Category: Animal Control Operations

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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.

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Working with Veterinarians

While working in Portland Oregon, we discovered the difficulty that our local veterinarians had with animal disposal. We decided to assist them with their need, in exchange for them helping us. We agreed to dispose of their dead animals, if we could bring injured animals in for treatment. The arrangement worked well, in that a veterinary hospital was always in the vicinity when animal control officers picked up injured animals. With only one exception, the program worked very well.

Animal control officers would report back to me that one veterinarian was never available to assist with injured animals. The solution was quite simple, I sent a letter advising the veterinarian that we were discontinuing pickup services at his clinic. Upon receipt of the letter, the veterinarian asked to meet.

In our meeting, he asked how he could make things right. He blamed his staff for rejecting the animals. It just happened that a couple of my officers were investigating an animal cruelty incident and I suggested that he go onsite with the officers to provide field examinations in preparation for court. His assistance would “buy” his way back into the program.

There are many ways that animal control can work together with their local veterinarians; you just need to attend their local meetings to talk things out. In many communities, veterinarians assist their community by having rabies clinics and selling pet licenses. It is surprising what you can do together.

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Animal Cruelty Investigations 101

Laws

We cannot help the animals in need without having the legal authority to act on their behalf. Laws that protect animals are found at all levels of government: federal, State, country, and local. Many of those laws can best be found on the Animal Legal Defense Fund website.

In the midst of saving an animal from cruelty, the investigator should not become so focused on the animal that he/she overshadows that rights of the animal’s owner, keeper, caretaker or tormentor.   Our objective is to save the animal through successful prosecution.  Too often we cut deals with the owner to surrender the animal so as to escape prosecution, only to allow the owner to obtain another animal to harm.  In most cases, investigators can convince a judge to order the defendant to surrender all animals and to not allow the person to have any animals for a specific period of time.  That is our ultimate goal.

We cannot facilitate a successful prosecution without insuring that the suspects rights are upheld.  It does not serve the interest of the animals, if we are negligent in screwing up our legal case against the owner.  We need to have a good understanding of due process, plain view doctrine, and chain of custody.  A good background guide in investigations can be found in an American Humane Operations Guide.

One of the biggest mistakes that we make in an animal cruelty investigation is rushing the animal to treatment before capturing the necessary evidence at the time of the seizure.  You have to be very methodical in your investigation.  If possible, try to have a veterinarian on site as you log your findings.  Whenever possible each animal should be photographed a minimum of three times for the purpose of identification and body condition from the front, side and top.  Each photo needs to be identified so as to preserve them as evidence.  If you get sloppy, you will not be able to prove one animal from another and a good attorney could place doubt on whether your photos are from the same crime scene.

Each animal should be weighed and examined by a veterinarian.  It is helpful (in court testimony) that a veterinarian provide the weight of the animal at the time of the seizure and what an animal of that breed should way at its current age.  While pending a court hearing, it is necessary to continue to weight the animal each day to show the increase of weight under proper care. 

Many times, the owner will surrender the animal(s) to the investigator in hopes of circumventing prosecution.  In these cases, the investigator should proceed with prosecution for the purpose of having the court strip the owner of rights to own another animal and to recover the medical cost of the surrendered animal(s).

I have seen many cases in which the decision to investigate a crime of animal cruelty is decided several days after the animal control organization takes possession of the animal.  The longer the delay, the less valid the animal’s cruelty evaluation becomes.  Whenever you are in doubt, treat an animal’s intake as if preparing for an eventual court appearance.

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The Problem with No Kill

It is a noble cause to find homes for the homeless pets in our communities.  I would never attempt to hinder the adoption of adoptable animals.  In the completion between animal shelters to declare their organizations as no kill, we have created hostilities between organizations.  The No Kill Movement has caused an isolation between adoption organizations.

The dynamics of becoming no kill is quite simple: increase adoptions or decrease animal intakes.  In Florida, our humane society wanted to declare that they were no kill, so as to access grants that are only available to no kill organizations.  In order to accomplish their no kill status, they chose to stop taking in stray animals.  The intakes increase at the public shelter at a time that the shelter was already beyond capacity.

The No Kill Movement is ineffective unless it is viewed from a big picture view.  One organization in a community claiming to be No Kill is worthless if all of the other organizations in that community are overwhelmed.  I am always amazed at the criticism that a public shelter receives from local no kill shelters that refuse to accept animals.

The admission status of a shelter seems to get lost in the condemnation that public animal shelters receive.  It is easy to be a no kill shelter when you can control what animals that you are willing to accept.  It is more difficult to be an open admission shelter in which you are expected to accept any animal that shows up (at any time).  It is easy to become overwhelmed in an open admission shelter.

The pressure on open admission shelters is great and has caused many of them to try no kill tactics.  The most common tactic is to attempt to reduce animal intakes.  They first started by trying to reduce owner surrendered animals.  Pet owners soon saw that in order to give up their pets, they would need to claim that their pets were strays.  Shelters then began to require that people had to make an appointment to surrender an animal.  When appointments were weeks or months out into the future, people saw that it was unreasonable to even attempt to surrender a stray pet.  People were left with releasing the pets in the parking lot of the shelter. 

This strategy takes an odd turn.  Although the shelter refused to accept the animal, they would quickly prosecute an person releasing the animal in their parking lot, charging them with animal abandonment.  All the while, the animal shelter views themselves as the good guy.  The purpose of a public animal shelter is to house stray animals, to keep them from being a nuisance or a danger to the community.  The No Kill Movement has caused communities to have more animals running loose.  It is a sad day when animal control officers have to turn a blind eye to the stray dog that runs out in front of their vehicle, because there are no open kennels in the shelter.

The No Kill Movement has forced people to turn a blind eye to the community problems that created public animal shelters in the first place.  Up until now, the No Kill Movement has only pitted one shelter against another.  The Movement is ineffective until it can announce that an entire community has become No Kill.  However, becoming a No Kill Community is not the end game; when the City of Austin announced it had gained no kill status, all of the surrounding communities began to flood Austin’s shelters with animals from adjacent countries.  Our end game is to become an No Kill Nation.

The bottom line is that the no kill movement can only supply temporary fixes to a problem that demands a permanent solution.  Austin Texas is a good solution of an organization that is in constant crisis as it attempts to hold on to the title of being a no kill city.  Every attempt to throw money at their problem of pet overpopulation just delays the inevitable decision that they epiphany that they will have in discovering that they do not have enough fingers to hold back their leaking dike.

You simply cannot become a no kill city until you gain the cooperation of your community.  Every time that you get to the point of boasting that you have reached the 90 percent save rate, you have signaled your community that they can be conscience free of dumping more pets at your shelter.

As much as the no kill movement wants to decry that the euthanasia is a “shelter problem,” they foolishly overlook the role the role that bad (breeding) pet owners play in the equation.   It is so much easier to blame the small group of animal shelter staff than to take on the entire community or bad pet owners.

No kill has only been successful on a permanent level in communities that embrace each individual’s obligation to perform their responsibility of being good pet owners.  Animal Shelter can pull it off for a short time, if provided sufficient funding and staff to hold back the growing crisis that they face within a community of irresponsible pet owners.

Oddly, the No Kill Movement is offended that animal shelter staff would speak to the source of the problem.  It is easier for their movement to blame the folks who are deal with pet overpopulation problem.  It gets tiring to listen to falsehoods that there is no pet overpopulation; they want everyone to believe that the euthanasia in our animal shelters is a result of lack of imagination on the part of the shelter’s staff.  All the while, pet owners keep beating a path to their doors with the litters of puppies and kittens brought into the world as a result of their negligence.

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Organizational Change

During my career, I had the opportunity to manage operations undergoing major organizational change.  Both cases involved humane societies ending their contract of managing the local public animal shelter.  Both had their own private shelters and used their contract to pick the best animals from the public shelter for adoption in their private shelter.  No adoptions were occurring in the private shelters.  The animals that were not moved to adoption were euthanized.  Both organizations refused to work with outside groups to ease the high euthanasia rate at their public shelters.

The first shelter was in Georgia.  A group of rescues joined together to approach the county to rebid the animal control contract.  With a 90 percent euthanasia rate at the public shelter, something had to change.  I was hired by the rescue groups to oversee the transition.  I was amazed at the phone calls I would get from the board of directors of the humane society claiming that stray dogs are just not suitable for adoption.  They had to feel justified in their management style of the public shelter.  That style lead to outside organizations wanting to colaberate and take over the public animal shelter.

The second shelter was in Virginia.  The humane society was taking critisim because they claimed to be no kill, but failed to calculate in the euthanasias performed through their contract with the local jurisdictions.  They treated each entity as a separate organization, reporting separate statistics: their private shelter had great statistics, but their public shelter had horrible statistics.  They too, had shut the door to outside groups because they saw those groups competing for the best animals and donors.  Trying to maintain positive organizational PR can be a fickle thing.

Both organizations were so busy trying to make themselves look good, that they missed the big picture.  In their effort to “appear” to look, like a progressive no kill organization, they discovered that their communities were a lot smarter than they gave them credit for.  They had become arrogant in their public image and lost out on a large source of public revenue and public good will.

It is a hard game for private rescue groups to stay viable.  In addition to the local competition for donor funding, they have to deal with the constant television ads from national organizations asking for money.  The fact is that people are more likely to donate to an organization that calls its self no kill, and many people have the false assumption that their donations to the national organizations will funnel to their local humane society.  It is easy to see why a local humane society might “stretch” the truth about their live release rate.

It has been my experience that major organizational change occurs when the organization is caught in a lie.  Organizational integrity is the foundation of any organization; if you weaken it, you will loose the support of your community.  It isn’t enough to appear good, you must be good. 

Pet overpopulation is still a real thing in our country.  The solution requires multiple hands in the pot.  I spent most of my career on the public side of running an animal shelter, because I wanted to focus on how I was going to get my animals into new homes and not worry about where the money was going to come from.  I attribute my successes to seeing the benefit of working with rescue groups, even the ones that were difficult.

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Societal Evolution

I have always believed that a person’s integrity was one of the most important attributes of a person’s character.  I learned my value system at a young age and by the time that I had become an Eagle Scout, my value system was fully formed.  I was constantly dismayed at seeing the corrosion of our societal norms.

It should come as no surprise to you that I felt that social media corrupted good people.  Everyone wanted to be “center stage” and self-embellishment led to flat out lying.  Lying became so commonplace that I believe people began believing their own lies.  Lying just became a way of life.

News organizations no longer reported the news, but created the news and no one cared if the facts were right, as long as they fought for higher ratings.  Fake news became a commonly used term and news sources became a forum for reporters to push their own belief system.

One of my biggest failures, as pointed out by one of my employees, was that I placed too much trust in people, I always gave them the benefit of the doubt.  He was right.  I wanted to believe that people treasured their integrity.  I think I cared more for their integrity than they did.

I witnessed people going out of their way to fabricate lies.  I witnessed staff scheming against their supervisor in an effort to bully the supervisor into looking the other way to overlook their own incompetence.  I was dumfounded in getting a call from our HR Department in which staff wanted to draw attention to their supervisor by calling anonymously to HR, claiming that their supervisor(s) returned from lunch with alcohol on their breath; just to make the life of their supervisor miserable.  The claims were obviously false.  I was further dismayed that HR protected these troublemakers by claiming protection under whistleblower policies.  We are becoming an ugly society and societal norms protected these people under First Amendment Rights and Whistleblower policies.  We began to lose our organizational vision because we were constantly putting out infighting fires caused by hateful people.

It is discouraging to watch the daily news to see that we have become a society of over-reacting children in desperate need of parental guidance.  Animal welfare and politics seem to have so much in common.  We daily watch the confrontations that occur and wonder if anyone is going to step up and be the adult. 

This evolution of the degradation of society has taken its toll on me.  Although I have always been an introvert, I’ve now become a recluse.  I keep hoping to see the rise of role models to lead society back to honoring personal intregrity. 

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Diplomacy

Managing an animal shelter demands the greatest diplomacy.  It is not a career in which your personal feelings on issues is welcome, nor is it safe to express them.  You have to hold it in until after you retire.

Even the most constructive words will find offense.  We live in a word in which everyone is hunting for an excuse to be offended.  By some freak of nature, I was passed along the genetic code that made me a “white male.”  To some, those phenotypic characteristics will earn me some labels that are not earned, deserved, or wanted.  So, diplomacy becomes even a greater concern.  To many, the fact that you look a certain way will cause people to shutdown to what you are saying and disreguard your words.

Along with diplomacy, balance is necessary.  Animal welfare is a fringe entity where people live on the outer boundaries.  As much as we try to maintain our footing in the middle, we will be constantly pulled to one fringe or another.  I think it is important to have a basic understand of another person’s position when looking for the proper diplomatic words; you can find it in an overview.

From the above overview animal control and animal welfare sits in the middle of the continuum as animal abuse and animal rights sit on in the fringe.  This fringe will become the groups that you will mostly deal with and communications will become the most difficult.  As you carefully select your words, keep in mind that these folks will not give you any benefit of the doubt and will search our words to find offense. 

This is what makes your career so exciting.  To stay out of trouble during your career, guard your words.  As I mentioned earlier, if you have to “let it out,” write a blog AFTER you retire.  Those of you who are in the profession or thinking of getting into the profession, my guiding words to you is to treat all communication as if it might be on the front page of your local newspaper or circulated on social media, because they probably will.

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The Plight of Backyard Dogs

Our pet’s love for us shows no bounds.  I know this because I have carved a career in animal welfare due to the reckless manner in which people treat their pets.  Let’s face it, if people were responsible pet owners, their would be no need for animal shelters and animal control officers.

Winter is the time that pet owners show their greatest ignorance towards their pets.  A recent article out of Dallas Texas demonstrated this when their local media reported that Dallas was seeing an increase in calls concerning pets being left out in the cold.  It is rare that any of our southern states could become cold enough to impact outdoor pets.

Dogs are social animals, so I am opposed to dogs living outdoors, not because of the effects of weather, but due to meeting their need to socialize with the pack (our household).  Most of my dogs preferred cold weather, after all they have been wearing a coat all year.

I used to have staff freak out about temperatures get down to forty degrees, when many of the animals preferred that temperature.  It is difficult to determine rules as to the temperature range for each animal because they are different.  Most “northern breed” dogs prefer colder weather.  And many shorthaired breeds appear to be cold when it is eighty degrees.

If it is possible, pet owners should show commonsense when dealing with their pets and the weather.  If it is cold enough for your dog’s water to freeze, then it is probably too cold for your dog to be outdoors.  I have lived in many areas that hot weather became an issue and we had to limit the time that an animal could be confined in an animal control vehicle.  If the temperature got to eighty or ninety degrees, we required that the animal be transported directly back to the animal shelter.  If an immediate transport could not be made, the officer was to pull over in the shade and hose down the dog to keep the dog cool.

Most dogs prefer to live in temperature ranges that are cooler that what we humans like, but that is no reason to leave them out in the cold.