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The Emu Caper

Over a decade ago, people were convinced that emus were the next generation as a meat source and were purchasing emus to ranch the species.  The caper proved to be a scam and the emu ranchers found themselves with birds that they could not sell.

Animal Shelters began filling up on these flightless birds as these would be profiteers began abandoning their herds on the streets of their communities.  Animal Control Officers were learning to become emu wranglers.  Once captured, the Officers were delighted to find that the birds had been microchipped and efforts were started to find the people who had abandoned the animals.

Knowing that the market had dropped out on emus; actually the emus market never caught on; the breeders reported that the microchips had never been registered, so as to prevent prosecutors from tracing the microchips to the animal’s owners.

For a short time in the history of local animal shelters, emus became fairly common forcing those shelters to educate themselves on the housing and care of this unique species.

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“Perception is Reality.”

I’ve heard the phase, “perception is reality” too often at executive meetings, indicating that if someone has a specific perception, it is their reality.  In some way, there was an expectation that we manage people’s perception; even though they created the perception to manipulate reality.  Let me explain:

Only in the realm of politics do we see greater misuse of manipulation to manifest a false reality.  Our generation will be known as the keepers of fake news.  We live in a world in which people create their own reality my falsifying  the events around them to drive their own agenda.

Fake news for animal welfare began with the no kill movement and was fuled by social media.  Social media became the number one place to obtain false information.  People pushed fake news either for attention or to bully.  Unfortunately, the ploy was fairly successful.  Organizations were bullied into making decisions that were not in their own best interest to mollify the social media noise.

Evidence of those bad decisions are documented on PETA’s website:  No Kill Policies.  It saddens me to see what shelter managers are going through as a result of caving to the outrageous demands of a few people.   My mantra was to “do the right thing.”  Today, the “right thing” is different for every person.   I always believed that keeping the community safe was the right thing.  Now there is an expectation that shelters should save every animal.  Saving animals is a good cause, but shelters must not compromise the safety of their community or the care of those animals in that effort.

The officials who oversee the operation of their community animal shelter are frequently more concerned about what people say on social media than they are worried about the safety of their community.  They want to cater to those who make the most noise.  It has never been a more difficult time to manage an animal shelter due to the competing demands and unreasonable expectations.

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The Problem with Databases

One of the greatest challenges for any animal shelter is selecting the mode by which you will maintain your data.  Before you start, you need to recognize that there is no perfect mechanism to record and maintain your data; when you finally make your decision, you’ll discover that it is all about compromise.

The first decision is that whether your records will be paper based or computer based.  Obviously a paper based system is the simplest method of recordkeeping, but it is a horrible system to query.  It is also doesn’t stand up well to the elements.  However, a computer based system is only as effective as the backup systems in place.  For example, I worked with a Houston shelter to recover their database files.  Their shelter staff faithfully backed up their data every evening onto a tape backup system without thinking that they should replace the backup tapes from time to time.  After years of using the same backup tapes, over the years they were backing up their data onto worn out (worthless) tapes.

Since a paper based system requires no explanation, I’ll jump into computer based systems.  The simplest computer systems use a flat file system; eventually an electronic paper based system.  Think of it as a paper based system on a computer.   Like a paper based system, it is easy to use and it allows you simple queries.   A flat file system is the easiest system to train your staff on, but it isn’t much help for driving statistics.  It is a good system for very small shelters or rescue organizations.

Anyone who has been in animal shelter for any length of time, you know that animal records are all about relationships.  A relational file system is the most common system used in maintaining animal shelter records.  But, those relationships can be confusing and so far there is no database system that you can purchase that can capture all of those relationships.

But, before you can decide on which relationships are necessary for your shelter, you need to decide if you want your data to focus on the animal or the incident (or event).  What will be the chief cornerstone of your data gathering?  Do you want to make the animal or the incident the center of your data gather.  In every occurrence, both will play a role.

The most common example is an animal intake.  The intake or impoundment is the incident and the animal is the other half of that equation.  Since most shelters wish to maintain monthly statistics, incidents (or events) become the cornerstone of their data gathering.  From that cornerstone event, other relationships begin to unfold.  And this begins the journey as to the complexity of a database program.  It is also the place where your eyes begin to glass over.

Usually a database is broken into data areas: animal, people and events.  In each incident, relationships paint the picture of what has occurred.  As with the intake incident described above: the animal has a relationship to the incident as “impounded.”  When the owner is found, the animal has the relationship as “owned.”  If an owner does not claim the animal, then the animal hopefully gains the relationship of “adopted.”  As so on…

To make the data easier to use, most software engineers eliminate obvious relationship to prevent the use from becoming overly frustrated.  For example:  Most database programs fail to recognize the association of household units.  People and animals belong to a household and households have relationships to addresses.  Failing to recognize those relationships, various household members could bail out their pet from the shelter without the shelter personnel realizing that the animal had been impounded multiple times.  It is a problem that exists when  shelter personnel allow their computers to do all of the thinking.

No animal shelter management software tool is perfect, in fact to make this tool work for you, you’ll have to create numerous workarounds to meet your needs.  When test driving an animal shelter software tool, look for data fields that seem to serve no purpose; those are the fields that you can later use when you need a workaround.

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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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Preparing for Disasters

One of the greatest outcomes of Hurricane Katrina was FEMA recognizing the importance of pets during a natural disaster.  FEMA opened the door to the creation of pet friendly shelters.  People like the idea of being sheltered with their pets.

Anyone who ever worked with me, knows that I always keep my vehicle stocked with supplies in preparation of providing an emergency response; but, all of the equipment in the world isn’t going to help you if you are not educated in handling disasters.  One of the best ways to prepare your staff and volunteers is to train them as Community Emergency Response Team Members.  The above link will put you, your staff, and volunteers into contact with other community members dedicated to keeping your community safe in an emergency.  If you are working on the public side of a disaster, you will be required to complete FEMA training; this training, is required for most public officials dealing with disasters.

Often preparation is the most important aspect of disaster preparedness; but cleanup after a disaster will aid in being allow back.  I was never able to make headway in opening pet friendly shelters in a county in north Florida because one previous attempt was made, years before my arrival, in a public school.  Whoever organized the sheltering of animals in the school left the cleanup to school personnel.  School administration never forgot that.

It is an important reminder that cleanup after a disaster could be the most important aspect of preparing for your next disaster.  In the Boy Scouts, we always had a rule to leave a campsite better than we found it.  It is a good rule to follow when closing down a pet shelter following a disaster.

One of the tragic part of being the midst of a disaster is the problem of pets being left behind when their owners evacuate.  Not only does a shelter have to deal with the influx of these abandoned pets, you have to deal with the pets that are turned away at sheltering locations that prohibit animals.

In our recent response to the epidemic, we have eyewitness accounts as to our nation getting a failing grade as to our preparation for a disaster.  In the Boy Scouts, our motto was Be Prepared.  Our problem as a nation is that we believe that someone else will assume our responsibility for being prepared.

Preparedness begins on an individual level.  People have looked a preppers as crazy people and now, in the midst of an epidemic, the preppers are saying, “I told you so!”  Being prepared is an ongoing thing, it is not rushing to the grocery store to buy out all of the toilet paper.  We as families should always be prepared.

Every community has a continuity of operations plan (COOP).  The  plan is for every department at the local, county, state, country to continue operations in an emergency.  COOP shows us our weaknesses and allows for us to make preparations prior to an emergency.

It is with great dismay that I watch on the news of the governments of New York screaming for the federal government to respond to their emergency.  The fact that New York is calling for assistance is evidence that they failed in preparation of an emergency.  Fortunately the Feds are there to bail them out, you would think they would show more appreciation.

I frequently get on my soapbox about people seeing themselves as victims.  Now I am seeing governments crying out that they are victims, only because they didn’t have the foresight to be prepared.  Soon, we will see this epidemic behind us, I hope that people see this as a lesson to accept their role in preparing for a disaster.

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Helping the Helpless

We live in times in which people complain that government is too big, but the problem is that people are becoming more and more helpless and ask government to do more for them. The pioneer spirit, that made our country so great, is being replaced by needy people.

People don’t want to spend the energy to find a new home for their pet, so they dump it at the “pound.” Fearing that people will think ill of them for surrendering their pet, they turn the animal in as a stray. So, instead of immediately trying to find a new home for the pet, the animal shelter is forced to spend the first few days looking for the animals owner.

It is not uncommon that we find that surrendering pet owners are not only callous, but also stupid. When surrendering a pet, the owner will forget that they had adopted the pet from the shelter and the pet had been microchipped prior to adoption.

Animal Control Officers will get calls from citizens asking for assistance to help the owner catch his/her own dog. The owner has developed such a poor relationship with their pet, that it is more likely that a stranger will be able to catch it.

One summer in Virginia, we had a problem of pet sitters surrendering the animals in their care. They would get tired of caring for the pet and surrender the animal to the shelter as a stray. They would not even bother to let us know that an owner will be returning from vacation to look for their pet.

But the biggest problem that we faced is people adopting a new pet and losing the pet before getting the pet inside their home. Even after all of the instructions that we provided, people would choose to drop the leash to let their new pet run to the front door on their own. Hey, guess what? After being caged for a long while, being off leash opened opportunities for new adventures for the pet.

The good news is that the few people who have access to money can pay others to help them be good pet owners. Doggie Day Cares exist to exercise and socialize and you can even hire people to come out and clean up the poop in your yard.

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Staff Training

The first thing removed from the budget during lean times is staff training.  It is probably the last place funds should be touched.  The best way to invest in your organization is through decent salaries and staff training. A few days ago, the newspaper picked up on a story that animal control staff returned from a conference and wanted to implement TNR (Trap, Neuter and Release) program.  The newspaper talked like this was something new and our community would be cutting edge by trapping cats. Communities have been performing TNR for years.  The fact that our community is starting it now only means that we are just catching up.  If we had invested in staff training years ago and had the will to manage our community cats, we would be further along to become no kill. Conferences are the place where our staff catches up with the rest of the world.  It is important to send our best staff to training.  If you were to pick a single conference to attend, I would suggest the Animal Care Expo. The best gift that you can give your staff is training.  There are not many opportunities for training animal welfare staff, so it is important that you follow when and where the training occurs.

When sending your staff off to training opportunities, it is a good idea to remind them that they are ambassadors of your organization.  I have encountered incidents in which a few staff saw training as a party opportunity and embarrassed themselves and our organization.  Depending on your staff, you might consider always sending a member of your management team who has the authority to send the offending member of your staff home.

If sending staff off to conferences is outside your budget, providing Animal Sheltering magazine is a good alternative.  I would suggest getting a subscription to the magazine for each member of the staff and extras for your volunteers.  When you are seeking grants for your shelter, consider obtaining training grants for your staff. Inhouse training can be supplemented by contacting organizations, like Animal Control Training Services (ACT), to conduct various levels of training as needed by your staff.  Usually these services discount training costs for the organization that will host the training event.  ACT’s website has many resource materials for those looking for a specific need or wishing to create a new form. Another “ACT” is Animal Care Technologies that provides training for shelter staff and volunteers in animal care and veterinary services.  If found this online training particularly beneficial in scheduling animal care training to new animal attendants and volunteers.  

COVID-19 put a real crimp on annual conferences, but it opened the door to national organizations rethinking their approach to providing professional development to their members.  The National Animal Control Association saw that their annual national conferences were no longer viable in today’s pandemic world, so they created online courses.  The online courses cannot make up for the peer to peer contact with others in their profession that makes conferences so great, but they provide an economic training opportunity to animal control staff who would not ordinarily be able to attend training.

If you think that staff training is unimportant, remember that much of the problems that the police face is that many of their officers have clearly demonstrated their lack of training when arriving on the scene.  As a result, many cities are cutting police budgets when they should be throwing more money towards better staff training.  The same is true of giving your staff the equipment they need to perform their jobs correctly.   As with the police, the more nonlethal equipment that you give to the officers, the more tools the officer has to bring a peaceful resolution.  

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Community Cat Programs

The biggest problem that communities face with community cat programs is that no one takes responsibly for the medical needs of the cats. It is one thing to feed a neighborhood cat, but quite another to take on the responsibility to sterilize and vaccinate those cats. Many cat owners don’t do that for their own cats, let alone cats running loose in the neighborhood.

Although feeding these neighborhood cats is a humane act; that food creates at artificially high carry capacity for the neighborhood and triggers breeding. Within a few years the neighborhood population of cats explode, resulting in complaints to animal control. Generally, animal control doesn’t care about cat problems until complaints arise and then they set about to reduce the population to zero: resetting the population for the cycle to begin again.

A few communities have active Trap, Neuter and Release (TNR) programs to attempt to bring about community wide population stability. Those programs are only as successful as the staff and funding to constantly trap fertile cats. Feral cat colonies exist within communities to attempt to maintain a population stability in small pockets; however, cat owners see those colonies as a dumping ground for their own pets when they decide to abandon them.

You might imagine that finding homes for these “wild cats” might be the biggest issue for animals shelters; but, the disease that they bring into the shelters is the biggest problem. These unvaccinated cats become stressed by trapping and relocation to the shelter that trigger the expression of disease.

It is not uncommon to read about disease outbreaks of Feline Panleukopenia in local animal shelters. These outbreaks are usually the result of animal control personnel loading the shelter with feral cats. The disease is quite contagious and will spread quickly, when people come into the shelter wanting to touch every animal.  In 2016/17, my shelter would get one outbreak under control, only to have animal control bring in more infected cats; we lived from one outbreak to another.  Having animal control and the animal shelter under one department helps the two organization into moving in the right direction.

Most people, including TNR folks, are only worried about rabies, so the other contagious diseases are not addressed in the community. People who allow their cats to go outside should vaccinate their cats as directed by their veterinarian.

Many animal shelters vaccinate animals on intake, but the onset of protection is too slow to prevent an outbreak within the shelter.  Control of shelter disease must start in the community.  A good strategy for people wanting to surrender their pets is to request that the animal is fully vaccinated 30 days prior to surrender.

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Why?

In a few days, I will celebrate one year of retirement.  The past year has allowed me to settle down and reflect on animal welfare as a profession.  I witnessed the era before pitbulls and social media.  This profession is much more challenging today for those who wish to make a career in this profession.  The purpose of this blog is to prepare a person for the world of animal welfare.