Category: Animal Shelter Operations

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Pets in Public

I’ve been out of the animal welfare business for some time, but my ears perk when I see a story about animals.  Several people were injured when bringing their dogs into a Florida Walmart.  I know you get tired of hearing me say that pet owners are the weak link in pet ownership.  Taking your dogs into a grocery store is beyond stupid.  Don’t get excited, I think allowing small children to run loose in stores is also stupid.

We’ve all seen incidents in which we see pets and children running amok in public.  The problem is that if you attempt to bring correction, you only get hostilities in return.   We all know someone who shouldn’t have had children or pets.  The problem with these people is that not only do they learn slowly, they forget fast.  It’ll probably be a few days, and these people will be bringing their pets back in again.  And as in the past, they will be looking the other way when their children or pets start pulling items off the shelves or fouling the aisles.

I know, some of you are saying that these were probably service animals needed by their owners.  Look, the ADA created a scam that is widely abused.  You can go online and buy vests claiming your dog is a service animal.  Knowing how far we tend to take things, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear about a person getting bitten by a rattlesnake that is in public as a service animal.  From my experience as an animal control officer, I would say that 90% of the service animals out there are fake.  Of course, my estimate might be on the low side.

This is one area where we are too tolerant of others.

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Drug Box

I was sitting in my office when one of our veterinary technicians approached me to say that the drug cabinet was unlocked.  Controlled substances must be kept in a locked box in a locked room.  Our veterinarian must have left the cabinet unlocked when she went on vacation—a simple, stupid mistake.

I considered my options and decided that the easiest thing to do was to resecure the cabinet.  Our veterinarian is the only one who has keys to the cabinet, and she would be upset if I touched her drugs.  So, I broke out my lock picks and resecured the cabinet.

When the veterinarian returned to work, I explained what happened.  She apparently was not a very good listener.  I guess that she picked up on drug box and lock picks.  Later that day, three detectives came to talk to me.  We had a good laugh.  Later, I heard that the State Board of Pharmacy issued her a warning letter.  She had contacted the Board about me as well, and that backfired.

Some of your smartest people on staff can make simple mistakes.  Make sure that you are open and honest in all of your dealings, and you’ll be fine.  Most importantly, document everything that you do.  The fact that you document is evidence that your intentions are honest.

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Career Obstacles

Twice in my career, I was hired to take over the animal control program for jurisdictions that had previously been contracted out to the local humane society.  In both of those cases, the humane societies had a very high euthanasia rate.  They saw that having a high kill rate was not conducive to being recognized as a humane organization.  They also knew that so much of the available funding and grants were dedicated to no-kill organizations.  They dropped the anchor that was holding them back from funding sources: running a public animal shelter.

I was constantly surprised that these organizations would then resort to lambasting the shelter while the shelter fought with overpopulation.  Eventually, we were able to bring the euthanasia numbers down to a very respectable number.  Some of the board members of one humane society, seeing our high save rate, would call me and complain that I was saving too many animals that should have been killed.  We live in a fickle world.

The other organization got upset that they no longer had preference for the highly adoptable animals and sought animals outside the area.  This is a common practice in animal welfare; organizations will cry out about high euthanasia rates at their local shelter while bringing animals from outside their area.  Instead of wanting to save the animals in their community, they just want access to the highly adoptable animals that they can sell (adopt).  Yep, I did say “sell” because many humane societies act no differently than a pet store selling animals.  You really can’t blame them. With the high rate of Pitbulls entering our shelters, it becomes increasingly difficult to find adopters.

Once in my career, I was hired to reduce the euthanasia rate of a shelter, only to find that the obstacles to adoption were from the shelter’s staff.   It is difficult to operate an animal shelter when staff oppose allowing people to come into their facility.  It was bad enough for the staff to have to allow pet owners to come into the shelter looking for their lost pets, but it was too much to accept allowing volunteers in.  They wanted to do what they do without being watched.

The purpose of this blog is to show those who enter the field of animal welfare that obstacles await you, but the reward is great.

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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.