  My mind is a little fuzzy at this point, it may have slipped out that they may not want to be known as having a sex offender using their website.  The website was shutdown within days.

I’m not a vindictive person and I have often wondered if I was righteous in approaching the volunteer that he started dating.  She was young and had a couple of young children; I have a strong protective streak.  Clearly, he had not shared that part of his life with her.  As with most sex offenders, she would have seen the large sign in his front yard.  She directed her anger at me, but I think that she was embarrassed that she had exposed her children to this guy without properly vetting him.

In our business we are not just dealing with animals, we are dealing with people.  Animal people are very caring and that makes them vulnerable in today’s world.  You have to ask yourself as to how you would handle the situation; just as I have to keep asking myself if I did the right thing.

To give you a clearer picture of the world that we live in, Google the sex offender registry of your city.  You will be amazed as to the seriousness of our plight to protect our community’s children.  Whatever the reason that earns a person’s profile on the registry, it is clear that they’ll be on that list for life.  That speaks to the concern of our judicial system to keep us safe.

But, the highlight of the Gainesville experience was a long running grant that had been awarded to the animal rescues in our community from Maddie’s Fund.  For the most part, Maddie’s Fund had given up on funding community projects because animal groups just can’t seem to work together.  They were experiencing failure after failure because animal welfare groups could not comply with the first rule of the grant: to play well together.

In Gainesville, the rescue community stepped over our large egos and joined together to form a coalition to save as many animals as possible.  Due to our success, Maddie’s Fund extended our grand several times.  We became a poster project that they could wave as a success, when they were facing so many failures with working with animal shelters.

Due to their unsuccessful experience working with animal shelters, Maddie’s Fund went off in wild directions providing grants that less impacted on community populations.  As a profession, we fail them and our communities.

Gainesville was one of the few communities that could enjoy the presence of a local veterinary college.  Veterinary colleges became a solid source of grant funding when Maddie’s fund gave up hope working with animal shelters.  One of the interesting thing about college projects, there is always a bias toward a specific area of interest; for the University of Florida, the interest was in cats.  If you every ask for a shelter assessment from a national organization or a college, look for the bias of their investigators.  Understanding their bias will help you make better sense of their assessment.

The University had developed a Shelter Medicine tract, thanks to Maddie’s Fund and we had weekly visits by veterinary students walking the halls of our shelter.  As with all of our rescue partners, we had a good relationship with the University.

Gainesville also set the stage for one of the largest hoarding cases in the United States in which we were force to seize nearly 700 cats from a local sanctuary.  As with most hoarding cases, it was a good idea that ended horribly bad.  As with all hoarding cases, the caretakes couldn’t turn off the “off button” on animal intakes.  The Humane Society of the United States was our key partner, but we were assisted by the ASPCA with veterinarians and American Humane with volunteers.  One of the key problems that we faced in handing this case, we discovered that working with a single veterinarian allows the veterinarian to make tough decisions; when you add one or two more, the committee approach to veterinary care becomes extremely expensive.  Fortunately the Humane Society of the United States help defray those costs.

We spend a lot of time matching up feral cats that had been brought into the sanctuary when a nearby jurisdiction thought they had found a solution to their feral cat problem by dumping the animals into another community.  In the animal welfare business, we are good at dumping our problems in other communities; especially when it come to dangerous dogs.  How many times have you heard a judge using old west justice by ordering an animal to get out of town?  No thought given to the new town that just gained a dangerous problem.