Category: Animal Shelter Operations

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Audible Scam

The other day, I had a charge appear on my credit card from Audible for $47.70.   I monitor my credit card activity closely and knew that this was a fraudulent charge.  But, before I could do anything, I had to wait for the charge to clear my bank.  During my wait, Audible charged me the same fee again.  After three days of waiting, I contacted the bank and was advised that they would cancel my card and investigate the charges.  I was hoping for the simple route to block charges from Audible and forget about it.  I discovered that wasn’t an option.

I contacted Audible and discovered that I have an account with them, but I am not a member.  Since Audible is an Amazon Company, Amazon shared my information.  Although I had an account with Audible, I was not a member and didn’t have any purchases with them.  A call taker admitted that my credit card was associated with another account, but she was very protective of that account and refused to provide any information.  She generously offered to help me if I could provide the first name of the fraudster.  I asked her if she really thought that I might know the person fraudulently using my credit card.  I explained to her that most victims of online fraud don’t know the perpetrator.   She was neither willing to reverse the charge nor stop any future charges against my card.  She was no help; she seemed more intent on keeping the criminal safe.  Something we are seeing more and more in today’s society.

It doesn’t have to be this way.  Why are companies in bed with the criminals?  Granted, they are not willful participants, but they provide no protection for those who are experiencing fraud.  The impression that I got from Audible was that I’m a forgetful grandparent and gave my card number to a grandchild to commit fraud against me.  I’ll have to admit that my memory is failing, but we are not there yet.  It is no wonder that scammers are so successful because companies like Audible do nothing to help the victims of crime.

If Audible wanted to help, they would immediately say, “Yes, we see that your credit card is associated with another account.  If you don’t authorize that, we will reverse the charges and stop any further charges on that card.”  But, instead, they say, “Yes, we see that your card is associated with another account, but there is nothing that we are willing to do about that.”  PERIOD!

Even when I am no longer able to read, I will never pay for anything on Audible.  I’m only posting this as a record that I can refer to Audible in the future.

So, why am I calling this an Audible Scam?  Once I notified Audible that they were allowing my credit card to be used freely on their website.  They refused to do anything about it.  Once notified of the fraud, they failed to take action, causing them to become participants in the fraud.

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Unfunded Mandates

One of the things that irritates me the most in our profession is states issuing unfunded mandates.  Animal control services are funded at a local level, they receive no funding from their state.  But that doesn’t stop the states from telling us how animal control should operate.

California, of course, is one of the first to butt its nose into our business.  The mandates issued by California made it impossible for humane societies to continue their contracts with government to provide housing. As with everything that California does, it created a crisis for the housing of animals.  It took years to eventually throw out the mandate, but a lot of damage was done in the meantime.

Delaware created a mandate that animal shelters could not euthanize animals unless the shelter was beyond capacity.  They gave no thought to an animal control officer bringing in strays, but finding all of the kennels full.  They’d have to sit around waiting for someone to euthanize an animal so that they could find cage space for the new arrival.  I think you can see the stupidity of this mandate.

I climbed back on this bandwagon when I discovered that Utah was in the process of putting controls on animal shelters when dispositioning their animals.  If a rescue showed interest in an animal, the shelter was forced to hold the animal.  Anyone with any brains can see the problem with this.

If states are going to create financial hardships on animal shelters, they should give the shelters funding for the costs associated with their mandates.  Of course, they never do.  And they are unable to think through the problems that they cause.  States should just stay out of business that are provided at the county or city level.  They know nothing of our business and should not cower to the animal rights groups that have their ear.

 

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Microchips

I recently got a news feed claiming that one of the largest microchip registries, Save This Life, went out of business, taking their registry with them.  Frankly, I’ve never heard of Save This Life, but it makes the point that without a registry, a microchip is useless.  But a registry is only one problem with microchips; there are many, many others.

I’ve always preached that a microchip should never be the primary identification for an animal.  Here is why:

  1. Many microchip vendors leave it up to the pet owner to complete the registration process. Pet owners are the weakest link in pet ownership.  When the owner fails to register their pet’s microchip, animal shelters depend on the vendor to give insight as to who purchased the microchip.  Many veterinarians will sell microchips, but refuse to maintain records as to who they sold it to.  Veterinarians fail to recognize that their client is the weakest link; they, in turn, are the second weakest link.
  2. Microchips operate on various technologies. As such, for years, it was nearly impossible to find microchip scanners that could read all of the microchips on the market.  One manufacturer encrypted their chips so that scanners from other manufacturers could not read them.  Even after the initial fallout and universal scanners became available, the scanners could not read all of the microchip frequencies at the same time.  Each scan had to be performed slowly, so as to give the scanner time to scan through all of the various frequencies.  It became quite easy to miss a microchip because a shelter worker scanned too quickly.
  3. Microchips are implanted in the shoulder area of an animal. Those scanning would know where to scan for the chip, but microchips have a bad habit of migrating.  I once found a microchip in the front paw of a Great Dane.  That microchip had migrated nearly 3 feet.  Due to this migration and the complications with scanners, many shelters created protocols to scan an animal at least three times during its stay at the shelter.  It would be scanned at intake, during its medical checkup, and then just prior to disposition.  This was as foolproof as we could make it.  And yet, it is far from perfect.  The problem with microchips is that you never know that you have missed them.

Given that pet owners are the weakest link in pet ownership.  Many communities changed from using tags for licensing and converted over to microchips.  I’ve always believed that was a very bad idea.  Having only a microchip as identification is very close to having no identification on the pet.  But most shelters will tell you that most pets come into the shelter with no identification at all.  So, a microchip, although a poor identification, is better than none at all.  Animal Shelters would do well to record microchips in their own shelter database system.

In Jacksonville, Florida, I witnessed an incident in which one of our City Council members had microchipped her pet and came to believe that having a microchip took away any worry of her pet running loose.  She had this notion that if her pet got loose, it would magically reappear in her yard.  There was no need to look for her pet herself.  Not everyone is this stupid, but you would be surprised at how many are.

The best identification is an ID tag.  For this identification to work, the tag must be legible and on the pet.  It should contain the owner’s name, address, and phone number.  It is important that the phone number contains the area code (I’ll explain later).

The second-best identification is the pet’s license tag.  As with the ID tag, it is only good if it is on the pet.  The license also evidences that the pet is vaccinated for rabies.  The people who issue these tags should also put their area code on them.  I once had a dog come in with a license tag from Jefferson County.  The tag failed to provide the area code or the state in which the license was issued.  I discovered that there were over a dozen Jefferson Counties in the United States.  I searched State by State, looking for the dog’s owners.  In addition to the missing information, the tag had also expired.  I discovered that many communities only keep the records for the current licensing period.  After hours of searching, the tag proved to be worthless.  I never found the owner.

At one point in my career, tattooing was a thing.  The problem with tattoos is that the ink becomes obscured, and there has never been a good system to register them.  It seems that we have come full circle since registration became the problem for microchips and government-issued tags.

So, you do everything right, and your pet is wearing a collar and tags.  But, the first person who finds your pet has bad eyesight and removes the collar to get a better look, only to have the pet escape from them while they are holding the pet’s lifeline in their hands.  This is why the microchip, all be it a poor form of pet identification, is there for us.

Dog owners would do well to ask their pet licensing provider to add their microchip information when licensing their pet.  It wouldn’t hurt to make a note to review the information once a year to make sure the information remains correct.  You would be surprised (or maybe you wouldn’t) that the major problem with microchip registrations is the failure of the pet owner (hint: the weakest link) to keep the microchip registration information current.  I used to send letters to the last address on file, looking for the pet owner.  The problem with that is that should the letter ever catch up with the owner, the pet’s stray holding time is long over.  Animal shelters have to face the problem of keeping a pet in an overcrowded shelter in hopes of its owner eventually coming forward or placing the pet into a new home.  It is common in our business that the owner will come forward months later after their pet has been adopted out.

My rule of thumb is that the law gives ownership of the pet to the animal shelter after the stray holding time.  The shelter passes the ownership of the pet to the adopter.  It isn’t the shelter’s right to try to take back the animal when its “previous owner” shows up.  I leave that decision up to the new owner.  If you agree with this philosophy, then in your next ordinances rewrite, you should make pet ownership information exempt from Freedom of Information Requests; otherwise, your adopters will be plagued with bullying from a previous owner.  It will also save you from local vendors asking for a copy of your licensing data.

A smart shelter employee will document every attempt at scanning for a microchip.  If you are unable to scan due to a broken scanner or a fractious animal, make sure you document that as well.  One day, you will have a pet owner wanting to sue you for failure to promptly return their pet to you.  Document everything that you do.

On intake, report whether the animal has a collar or lacks a collar.  Each time you scan the animal document it.  If you discover a microchip, record every attempt of attempting to reach the owner.  Document phone call attempts, document letters that you mail out, and even document if the letter is returned.  Do this because one day you might be in court describing to a judge what efforts you made to locate the owner.

I once discovered that I had five potential addresses for a suspected pet owner.  I mailed letters to each address, and if one of the addressees contacted me to say that they weren’t the owner, I documented that.  If the address is in your jurisdiction, send out an officer to leave a door hanger…. You got it, document that as well.

If you luck out and find the pet owner, give them a “drop dead date”  (a deadline) by which they must appear at your shelter.  You want them to know that you are unable to keep their animal indefinitely.  If you have contacted the owner, always keep the animal a day or two beyond the date that you gave the owner.  We live in a time in which people like to push their limits.  It is better that you report that you kept the animal past the deadline when you are called before a judge.  Also, bring a copy of the ordinance that gives you authority to dispose of stray/unwanted pets.

I have to be honest; I was never called into court over a pet ownership issue.  But, because I documented everything, I slept better at night.

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Shelter Music

Staff came to me asking about playing music in the kennels for the dogs.  I told them that it was a good idea.  My only requirement was that they play only Enya.  I feared that if the dogs had to listen to the music enjoyed by my staff, they would only hear rap music.  The idea of providing background music is to calm the animals.  I don’t know about you, but rap music only makes me angry.

I seem to remember that the kennels became quieter.  My memory isn’t what it once was, so I can’t say that the effect of the music was real or imagined.  I can’t remember whether my staff enjoyed it either.  But I have fond memories of it.  I guess that is what counts.  The truth is that Enya is always better than hearing dogs bark.  I am sure the dogs thanked me for not subjecting them to rap.

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As if they are my own.

I recently had an Amazon delivery, and I watched the camera feed of the driver dropping my package in front of my door.  It was a careless act.  Then it dawned on me that one of the most important aspects of working in an animal shelter is treating all the animals as if they were your own.

When an animal enters your shelter, you take on the important task of caring for that animal.  One of the best rules for caring for a lost pet is to treat it as if it were your own.  It makes providing care much easier.  One of the hardest tasks in caring for shelter animals is deciding when to provide medical care.  Too often, we provide or withhold care depending on what others think we should do.  The bottom line is providing the care that you would provide for your own pet.

This extends to animals in your foster care program too.  I’ve had to remove people from fostering animals because every small incident with the pet led to a veterinary visit.  It is amazing how much money is lost because a foster care person is over-cautious.  The trick to pet care is common sense.  You’d be amazed at the number of people who don’t have it.  They make poor staff picks and poor foster care people.

Of course, you will be dealing with a lot of animals that come into your shelter due to the poor care given by their owners.  But the rule in your shelter is not to care for them as their owner did, but as you would do if they were your pet.

Fortunately, nothing was broken in the delivery that started this page, but I am over-cautious not to drop any animals in my care.  If someone ever criticizes you for the care you provide your animals, you can reply, “I treat them as if they are my own.”  This philosophy is a good one to follow in other lines of work as well.

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The first question that you should ask a potential hire.

I just finished watching a movie, What is a Woman?  I saw Matt Walsh traveling our country in an attempt to get “experts” to define: what a woman is.  It wasn’t until he traveled to a remote African tribe that he found his answer.  The tribe considered him pretty stupid to even ask the question.  They all agreed that they were better off in their remote tribe than living in America.

Half of our country cannot define a woman.  It is this half of society that we don’t want to hire in our profession.  We spend a lot of time attempting to describe an animal so that it can properly be found by its owner.  It is difficult enough that we confuse breeds; but if we can’t identify the sex (or gender) of the animal, we might as well just turn all of the dogs (and cats) loose to find their own way home.

It is also members of this group that will accept that a person can be a dog or cat.   That’s right, people are now identifying as animals.  You’ll have to deal with that when someone comes into your shelter claiming to identify as a dog.   You’ll have to decide as to whether you require a license or neutering.

The current dysphoria that we have with gender will eventually find its way to animal shelters.  Suggesting that we use a binary system to identify our animals will cause employee stress, given today’s society.  So, the best way to handle this is to form committees to decide the sex of an animal.

I am reminded that in Roanoke the volunteers insisted that a dog was a Great Dane, because they hated when I referred to a dog as being a Pitbull.  I can’t blame them, 70% of our dogs were Pitbulls.  I agreed to send the dog’s DNA for testing.  Guess what?  The dog was genetically a Pitbull.  100%!

Fortunately, determining the sex of an animal is pretty simple when you look under the hood and are honest with what you see.  Hint:  penis = male.

So, in case you are wondering: a woman is an adult female (with the equipment necessary for birthing a baby).  Sometimes asks for help opening a jar of pickles.  Hint: no penis = female.

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Cat Colonies

One of the newer strategies in reaching a no-kill quota is to remove surrendered cats from an animal shelter and release them into community cat colonies.  The notion is that it is better to allow them a chance to live wild than to kill them.  This strategy is good for the shelter’s statistics by allowing the shelter to show them in the live release column.

At odds with this strategy is the placement of the cats into circumstances in which the cats might die from harsh winter weather or be eaten by coyotes.  Either way, the cats’ deaths do not negatively impact the shelter’s statistics.  The more cats you remove from the shelter, the better the live release rate becomes.  The bad news is that not everyone will believe that this is a humane solution.  The good news is that no matter how much the cats suffer in death, the shelter statistics will look good.

Even if the shelter is maintaining the colony as it should by feeding the cats off of the ground and creating escape routes to keep the cats safe, the colony is going to naturally attract wildlife into the area.  The colony will become an attractant for racoons, skunks and coyotes.

Areas that did not have to deal with nuisance wildlife will begin to experience problems.  It is easy to convince a community to ignore minor wildlife intrusions, but as the cat colonies grow, the nuisances caused by wildlife will also grow.

A shelter’s no-kill strategy can lead to neighborhood pets being killed due to the attracting colony.  The problem with dealing with Mother Nature is that every time humans become involved, we tend to make things worse.  We never seem to be able to see the bigger picture.

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Pet Limit Laws

As with most laws, pet limit laws exist because some people lack the common sense to understand their limits. This blog is the result of a seizure of 97 dogs in our community. The notion of pet limit laws is the belief that as the number of animals that increase at a residence, the issue of animal-related complaints rise. Many communities enact pet limits in preparation for the idiots who come into their communities lacking the necessary common sense needed when people group together.

Pet limit laws can be found either in the local zoning code or in the animal control ordinance. Most limit the number of pets to less than a half dozen (over six months of age). As an incentive, many communities allow people to own more sterile pets than fertile ones. The idea is that people who spay/neuter their pets are generally more responsible than those who don’t.  Exemptions are often given to people who are fostering animals for the animal shelter.

A large number of pets at a specific residence increases noise related to pets and odor related to pet waste. Given these issues, it is understandable that people make animals one of the issues that are most reported to city/county councils. The worst part of people owning too many pets is when the government has to step in. Most public animal shelters are unprepared for a large influx of animals. So it comes down to one person’s lack of common sense creates a crisis for those who have to deal with it.

If I sound a little harsh here, it is because I have dealt with my share of pet seizures resulting from stupid people owning pets. From a professional perspective, there are a lot more stupid people in our communities than you could ever imagine; unless you are living next to one, and then you know.

It will be interesting to see how our community deals with this latest seizure. Will they address pet limits due to a single idiot, or do we need a few more incidents of our shelters being overburdened?

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Am I getting Racist?

Ever since the BLM riots, I have worried that my attitude towards blacks has gotten worse. I spent much time trying to walk myself back from this racist abyss. And then I found bloggers on YouTube who shared my sentiments. They were all black, but they too were feeling Black Fatigue.

These black bloggers were feeling the same way about other blacks, but being non-white, they were free to talk about it. They, too, want to avoid what they call “ghetto blacks.” They helped me realize that I was no more racist than they were. I found kindred spirits. Everything that I was feeling about ghetto blacks was also being felt by blacks. It wasn’t a racial thing at all, it is just a feeling that good people have towards bad people; skin color plays no part. But to be fair, we have plenty of ghetto whites as well.

So, if BLM turned you into a racist, many blacks feel the same way that you do. BLM just widened the gulf between blacks and other races, including their own.

If you have been watching the news, you’ll see that the ICE protesters are following the BLM script: protest for a few hours, light a few cars on fire, then loot a few stores before heading home. And that is what makes, as the media says, a “mostly peaceful protest.” Just as BLM opened my eyes to ghetto blacks, the ICE protests have opened my eyes to the threat of illegal immigrants; it is funny how looting does that to a person.

If your cause is centered around inflicting harm on a community, you’ll never get many of us to see your cause of being anything other than domestic terrorism.

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Dog Bites on Postal Carriers

A couple of months ago, I received a postcard from the Post Office reminding residents of the need to secure their pets; dog bites rise in the summer months. Today, our local media reports that there has been a spike in the number of postal carriers being bitten by dogs. Two factors are present when dog bites occur: hot weather that makes dogs short-tempered, and irresponsible dog owners who let their dogs run loose. There isn’t much of a cure for either of these two factors…. Or is there?

I have always believed that the Postal Service holds the greatest cure to end the stupidity factor. They only need to stop mail service to the neighborhood with loose aggressive dogs, and the dog owners’ neighbors will begin the education process. In most cases, the dog owner sees his (or her) error and will comply with the neighborhood norms. If that doesn’t work, then the dog becomes a victim of the neighborhood by either someone holding the dog for Animal Control to pick up or by “accidentally” digesting food that disagrees with the dog.  Having the option of having animal control in the community is a good step in reducing incidents of extreme justice.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of pet owners who cannot overcome their stupidity and thus secures the careers of many animal control personnel. I used to meet up with postal carriers to check in with them about potential problems on their routes. No one knows the problem of loose dogs better than postal carriers: work with them to keep the mail flowing.

In communities where animal control is underfunded, I have heard about neighborhoods in which people carry weapons when going out for a neighborly walk.  Usually, the problem has to persist when neighbors resort to such activities; and yet,  the owner acts shocked when one of their dogs is the recipient of a neighbor’s bullet.   Clueless is right up there with stupidity for such people.