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Breaking Up Dog Fights

One of the greatest risks to employee safety is breaking up two dogs fighting.  Dog fights are most likely to occur in the shelter, but recent designs to animal control vehicles place employees at risk while transporting animals.  In order to accommodate various size dogs, animal control vehicle box designers have created removeable walls to adjust the size of the cage compartments.  Those walls are an extremely weak point in the design in which an aggressive dog can breach the wall and attack a dog an adjacent cage.

I have found that the most effect way to break up a dog fight is to use a CO2 fire extinguisher.  The blast from the fire extinguisher is sufficient to shock the dogs from fighting briefly.  One used, the extinguishers can be recharged to be used again.  The extinguishers should be in every animal control vehicle and placed throughout the animal shelter.

Police and EMT might consider using the extinguishers to access an injured person who is being guarded by the person’s dogs.  Although tasers are effective, they may be unnecessary  if emergency personnel prepare in advance for such incidents.

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Working for Bureaucrats

An article out of White County Illinois tells of a story of an Animal Control Officer being fired.  My best guess is the County Commissioners attempting to punish the officer for social media abuse; a frequent problem in our profession.  As with many bureaucrats, they puff out their chests and proceeded to do the wrong thing.

This particular Animal Control Officer started extended the hold time for animals to get them adopted and asked volunteers to come in to provide socialization with the animals.  The local bureaucrats wanted all of these programs aborted.  Their actions hit a nerve with me, not just for the callousness toward the animals, but it sparked an old memory.

While going to college, over 30 years ago, I was the animal control officer for Pullman Washington.  I worked under the Police Department.  I had a good relationship with the Washington State Veterinary College and local media.  Relationships that every animal shelter operator treasures.

The shelter was a small shelter and the adoptions were slow.  I convinced the local newspaper to run a weekly pet of the week and show all of the animals at the animal shelter.  One of the local councilman began following the pet list and discovered that many of the pets had been listed and relisted in the column.

The Police Chief paid me a visit and demanded that I stop holding  animals and ordered me to euthanize every animal that was over its five day stray hold period, much like what is happening in White County.  I was so angry.  I returned to the animal shelter, had a good cry, and followed my orders.

I believe that the order was immoral, as are many mandates from bureaucrats.  I had arranged for all of the shelter’s food be donated and the only cost to the City was the time I spent cleaning cages.   Did I continue holding animals?  Of course, but I knew that I had to be smarter.  I would make small changes in the appearance of the animals in the newspaper article, so that the busy body councilman would not see the same animal listed twice.

The problem with many bureaucrats is that they fail to see that the animals in our care represent a life and all life is precious.  Not a tool to bully their animal welfare staff and demonstrate their own self importance.

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When Going the Extra Mile is Not Enough

I have had the opportunity to participate in the evaluation  of animal sheltering over the past 30 years.  We migrated from index card record keeping to computer systems that post photos of lost pets on the Internet.  I have always encouraged my staff to go the extra mile in getting a pet back to his or her owner.

The evolution of the pet owner has evolved to recognizing the importance of spaying and neutering (in most of the country); but pet owners have not become better a vaccinating their pets or taking the initiative to look for their lost pets.

Animal Shelters are receiving less annual intakes due to spay/neutering efforts.  Shelters are not less crowded because animals are being held longer in hopes of finding them a new home.  Pit bull dogs are the greatest problematic breed because the breed occupies 50 percent of the kennel space in shelters.

When I first got into the business of animal welfare, a university veterinary professor told me the best way to control disease in an animal shelter is to not overcrowd the shelter.  Overcrowding causes stress to the animals and the maintaining a large number of animals will likely introduce disease.  As a result of the no kill movement, shelters are maintained in a state of overcrowding and as such shelters are frequently battling disease outbreaks.  If pet owners had previously vaccinated their pets, we would see fewer disease outbreaks.

The most notable issue that we see in animal shelters is the failure of pet owners to look for their lost pets.  The usual excuse is that, “He is always getting out and eventually comes home.”   The most important factor in being a pet owners is that the own should be smarter than their pet.  Pet owners should be able to create an escape proof yard.  I suspect that many pet owners are just too lazy to go looking for their lost pet, in many cases pet owners report they learned about their dog being in the shelter through a friend or social media.

In most of the country, animal shelters maintain a three day holding period.  Most reasonable people would realize that their pet is missing in three days and go to the shelter.  The three day period is sufficiently short that the animal is unlikely to breakout with a disease by coming into the shelter unvaccinated.  The owner can deal with the symptoms when they get home.

In an effort to cater to local communities, some shelters extend the holding periods up to 10 days.  Even with the longer holding periods, many pet owners find the time too short.  The problem with longer holding periods is that an unvaccinated pet may start showing symptoms of disease during day 5 or 6.   The animal shelter is then faced with treating the animal’s disease and becomes a risk to other animals.

Nothing is more upsetting than to have an animal owner reclaiming their sick lost dog on day nine and blame shelter staff for the animal’s illness.  It is easier to announce how dirt the shelter is with disease infested animals, than to admit that the owner didn’t see the importance of vaccinating their pet.

Due to the nature of animal shelters, there will ALWAYS be animals with diseases in them.  If you are not going to vaccinated your pet, then you should make sure that your pet never ends up in an animal shelter.  The only way to keep disease out of an animal shelter is to shut its doors to incoming animals.

Most animal shelters recognized the deficiency of pet owners in vaccinating their pets, so they vaccinate the pets on intake.  The problem with vaccinations is that they don’t begin to take effect for six to seven days and it is minimal affect at that.  So why do we bother vaccinating?  It is all part of going the extra mile for the animal.

Now it is time for pet owners to start going the extra mile for their pets.  They can begin by placing identification on their pets and begin looking for their lost pet within the first 24 hours.  The shorter the time an animal spends in an anima shelter the safer the animal will be from disease.

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ACOs Looking for RPOs

In this blog, I want to “kill two birds with one stone;” although I, in no way, condone stoning as a legitimate means of euthanasia.  I want to discuss a program I had to reward responsible pet owners (RPOs) and to discuss societies abuse of acronyms.

A great number of years ago, I wanted to change up my patrols of picking up stray dogs by looking for responsible pet owners; people walking their pets responsibly.  I went out in search with a letter from the mayor and a bag of goodies.  I posted signs on my Animal Control vehicle: “ACO looking for RPO.”  Of course no one knew what that meant: Animal Control Officer looking for Responsible Pet Owners.

I would stop people out walking their dogs and looked for a leash, current license, carrying a bag to pick up poop, and evidence that the animal was spayed or neutered.  Shockingly, I actually found a few who qualified.  I quickly realized that the free bag of dog food might have been an excessive gift.

This effort reminded me of the excessive use of acronyms that we use in society, the worst part of reading an article is the fact that most authors actually believe that everyone will know what their acronym represents.  It is as if we have forgotten the rules of engaging readers.  So for everyone’s sake the rule is that if you are going to use an acronym, you FIRST write out the term and follow it with the acronym in parentheses like: “Government funded organization (GFO)”.

Every organization uses acronyms, but it is damn foolish to think that everyone knows what they mean.  We have become a society that tries to shorten our words into very brief communications, but we frequently commit a disservice to our readers.  Please use acronyms responsibly.

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Having the Right Tool

Animal control officers have it easier than police officers because we can usually predict the actions of those that we deal with.   Our cliental have their own set of tools, like teeth and claws and we need to have to proper tools to prevent our own injury and protect the animal.  The most important tool is the one that we don’t have.

Catchpole: the catchpole is the most important tool we have to prevent injury to ourselves and to control the animal.  Even used properly, it can be a media nightmare when its use is watched by others.  The trick in using a catchpole is to gently control the animal with minimal force.  The catchpole should be tight enough to keep the animal from escaping, but not so tight as to choke the animal.  It is the one tool that you should ALWAY care with you.  When facing an aggressive dog, the last place your catchpole should be in in the vehicle.   When I would go out into the field with my officers, I always carried my own catchpole because I knew that it worked.  Always keep your equipment in working order.

Muzzles:  as I mentioned previously, using a muzzle on a cat means that you have already lost the fight.  The trick to muzzling dogs is to use the right size; too small and the dog can’t breathe, too large and the dog removes the muzzle.

Gloves:  The only glove that I ever found that worked on cats was the Neptune Glove.  The glove looked like the attack sleeve used in training police and military dogs, but was covered by chainmail.  It was expensive, but paid for itself when I was called to remove a badger from the trunk of a car.   I haven’t seen it on the market for years, but there are a lot of new materials available that claim to be puncture resistant.

Pepper stray:  I used pepper spray once, when I foolishly stepped out of my vehicle without a catchpole.  I discovered that a leash provides little protection from a cornered Rottweiler.  Pepper spray come in many concentrations:  Halt is at .003 %, others are at 5%, 10%, and 20% for bears.  I always carried Halt, but many animal control officers want to use the concentrations used by police officers.  Although it is infrequently used, to keep the pepper in suspension, you need to vigorously shake up the can at least once a month.

Clipboard:  A metal clipboard is the best protection when approaching pet owner’s home.  We have all experience dogs pushing their way past the owner to get at the intruder on the porch.  In these situations, I have yet to come upon a pet owner willing or able to control their pet.  For that reason, the clipboard provides a small shield from the animal.  The dog wants to bite you, so you feed the dog your clipboard.  You keep feeding the clipboard as you step slowly back to the street to your vehicle.   In situations in which two dogs run out at you, you pepper spray them both and use the clipboard to feed to the one that keeps coming.

Snake tools:  snake tongs and snake hooks are valuable for dealing with snakes.  I hate snakes and found that they don’t make 20 foot long snake tongs, you’ll have to work with tongs that are 4 or 5 feet long.

Hazmat equipment:  if you ever have to go into the home of a hoarder, you’ll appreciate having disposable coverall, booties and gloves.  A facemask with the methane/ammonia cartridge will be necessary in the worse cases.  Make sure you keep track of the expiration date on the cartridges.  The facemasks come in various sizes, so it is important to find the right size to fit you.

Flashlights:  remember that using a catchpole requires two hands, so a flashlight that isn’t fixed to your forehead will only get in the way if you need to use your catchpole.

Flex ties:  It is not uncommon to find yourself in a hoarding case that you need to borrow pet carriers.  The carriers are often broken down and the screws are frequently missing.  Flex ties is a good temporary solution in an emergency.

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Zoonotic Diseases

I saw in the news a report of a person getting Brucellosis from a dog.  As an animal welfare worker, you should already know that you live in a world of animal diseases and some of those diseases can be passed along to you; that is the definition of a zoonotic disease.

From time to time we need to refresh our memories as to this particular aspect of our profession; I was constantly reminded by the staff who loved to go from animal to animal getting doggie kisses.  We preach about fomites (the spread of disease through our hands and clothing) only to see employees spreading it through their mouths.  I get it, it hard to be in this profession and not surrender to a few kisses.  But like your hands, wash your face between kisses.

Animal Shelter staff and the public are the primary vector for spreading diseases within an animal shelter.  It is bad enough that we spread the diseases between animals, but we need to be sensitive to the diseases that we can give to ourselves.

I would like to share an article by Jill Seladi-Schulman, PhD on zoonosis.  We all should practice safe animal handling.

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Screwing with Mother Nature

I recently wrote about Australia’s war on feral cats.  In today’s news, we find that the bounty on cats is not reaping sufficient cat deaths; the government has decided that the solution to kill millions of stray cats is by airdropping “poison sausages” according to Australia’s CBS News.

It has been my experience that our “well intended species” always makes things worse when we screw with Mother Nature.  We created the problem with the cats in the first place and now we feel the need to fix the problem by poisoning all of the cats so as to minimize the impact the threat of the cats on native wildlife populations.

I mentioned the problem of non-target species eating the bait.  As I see it, many native wildlife species eat the same food as cats and maybe even a few children.  The plan to poison all of the cats seems to not be very well thought out.

Australia is faced with a difficult problem. Since the introduction of cats by Europeans in 1700, 27 mammals species are now facing extinction.  Even here in the United States cats are blames for impacting wildlife populations.  Australia believes that their are estimated between 2 and 6 millions cats in their country.  Having been in houses hoarding cats, I know the difficulty in getting an accurate count.  Australia has set their goal of wanting to kill 2 million cats by 2020.

So, this is how I think it will unfold:  Australia will successfully kill a whole bunch of cats, but at the same time they will be killing a whole bunch of the species they are trying to save.  A couple children will come across the food and hopefully not eat enough to harm them.  And, all the while the cats will continue to breed and in a few years they will be back where they started.

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War on Cats

I read an article this morning about Australia declaring war on feral cats.  The feral population has grown so large that their government is worried about the impact that the cats have on other species.  They have started putting a bounty on the cats. 

Australia is not alone with this problem.  In the United States, we have been fighting this problem for years.  At one time or another large communities have discussed methods to reduce the feral cat population.  Many community begin by trapping, neutering, and releasing the cats back where they were found.  TNR programs are considered a humane way to deal with the surplus problem.

The idea behind TNR is to create a community of infertile cats.  It is believed that every area has a maximum carrying capacity for a specific species and that by loading up an area with cats that cannot reproduce will eventually lead to reduction of the cat population.  In theory, it looks good on paper.

The problem is that people caused the problem of feral cats and humans continue to undermine the success of feral cat programs.  Although Mother Nature has a specific carrying capacity for any species, that does not keep us humans from messing it up by leaving food out for the cats and increasing the capacity for an neighborhood to support more cats.

In Jacksonville Florida, we had a problem in which groups of citizens took it upon their selves to set up shelters and feeding stations for feral cats throughout the city’s parks.  Some engaged in TNR, but many only had the funds to just buy food.  The Parks Department was not very happy with the increasing amount of feces deposited where children were playing.

One neighborhood in Jacksonville took on the challenge of removing all of their feral cats, only to discover that rats moved in.  Clearly the art of dealing with feral cats needs to be balanced.

Our government created food pellets that could vaccinate raccoons for rabies.  I had always wished that someone would create food pellets that would vaccinate and sterilize cats.  This sounds like such a simple solution to our feral cat problem, until you begin to worry about non-target species, for example: children picking up the pellets and eating them.  Kids do stupid things like that.

TNR is part of the solution, but we are still dealing with the pet owners who moves out of town abandoning their fertile cats.  Differential licensing fees work in many area where infertile pets are licensed are a ridiculously low fee and fertile pets are licensed at a much higher fee.  In Gainesville Florida, the owners of impounded fertile pets had a choice to pay a lower reclaim fee if they allowed us to sterilize their pet.  After all, animals that are running at large are the problem.

We have a lot of citizens who just refuse to do the right thing.  We create laws, in hopes of regulating their bad behavior.  Unfortunately, these folks don’t care very much about following rules or laws.  It is because of people like this, that Australia had to declare war on cats because people along the way failed to do the right thing of controlling or sterilizing their cats.  Australia is proof that many people do not have what it takes to be a responsible pet owner.

In Salt Lake City, we had an education program in which we went into all of the elementary schools to teach humane education to 3rd and 5th graders.  One of the favorite parts of my job was to listen to parents complain to me that their child came home from school and pointed out that they were bad pet owners.  It gave me an opportunity to remind them of their responsibility to set a good example for their children.  We hoped that this program would create a whole new change in pet ownership for the next generation.

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Adequate Confinement

In the business of animal welfare we constantly butt heads with people lacking commonsense or reason.  We are partly to blame because we do not word our laws in such a way that applies to every specific circumstance.  If we served reasonable people, we could write our laws in a broad sense, but too many in our communities need someone to draw a picture.  Unfortunately, because many of our laws are written in a broad sense, we encounter reasonable complaints that provide us no measure to resolve.

It is not uncommon for one neighbor to complain about another neighbor’s dog that aggressively attacks the fence trying to get to passersby.  The fence is flimsy, but (so far) has contained the dog(s).  The dogs present a threat to the community, but you cannot determine if the it is an immediate threat.  Asking the dog owner to strengthen the fence usually falls on deaf ears.  The neighbors are upset believing that if (or when) the dog(s) escape their yard, only an attack on a small child will prove their point.

We can use language like:  “The confinement structure must be of sufficient strength by which a reasonable person might believe that the structure will confine the animal.”  I am not sure that with all of our laws that use the measure of a “reasonable person” has ever found such person.  And then the question comes in to play, as to whether that person could be brought into the courtroom to confirm your suspicions about the fence.

I once had a company ask me to indorse invisible fences as a physical barrier to as to satisfy a portion of law that I had written about animal confinement.  Even if the batteries are fully charged on an invisible fence system, those fences are CLEARLY not a physical barrier. I could not believe that I was asked to indorse the system for the confinement of an aggressive dog; proof that this distributor didn’t have the sense to understand the weakness in his own system.

Maybe these incidents should be handled like zoning code violations, where a group neighbors sign a complain agreeing that the fence is inadequate and can make their case to the zoning board.  Then you just have to wait for your meeting with the board and hope that the dog doesn’t escape the yard and attack someone in the mean time. 

I spoke to a group neighbors that were so sure that their neighbor’s dogs were going to escape that they began carrying guns to protect themselves for that day.  It is a sorry day when the ignorance of a single dog owner causes us to have to relive the wild west.  Anytime you are revising your laws on animal confinement,  write this portion of the code very slowly, because this is the portion of the code that frequently brings us the most grief.

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Grants

It comes as no surprise to animal shelter workers that they operate on a marginal budget. During budget time, we constantly hear from elected officials that they have to decide between pets and children; making the point that the shelter should prepare for budget cuts.

One of our saving graces is grants.