Using GPS

Throughout my career, I have used GPS in several organizations that I have overseen.  Here are a few war stories:

In Portland, we received a call that one of our vehicles had kicked up a rock and cracked the caller’s windshield.  We checked the location of the incident against the GPS of the vehicle that the guy reported.   We found that the vehicle was on the other side of the County when the incident occurred.  We discovered that people get their windshield cracked and begin looking for a government vehicle on the road to blame the incident on and get a free windshield replacement.

In Jacksonville, we received a call about one of our drivers driving recklessly.  We pulled up the GPS data and found that our driver was driving 50 miles per hour in a 35-mile zone.  The caller was right.

Also, in Jacksonville, we deal with a lot of impatient callers who are calling in to see where the truck dispatched to their address is.  We can look at the mapping software and advise them.  It was not uncommon that we’d see the vehicle pulling up in front of their house and advise them to look outside the window.

GPS finds the best use for new drivers who are unfamiliar with your city.  It helps them get around.

GPS systems help advise your dispatcher as to which vehicle is the closest to the incident location.

We lost one of our employees in Fairfax County.  He had pressed the emergency button on his radio, and we were able to find the location of his vehicle via GPS.  When it started getting dark, we dispatched a helicopter and asked him to shine his flashlight straight up, and the helicopter pilot was able to direct our search to him.

GPS is a wonderful tool.  I used the it in Jacksonville to map the locations of raccoons that had tested positive for rabies.

In Salt Lake City, I used GPS to map the locations of dogs that had been declared dangerous.   I have heard of communities that have online mapping to let neighbors know where the dangerous dogs are in their neighborhood.

As an oldtimer, I use GPS when I am using the public transportation system in my city.    Google has a feature where you can share your location (not with just China (joking)).  So when I go out the door, I turn on Google Maps, and my daughter can track me when she turns on her Google Maps.  If I am headed out to a soccer game, she can see how far I am away.

You would be remiss if you didn’t take advantage of the tools that are available to you.

Its not their fault!

I was reading comments following the recent incident of one of our police officers shooting a dog.  Many people conclude that the dog was not to blame.  On that, I agree.  Dogs become confused, especially when some stranger is yelling at them.  Time and time again we see evidence that many pet owners are not smart enough to own a dog.  Any reasonable person would realize that the best way to control your dog is with a leash.   If you can’t figure out the purpose of the leash, you should not take your dog into a crowd.

Every effort that the person attempting to control the dog made it worse.  Their excitement just further excited the dog.  During the two separate altercations that the police had with the dog, I did not hear a single person say “no” to the dog.  That is the first step in training dogs to be around people; to stop aberrant behavior.  This incident failed at all levels.

When the officer approached the dog the first time, the leash was on the dog, but no one was holding the leash.  Someone was stepping on the leash.  The officer should have seen the risk that he was entering into and demanded that someone take the leash into their hands.  It might have helped that he didn’t start with “his cop voice.”

In the second incident with the dog, the dog was off-leash.  The person near the dog could be clearly seen with the leash in her hand.  This makes no sense; the person had to be pretty stupid to take the dog off leash following the dog biting an officer just moments before.

Still using his “cop voice,” but a little more excited, the officer was yelling at the woman to hold the dog.  In addition to the woman being stupid, she was also very slow.  The dog began approaching the officer and the woman’s efforts to stop the dog only seemed to excite the dog more.

As slow as the woman was, the police officer was very quick in pumping four rounds into the dog.  Although the dog didn’t immediately die, it was in pretty bad shape.  I don’t know at what point that dog realized that he was acting badly; it is further evidence that people should be tested first before they are allowed to own a pet or have children.

Officer Involved Shooting

Our local police responded to a parking lot full of people.  From police footage, it appears that most of the people were homeless.  One police officer approached the group and was attacked and bitten by a dog.  It appeared to me that the dog was on a leash at the time.   The officer was walking off the attack when he came back into view of the dog again, which was now off-leash.    Another officer approached the dog’s owner yelling at her to control her dog.  Her attempt was feeble, at best.  He promised her that he would shoot the dog if she didn’t gain control of it.  She didn’t and the dog attacked again and was shot four times for its efforts.

In most circumstances, I would feel sorry for the stupid dog and its owner; but, people don’t realize the impact that has on the officer.  As an animal control officer, I could have taken the dog without killing it.  That’s what we do.  But, I don’t expect a police officer to handle the situation as I would have.  Police officers are trained to think with their guns when they are in danger.  So, given the circumstances, it was a righteous shooting. Although, a Taser would have been my first choice.

Before you start thinking that I’m all full of myself, keep in mind that most animal control officers don’t carry guns.  So shooting a dog isn’t an option.  If we are experienced animal control officers, we get out of our vehicles with a ketch-pole and leash in our hands.  The prospect of getting bitten doesn’t worry us as it does police officers.  Of course, we also get more experience facing down a face full of doggie teeth.

I recall using pepper spray on a Rottweiler once.  The owners complained to the police about my use of pepper spray and when the police sergeant came out to talk to the dog’s owners, the dog attacked him.  He came just short of shooting the dog.  Once the sergeant calmed down, he told me not to worry about the complaint.  I was a little embarrassed that I stepped out of the vehicle without my ketch-pole.  After all of these years, I still feel bad about using the pepper spray.

Hiring a veterinarian

Hiring a veterinarian can be the most challenging task that you might ever encounter. Your veterinarian will likely be your most expensive employee and the veterinarian position will be the hardest position that you will ever have to fill. During your interview with potential hires, you will keep asking yourself if there is any hope that you will get your money’s worth from that individual. Here is what you will encounter:

You need someone who can organize their time and be able to perform high-volume surgeries. But here is the kicker: they can’t be too fast or too slow. A veterinarian that needs two or three hours to complete a spay/neuter will be too ineffective on your staff; but, a veterinarian who completes surgeries within minutes will be taking shortcuts. I have witnessed veterinarians taking shortcuts in closing and substituting glue for sutures. I’ve seen organizations dealing with the bad press from people taking their pets home, only to complain about open wounds. And then the shelter has to pay for that person to take their pet to the emergency clinic to close the wound again. You can’t afford to be paying for many of those incidents. It is much cheaper to do the surgeries right, even if it takes a few minutes more.

Hiring a veterinarian is all about balance. That balance is very hard to find. As such, you need to think about “plan B.” If your local humane society operates a high-volume clinic, you might consider contracting with them for your surgeries. Some will even provide pickup and delivery services. “Plan C” is contracting with a local veterinarian who is willing to reduce their rates for a constant income source. Surgeries make up a small portion of a veterinarian’s business and you might find one who wants your business just to stay proficient.

A word of caution. Avoid “luxury veterinarians”; who might have worked at a luxury, government, or university clinic where that had unlimited resources.  There are hidden costs associated with “luxury veterinarians,” because they are used to providing deluxe services.  I discovered just how many dogs you can find with lime disease if you test for it. You are going to run up your veterinary costs if you treat every dog that comes into your shelter with lime disease. If you have the time and the money, go for it. If you are working with the same budget that I’ve had throughout my career, you have to stop short of providing luxury services.

Another word of caution is the handling of controlled substances. Although the shelter purchases the drugs, your veterinarian is the only one allowed to handle them. If you decide to fire your veterinarian, have another veterinarian in the wings to accept responsibility for the drugs. Come to think about it, you might want to schedule route drug tests for your veterinarian. I never did that and thinking back, I wish that I had.

I am going to get slightly off-topic. When I worked in Utah, employees who were in accidents when driving a government vehicle were immediately sent in for a drug test. At first thought, you’ll think that is a stupid idea, until you start to realize that the accident could have been caused by someone on drugs. Does meth make you drive a little more aggressive? I think that it might. Of course, back in those days, Utah had the third-highest meth use in the Country.

Status Quo Budget

I have discovered that I can’t leave the animal welfare profession even though I am retired.  Last night I dreamt of working on a status quo budget.

The phrase “status quo” literally translates to “the existing state of affairs.’  In budgeting, it means a budget that reflects the current pattern and operational levels without any planned changes or increases. (according to Google)

In reality, given inflation, there is no such thing as a status quo budget; last year’s dollars will not present this year’s operation.  So, even with a status quo level of budgeting, you’re forced to reduce areas of your budget due to rising costs of, say, pet food; unless you are prepared to provide cheaper food; which, might cause other budget areas to arise: due to indigestion.

The best insurance for your budget is developing a good relationship with your city/county commission.  As I have mentioned in past blogs, in Florida I had a County Administrator hell bend to reducing Animal Control’s budget.  But, due to our relationship with our Commission, they stopped him every year because the Commission receives a lot of animal-related complaints and we made sure that we responded promptly to them.   The County Administrator never figured out our secret, because he never saw the big picture.

That same Administrator always had us providing cost-cutting budgets each year.  In many of them, I would cut my own salary so as to meet the needs of the County.   Although losing me was no sweat off the Administrator’s back, the Commission didn’t want to lose their contact person in Animal Control.

In last night’s budget, I was disillusioned with Animal Control agreeing to a status quo budget without thinking that it was really a budget reduction.  So, if you think you are ahead by agreeing to last year’s budget, you are going to have to rethink your budget as a reduction.  Just know that in advance and let me go back to sleep.

Being on the Right Side of Animal Rights

As much as I lambast animal rights organizations for bullying animal shelters for not adopting aggressive dogs so as to meet a 90% statistical number; I find myself on the same side wth them when it comes to wild animals.  I think all roadside zoos should be shut down.

Although my college background is in wildlife resources, I am against State laws that require that trappers only have to check their traplines once every three days.  I can’t imagine an animal being stuck in a leg hold trap for three days.  I can’t imagine an animal having to be in a leg hold trap for even three hours.  Whenever I am given the opportunity to update a city or county animal ordinance, I always work in a prohibition on leg hold traps. There is no use for them in populated or unpopulated areas.  They are a danger to domestic pets and they are intended to harm another living thing.

While I am bandstanding, wild species should never be a backyard pet.  For a while idiots were allowed to purchase ligers, half lion and half tiger.  There are probably still people keeping these animals in their backyards.  The real dumb ones probably have them running around in their houses.  The problem with natural selection is that instead of wiping out the person with deleterious genes (for stupidity) is when a child becomes injured due to someone else’s gene pool.

I worked with someone conducting college research on taking coyote puppies and attempting to domesticate them.  They hand-raised them from birth; only to find that the animals were coded from birth to be wild.  The human species is not smart enough to figure out that wild animals are coded with DNA to be wild.  It is inhumane to make them any different than what they are coded for.

How does your data look underwater?

Hurricane Katrina taught us many things.  For the animal shelters that were hit, we learned how our data systems look underwater.  Living in Florida, we planned to continue services after we lose electricity.  Whenever possible, we attempted to replicate our data on a laptop, so that we could conduct searches of our data when the lights go out.  We also had a paper system to support the intake of new animals into the shelter.

We have become too dependent on technology.  This blog results from one of our local schools having to cancel classes because they lost access to the internet.  It is moments like this that we old guys get together to talk about how we went to school before the internet was invented.  I am amazed that our school system has no plan B.

For those of you who have never experienced a hurricane, you probably have not thought about how to back up your data for the day when the power goes out.  That leaves you with the possibility that if your power goes out for an extended period of time, you’ll have no records, except what you hang on the cage doors, of the animal in your care.

If you have thought about it, and are backing up your data, make sure that you do it correctly.  Back in the days that I was providing tech support for PetWhere, I was approached by an animal shelter in Texas who had been faithfully backing up their data.  When their data became corrupt, they discovered that their backup files were worse than the original files because they had been backing up their data on tape drives without ever replacing the tapes.  After years of backing up data over the same tapes, the tapes lost the ability to be overwritten.  My job was to take their current data and attempt to reconstruct it into a usable format.

Now, many of the database programs used in animal shelter management are internet-based.  Hopefully, you’ve worked out a plan in which you are keeping a copy of your data locally.  The Internet is more likely to go down before you lose power.

Funny Times

In case you missed it, we are living in funny times.  Our last President issued pardons for his entire family when he left the Whitehouse.  Half of us think a man playing in women’s sports should have more rights than women.   The FBI is actively attempting to hide evidence from the new administration.

Following Brandon’s efforts, our State legislators are writing a bill to protect the identities of government workers when they are believed to have violated the law.

Our society seems to want to protect law-breakers more than they wish to protect their citizens.

Many animal shelters have gotten so caught up in the No-Kill movement that they are more eager to adopt out aggressive dogs than risk their no-kill status by putting the dogs down.  We seem to have lost our ability to understand consequences.  Are your no-kill statistics so important that you would risk a child’s life?  If your answer is yes, then please get out of the business before some poor child loses his or her life.

Being a Good Steward

One of the most glaring things about President Trump’s efforts to weed out wasteful spending is the fact that our government went well beyond being wasteful and appeared to spend for the sake of just spending (our tax dollars). Government was not a good steward; in fact, government departments acted like they were competing to be the worst spenders. Government knew of their waste and did nothing to stop it. The feds are not an example that we can afford to follow.

It is one thing to root out the bad apples in government; but, we have people in Congress demanding that efforts to end wasteful spending be stopped and look the other way. The worst part of all of this is that Americans voted these people into office. Either we are blind to the people we vote for or we are just plain stupid. If you still believe what the legacy media is telling you, then you really don’t know what is going on in the world. Anyone who encourages government employees to waste money are idiots.

Sometimes, in order to be a good steward, we need to stop listening to the people around us who are trying to direct our paths. It is easy to take up the cause to help homeless animals if we put on blinders that prevent us from seeing homeless people. I have always advocated for helping animals. But do animals hold a higher priority than that of people?

Animal rights groups are made up of one dimensional people. They only see the animals that exist in our world. That’s great, animals need our help. We can make catchy phrases to “speak for those who have no voice.” Animal rights groups are free to live in that world.

But those of us in animal welfare have to live in the real world. When we are fighting for our budgets, we realize that we are competing against other needs. We are not like the federal government that has been given such large budgets that they are free to spend it on nonsensical things. We have to fight for money just to feed our animals.

You are right, I am still steamed about the animal rights group going to the media to complain that one of our local cities turned down a TNR grant because they could not commit to keeping the grant going after the “free” money ran out. The city had the foresight to recognize that they didn’t have the money to care for feral cats now, so they didn’t want to default on the grant later. We call that integrity.

You see, if you show integrity in your stewardship of your budget, your city/county commission is more likely to fund you. I worked in one county in which our County Administer desperately tried to cut our budget. For a while, I worked full time in creating budget scenarios in which I outlined various levels of budget cuts. But, I had an excellent relationship with our County Commission. We were always funded at the same level. Why? Because we showed that we were serious about being a good steward.

I draw this comparison because there will be people trying to tear down your budgetary decisions for being frugal with your government funds. These people only see things from their own perspective. Given how tight money is, I would gladly forgo funding for a TNR program, if that money could be used to help homeless children. Being a grownup is knowing that you don’t always get what you want; you usually get what you need. Sometimes keeping a feral cat population going only encourages coyote populations to move into our cities. Fortunately, the statistics for coyotes eating cats are not part of the no-kill equation. In case you missed that: the more coyotes that eat cats, the faster that we can become a no-kill community.

Say What?

In looking at my last post, no one can accuse me of smooth-talking. So? What do I do with it? Do I throw it out or do I try to sift through it? Let’s try again.

Animal Welfare is looking at each individual animal and attempts to do what is best for it given current resources. Animal Rights is looking at the plight of groups of animals and shifting the mindset of society to raise the animal’s plight to higher importance.

From an Animal Welfare approach you look at the condition of an animal and determine if you can improve the animal’s condition given the resources at hand. It becomes most noticeable when determining whether an organization should treat a medically compromised animal. What factors do you consider? Probably the most important factor is if there is any home where the animal’s owner will show up and assume financial responsibility for the animal. Organizations with limited budgets will be more likely to treat an injured animal if the animal is wearing some form of identification, hinting that an owner might be out looking for their pet. The difficulty is trying to get inside the mind of that owner as to what they would accept as a reasonable amount that they would pay out for their pet.

When treating an injured animal, the organization has to decide if care for the one animal outweighs the care for the other animals in your care. The one notion that people cannot get their heads around is that animal shelters do not have unlimited resources. I have witnessed many incidents in which an animal’s owner would surrender their pet, as a stray, to the animal shelter because they didn’t want to pay the cost for the medical treatment that their pet needed. These folks seem to be the least understanding when the shelter decides that the cost of treatment is beyond them as well. People think that the shelter should throw any amount of funds so that the owner can come return later to adopt back their own pet. So, seeing an ID on the animal is not always an indication that someone is out there in the world to accept financial responsibility of the pet. It does, however, give shelter staff hope and I am more likely to hold the animal longer at the shelter and offer up more money to help the animal with ID.

From an animal rights perspective, the decision to treat the animal is easy. All animals deserve the right to live. The only exception is the animal is demonstrating that it is in such pain and the animal would be better off being put to sleep. Animal rights folks would browbeat anyone standing in the way to prevent treatment. The animal rights folks would just as likely treat a potentially dangerous animal as it would any other.

From an animal welfare perspective, a shelter might hold off on treatment of an animal that doesn’t offer any return on investment. In other words, is the animal adoptable, or after a long stay you are going to have to euthanize the animal anyway? And then you are out the funds that you could have used to save other animals. From an animal rights perspective, you see that one animal representing every other animal and that if you don’t save the one, then that is your attitude towards all the rest. In the case of potentially dangerous animals, the animal rights folks have me pegged. I would rather keep a dangerous dog comfortable during its stray holding period than throw a bunch of money towards it when I have no notion of returning the animal back into the community.

From an outside perspective, one group makes the decision and moves on to help the animals that they are capable of helping. From the other perspective, the groups sees that failure to help that one animal is evidence that other animals won’t be helped either. As such, animal rights groups will attempt to teach you a lesson and go public to try to turn your community against you. The best beating, in their minds, is from the people who fund your organization.

Animal Rights groups cannot wrap their heads around the fact that animal shelters have limited resources. They are not smart enough to understand that communities that fund the animal shelter also have limited resources. Time after time, when I was fighting for funding for my shelter, I heard other voices crying out that funding that was allocated to me would take away from allocations to children in the community. Animal Rights folks can’t understand the competition that animal shelters face for funding.

An Animal Rights group might offer limited funding to push their efforts, but they expect the animal shelter to continue funding the project after it gets off to a good start. The problem is that communities are more sensitive to the economy than are the animal right folks. If the economy is hard now, it is likely to be worse when the pilot program ends. You can’t make a promise to fund a project two or three years down the road when you can’t afford it now.

Notwithstanding the economic climate; the animal rights folks will feel slighted because they feel their cause is higher than any other that communities might face in the future. As such, they will make a public spectacle to bloody the community leaders and the animal shelter staff. I have had to fight this battle many times in my career and for that reason, I don’t think much of animal rights groups. If there is any message to send them; despite what they feel are their priorities, in budget deliberations, children trumps animals every time. Animal Rights folks believe that their cause is the only one that matters; that is their world. Communities have to deal with a much larger world.

A public animal shelter rarely gains financially when they become No-Kill. Animal Rights groups, on the other hand, can access private funding for punishing animal shelters into submission. In the end, public animal shelters have to go through great financial hardship when pushing the No-Kill agenda, but the taskmasters are financially rewarded. There is example after example of governmental organizations spending tons of money to gain and hang on to their No-Kill status. Read about the City of Austin going through it. Just ask Google: Mainly, no-kill created shelter overcrowding, forced shelter staff to reduce the quality of care for their animals, and came at a great expense. Was it worth it? Depends on who you ask. It mostly depends on the amount of available cash that a city has to spend on such efforts. Most cities could not have pulled off what Austin did… none that I ever worked in. That doesn’t mean that we didn’t have our own success stories. I found that the most successful programs that we pulled off were ones in which we made it financially feasible for animal rescue groups to join our cause.

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Why do I bother with this now? As a governmental employee, I had to wear a muzzle throughout my career. When I retired, I was able to throw off my muzzle and speak my truth, even if it first appeared as gibberish on paper. At least, it is unfiltered gibberish. And, I hate bullies. When I see bullies, in any form, I’ll lash out. Animal Rights groups are eager to bully an animal shelter into compliance. Sometimes it is justified but usually, it isn’t