Author: David

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Climate for Dogs

I have worked with a bunch of animal control officers who believe that dogs like to live at the same temperatures as their owners. To a small degree they are correct, but they are mostly wrong.

Northern breed dogs like colder temperatures.  My dog’s favorite temperature range is just above freezing.  Cold weather finally makes use of the dog’s fur and allows them to finally cool down from the summer months.

Some dogs, like Chihuahuas seem to never find temperatures warm enough for them.  Every dog is different and it is important as a responsible pet owner to research the temperature range that is best suited for your breed.  Veterinarians are a handy resource.

Just because you own a northern breed dog, doesn’t mean that the dog should be kept out all winter.  Dogs need socialization just as much as they enjoy the cold weather.  A rule of thumb is that if your dog’s water freezes, then it is cold enough for the dog to be indoors, not because it is too cold, but that the dog needs a constant supply of fresh water.  In the winter months, animal control officers prosecute the majority of animal neglect cases due to the owner failing to fresh (unfrozen) water.

Pet ownership is all about people using commonsense.  People make life long careers in animal welfare because commonsense is not abundant in our communities.

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Pet ID Tags

It has always amazed me at the lack of identification that is found on pets running loose.  Pet owners go out of their way to make it impossible for animal shelter workers to locate them.  Although most jurisdictions require that pets (mostly dogs) wear a local pet license, few owners actually place the license on their pet.

In an effort to keep pets out of local shelters, many shelters provide free identification tags so as to return an animal back to its owner.  Even with free tags, it is amazing the number of pets that repeatedly return to the shelter without identification.  Fortunately, shelters have staff with good memories and can recognize a repeat customer.  But given the volume of pets that pass through the doors of an animal shelter, it is unreasonable for owners to expect staff to remember their pets… that is why ID tags are so important.

Cats are a different story.  Most shelters only return 11 or 12% of the cats coming into the shelter to their owners.  Cat owners just don’t go looking for their lost cats.  Like dog owners, they choose to not place identification on their pets.  But unlike dog owners, cat owners generally do not begin the search of their lost pet until way after the hold time expires at the animal shelter, so the cat is either adopted or euthanized by the time the cat owner begins the search.

Microchips are a partial solution, but cats that have been trapped by a neighbor are so freaked out inside the trap that the cat appears feral.  Most shelter personnel will only make a cursory scan so as to prevent the loss of their fingers.  It may be several days before the cat calms down enough to attempt another scan for a microchip.

Many shelters have only a 72 hour holding period for stray pets.  That isn’t much time to figure out that your pet is lost, if you are not paying attention.  This short timeframe is a perfect reason to keep visible identification on your pet at all times.

Every city and county that I have ever worked has the cleanest pets in the world.  The excuse for a pet not wearing a collar or tags is that “I just gave him (her) a bath.”  That excuse is getting old.  Very old.  And to be honest, judging by the mud on your pet, we don’t believe you anyway.

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Race to No Kill

The live release rate has become the number one statistic that governmental elected staff use to evaluate the performance of their animal shelter.  These folks are deaf to the obstacles that prevent a 90% live release rate, like their citizens breeding their pets like crazy.

One path to No Kill is to get your elected folks so worked up about saving all of the animals that you get them to make a declaration of No Kill.  That commitment now opens all of the doors to fund a solution.  Austin Texas is a good example as to declaring its intent and then being forced to build a new shelter and add new personnel to maintain their No Kill status.  They even experienced the side effect of citizens from neighboring cities and counties bringing their pets to Austin.  After all, if your want to feel good about abandoning your pet, take the pet to a no kill facility.

Most communities cannot afford to keep throwing money at their animal shelter to boast of being No Kill, so an alternate solution is to begin training your citizens to become responsible pet owners: to encourage pet licensing and spaying and neutering.

Pet laws should be geared to impacting the owners who allow their fertile pets from running at large.  Some shelters offer programs that reduce the reclaim rate of bailing your pet out of the shelter if the owner allows the pet to be sterilized.  Those shelters frequently demand that owners who continuously allow their pets to run loose without identification must microchip their pets.  The purpose of these laws are to force bad pet owners into taking responsible measures for their pets.

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Where Credit is Due

Every animal shelter has a volunteer who works from the comfort of his/her home computer using social media to move animals.  This person develops a gift of embellishment that portrays the animal in such light that anyone familiar with the animals would not recognize it as the same animal.

Not only do these folks misrepresent the animal, they want credit for all of the animals that have been placed as recognition of their salesmanship.  To them, it doesn’t matter that there is a high return rate, their job is to push animals out of the shelter.  Their placement rate is more important than finding a good permanent home for animals.

It is important for an animal shelter to recognize that having someone like this representing your organization is a detriment and although their enthusiasm is contagious, they place you at risk.  More and more animal shelters are being sued because volunteers or staff have misrepresented an animal to a prospective adopter.

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Anchor

I was working in a facility in Florida that evolved very fast.  We had become a shelter with a high release rate as the result of a Maddie’s Fund grant.  We were all feeling great.  I felt that I wanted to feel that experience/ again.

I accepted a position with an organization with a low live release rate and wanted rolled up my sleeves to begin the task of directing the evolution of that shelter.  I was unprepared for the anchor.  An anchor keeps a ship from moving.  Our anchor was in the form of a supervisory position within the organization and had been with the organization long before the organization was founded.  An anchor is an effective tool to keep the ship from moving in a storm, but in calm waters, it prevents the ship  from getting to its destination.

Nothing I could do could persuade our anchor from opposing change.  The anchor didn’t want volunteers in the shelter or rescue groups.  Although our board of directors wanted to see the organization move forward, they wanted this employee to be happy.  It was clear that I had made a mistake in taking this job.

I saw all of the clues in letters being written about this individual in the media, but maybe my ego got the best of me.  When taking on an organization, it is critical that you research the organization to make sure that the organization is ready to evolve, to move on.  I discovered that even one individual can prevent the organization from moving forward.

Timing is everything.  This organization would have to remain stagnant until such time as this person retires.  Do not take on an organization that is not ready for you.

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Good Ole Boys

I never ran into a “good-ole-boy” group until I worked in northern Florida.  I thought the world of the mayor, but his office wanted the mayor’s friends to be treated differently that anyone else.  I am a firm believer that every citizen should be treated the same, but you might be hired by a community (usually in the south) that subscribes to a system of good-ole-boys.

When taking a job, it is important for you to preplan as to how you will deal with situations in which the mayor’s office will call you and ask that you treat an individual differently than what your ethics dictates.

The program became so severe in this city, that they created an Ethics Office to help head off complaints.  I think when the budget got tight, the Ethics Office was first to disappear because it became an inconvenience for the mayor. As I see it, ethics is a lot like integrity, you either got it or you don’t and if you need to create an office to keep you straight, then your value system is all screwed up.

When dealing with ethics issues from those that hire you, you become very good and distinguishing between the letter of the law and the intent of the law.  Although you can be bullied into acting against your belief system, you can find ways to that those decisions uncomfortable for those who direct your activities.

For some mayors, it is hard for them to believe that some of us answer to a higher calling.

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Special Programs

It is always exciting to develop a community program, but some programs only work on the drawing board.  One of the local women’s shelter approached us to assist with the police department on dealing with incidents involving battered women.  That sound like a wonderful program, right?

The idea was that some women will not leave their abusive situation because of a pet in the household.  So the police would arrive and pick up the battered woman and her pets to take them to safety.  It was a feel good program for everyone; except for the pets.

When the program was first developed, I had to constantly rewrite the program weekly.  We needed a bailout clause because once rescued from the abusive situation, most of the pets were abandoned.  In the first case, the woman jumped aboard a passing 18 wheeler truck and was never heard from again.  That incident forced us to set holding times and create abandonment clauses.

Just because a program feels good doesn’t make it a good program.  I hate to admit it, but I have created similar programs in many localities, only to help one or two women.  Although the program always ended in failure, I felt it was worthwhile for the one or two women that the program helped.   And given a choice, I would do it again and again.

Special programs are a good idea, but it is important that when creating programs to help people, you need to look out for the welfare of the animals that are involved.

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Hurricane Preparation

It is the day after the hurricane made landfall and the media is reporting that  hurricane victims are complaining that FEMA has failed to knock on their doors with food and water.  Two events are at play: the first is that the people had the opportunity to evacuate and failed to do so and second, they choose to shelter-in-place without preparation.

Why would a person weather out a storm and not be prepared?  Have we become so foolish to believe that no matter what life mistakes that we make, someone will be there to fix them for us.  And if FEMA doesn’t show up to fix our mistakes, we immediately run to the media.

No matter how prepared FEMA is for a storm, if you are going to sit out a storm, you need to be prepared to care for yourself (and your pets) for a week.  It is the commonsense portion of your disaster plan… you know, the plan that you should have made before the storm…. before running to the media.

We have become a society of victims.  We are too shortsighted to recognize that we become victims of our own foolishness.

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Dog Bites

The leading cause of dog bites are dog owners.  Most dog owners are oblivious to the fact that their dog has the potential to bite and callous of the conditions that might lead up to their pet biting.  For that reason, one of the most common phrases that a dog bite victim hears prior to being bitten is the voice of the dog’s owner yelling, “Don’t worry, he won’t bite.”

This is one of the greatest threats to our community in which dog owners fail to step up and accept responsibility for the dog bite potential that their pet presents.  Failing to accept that responsibility places people at risk.

Dog bites have become so common that people have become judicial witnesses based on “junk science” that attempts to win dog bite cases by blaming dog bites on the victims rather than recognizing the behavior of the dog.  The notion is that the dog has a reason for biting a person, but we just don’t understand what that reason is; so a self proclaimed individual will take the stand in court, claiming to be a profession witness, to explain what the victim did to justify the bite.

These “experts’ have created a niche in which they make the dog owner the victim on an unjust justice system that puts humans before animals.  These “professionals” are lifted up by their followers that own potentially dangerous dog breeds.

To be honest, some people  provoke dogs to the point of getting bit.   That is one more reason for dog owners to consider their liability in owning a large dog and failing to provide proper boundaries between their dog and potential victims.  Some dogs have less tolerance towards being provoked; some dogs don’t need any provocation.

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The Problem with Microchips

Technology is usually a good thing.  From the beginning, microchips seems to be just that; a way to identify our pets without the worry of misplaced collars and tags.  But, at best, microchipping your pet is a poor secondary form of identification.  It is better than nothing, but not much better.  The fact that your pet is microchipped, is no excuse for failing to place  identification on your pet or to actually physically search for your dog..

From the beginning, microchip companies did not want to share their microchipping secrets.  One company even encrypted their microchips to prevent other microchip company scanners from being able to scan for their chips.  Then microchips began entering the United States from Canada and new microchip frequencies began to enter our market.  It became increasingly difficult for animal shelter to find the implanted chips due to the lack of universal scanners.  Even today, with universal scanners on the market, microchips remain unfound because of frequency issues.  The issue has become so great, that many animal shelters refuse to scan for microchips because of the difficulty of finding the chips.

Responsible animal shelters believe that if a pet owner is going to microchip their pet, then the shelter should, at least,  perform the scan.  Animal shelters should make every effort to return a pet back to its owner.  Because microchips are elusive to find, animal shelters will scan for the chip three times: upon intake of the animals, during the medical examination, and at disposition.  Microchips can migrate within the pet; I once found a microchip that had migrated from the injection site (in the shoulder blades) to the front paw, for this Great Dane, that was a migration of three feet.  It is so critical that every inch of the animal is scanned.   If you realized the number of microchips that are discovered just prior to euthanasia, you would understand why I state that the microchip is a poor secondary form of identification.

Animal shelter personnel get so very excited to find a microchip, only to find that few microchips are traceable.   The most common cause of an untraceable microchip is from microchips that are purchased from veterinarians, where the veterinarian expects the pet owner to register the microchip with a national registry.  Many veterinarians just sell and implant the chip, but fails to associate that chip with the owner and those that do, might purge the records of pet owners who fail to return for follow up medical examinations.

We are a mobile society.  Pet owners fail to keep current their pet’s microchip registration.  Some animal shelters have to go to great lengths to trace an owner through their microchip.  Originally, it had been the hope of our profession to find lost pets in the field and return them home before the owner even discovered the pet was missing.  That happens infrequently, but those occurrence are occurring even more rarely.

One of the most frustrating things that animal shelter personnel face is that pet owners with microchipped pets feel that it is not necessary for them to look for their lost pet because the microchip will guarantee the animal’s return.  With this mindset, the pet owners might have to wait a year or two to see their pet again.

Microchipping your pet is no excuse to be lazy.  Buy an ID tag, purchase your local pet license and be proactive in finding your lost pet.