Category: Animal Shelter Operations

In addition to the vaccinations that we administer, there are a number of drugs that we should have in our toolbox.  When I started in the animal welfare business, no training was provided in the use of drugs; but, I was fortunate that my first place of employment was in Pullman Washington,  I developed a good working relationship with the Washington State’s Veterinary College and I was trained by the head  anesthesiologist.   Now, training is required for those who use these drugs.

Sodium Pentobarbital is the drug that we least like to use, but it is the only preferred method to administer euthanasia. A number of years ago the supply of drug diminished and for several months the entire country had become no-kill. pharmaceuticals can be a fickle thing and that one incident taught us all to maintain, at least, a six month supply.

Years ago, I got into the habit of pre-tranquilizing my animals for euthanasia.  I wanted the procedure to go as smoothing for the animal, as well as myself.  In those days, my cohorts in the profession called me “drug happy.”  Now, it has become common practice to anesthetize an animal prior to euthanasia.

The same drugs are use both in the shelter and in the field to tranquilize an animal.  Much of the training that you find online is geared towards wildlife, but if you use the drugs that offer the a wide margin of safety, the same drugs are safe on domestic animals.  The rule of thumb is that you use double the clinical dosage in the field to overcome the adrenaline that an animal has in a field setting.

Generally animal control professionals create a cocktail of two or more drugs.  Much of my history of using chemicals, I choose a 5-1 mixture of ketamine and xylazine.  I would create the solution by opening a 10 ml bottle of 100 mg/ml of ketamine and injecting 2 ml of 100 mg/ml of xylazine.  The benefit of this cocktail was that it had a wide safety margin and a long shelf life.  One of the problems with this cocktail is that if you stored loaded tranquilizer darts, you would have to make sure that the cocktail did not crystalize in the needle.

The “bible” on this subject was the Chemical Immobilization in Urban Animal Control Work, by Leon Nielsen.  The book was published by the Wisconsin Humane Society and has not been in print for many, many years.  I found a copy on Amazon.  Also the proceedings for the North American in 1982 produced the Chemical Immobilization of North American Wildlife.  It is much easier to find this book, but if you going to be in the business of chemical capture, both books should be on your shelf.

At this point I should add that a large number of animal control officers prefer to add acepromazine.  Acepromazine is a mild sedative and you might as well just add water to dilute  your cocktail.  It is great to use alone to mildly sedate an animal, but reversal is quick when adrenaline kicks in.

I used a blow dart system that used a 3 ml dart.  I could load the three darts with 1 ml, 2 ml, and 3ml for small, medium, or large dogs.  If I got a very large animal, I could load the blow gun with multiple darts.

Today, animal organizations are moving to using Telazol as their drug of choice.  The advantage of Telazol is that it comes in powder form, so that you can increase its strength by adding less water, which is a good thing when your darts are limited to 3 ml.  The problem with Telazol is that it has a very short shelf life.  I have used the drug on multiple occasions and just prefer the cocktail that I grew up with.

There is one drug that I hesitate to mention: succinylcholine.  It is a paralytic drug and provides the quickest knock down, but they have a very narrow safety margin.  Overdosing an animal administers a horrible death.  I was attending a college lecture in which a wildlife researcher was telling my class about his project of shooting deer with a tranquilizer from a helicopter for his research project.  Being the smartass that I am, I asked him what drug was he using.  He said he was using succinylcholine.  I then asked him what his survival rate was.  He said that he had a fifty percent survival rate.  I then asked him how he felt about being involved in bastard research.  My entire class agreed with me that any research that kills half of its research subjects it not legitimate.

I had only one incident in my career in which I considered using succinylcholine; I got a call that a group of dogs were harassing a deer and that the deer’s hind legs were torn up badly.  Since I was not authorized to use a firearm, I needed a drug that would quickly knock the deer down, so that I could immediately euthanize it.

When considering using chemicals to capture an animal in the field, you need to consider the possibility of loosing a dart.  Each time I shot an animal with a tranquilizer dart, I was more concerned as to where the dart went than the animal.  Trust me, missing darts are hard to find and will give you many sleepless nights.  I was fortunate that I recovered every lost dart.  I had a good team working with me.  If I could not find the dart, I would bring in a pair of professional dart finders: my young son and daughter.  Kids are well suited for finding things on the ground, that is why you never, never, ever want to lose one of your darts.

Tranquilizers are very helpful when you need to handle an aggressive dog for examination or euthanasia.  In the kennel area, you can either use a blowgun or jab-stick.  A jab-stick is just a syringe on the end of a long pole.  You have to use care in dealing with a moving animal so that you don’t inadvertently bend the needle when sticking an animal.  You need to apply enough force to plunge the solution in the syringe into the animal.

Dealing with aggressive animals is one of the elements that makes an animal welfare officer’s job dangerous.  Chemical techniques can greatly lessen that danger.  It also lessens damage to the animal when being captured.

The best disposition at an animal shelter is through adoption, but not every outcome meets our hope. Due to age, illness, behavior, or overcrowding, we are too frequently faced with the need to dispose of an animal that has been brought to the shelter dead or has been euthanized. The four methods of disposal are landfill, rendering, selling them for research and cremation.  I have always said that the respect in which an animal shelter treats there dead animals is an indicator as to how they treat their animals while they were alive.

Burying the animals at the landfill is the cheapest option and least preferred.  Overtime, landfills have stopped accepting animal remains.  The process requires that someone is available upon delivery of the load of animals to dig a hole and cover it up immediately.  But, beyond the additional work, there is a general feeling among community members that pets should not be treated like garbage.

The ability to use rendering plants and local research companies to “repurpose” the animals are becoming rarer and rarer.  But, these are to two options that provide for revenue when selling off your dead animals.  You’ll have to do a little research to see if these options are available and if your community is open to the idea.

One option that should be mentioned is selling your live animals for research.  When I was director of the a Utah animal shelter, the State passed a law requiring animal shelters to make their animals available for research I was opposed to this Pound Seizure principle.  I spend much of my time finding work-a-rounds to prevent the animals in my care to become research subjects.  It is an issue that you may one day face.  No all research on live animals is bad, but who wants to take the chance?

Cremation is the most preferred method of disposal, but it is costly due to the upfront cost of equipment and the ongoing cost of fuel.  In an effort to reduce costs, some “efficient” crematoriums are constructed with the secondary burner below the primary burner, so the heat from one adds to the heat to the other.

Very quickly, crematoriums have two chambers: the primary chamber is where the animals are placed and a secondary chamber to burn the smoke and debris caused during the primary bury; so in other words, you are burning the fumes.  The primary chamber is usually lined with fire brick called a green coat and infrequently needs to be replaced.  In most models, the secondary chamber is in the smoke stack.

There are two problems with the new energy efficient crematoriums:  your staff will have to lift the animals up into the primary chamber that may cause strain when dealing with large animals.  In these models, the secondary chamber is a bricked chamber area under the primary (thus the need to have to lift animals up to the primary chamber).  To reach the secondary chamber, a person has to climb into the primary chamber to access the area for brick replacement underneath.  I am amazed that anyone can perform that task.  Also, the primary chamber is only large enough for a dozen medium sized animals.

The most convenient crematoriums are the walk in units.   Many are large enough for 50 to 100 animals.  We had a couple oddball crematoriums in Wisconsin that only handed 3 to five animals.  Given the size of those units, two were used.  Since one or the other was always down for maintenance, it was nice to have the other as a backup unit.   I suspect that these units had poor secondary burners, because it was always obvious when the units were in use.  Given the smoke and neighborhood complaints,  I suspect these units barely met EPA requirements.  This is something to think about when building a shelter in a residential neighborhood and decide to cremate.  We frequently had an inspector parked outside our shelter watching for visible emissions.  Emissions or not, we were not a very good neighbor; more money should have gone in to the purchase of better units.

A word to the wise.  If you have a crematorium, you might be approached by your local law enforcement and asked to burn a narcotics seizure.  Unless you are eager to pay the cost of constantly green coating your unit, I would turn them down.  Marijuana burns at a much high temperature that biomatter.  There are special units for burning drugs.  If you want to be the good guy, only burn a few kilos at a time with the animals.

If you have a crematorium, you will be asked to perform private cremations.  Obviously, it is too expensive to fire up the crematorium for just one animal.  Usually a private cremation is set aside of the main body of animals and scooped up separately.  Many shelters will use large steel bowls to confine the ashes.  Once the cremation is complete, you either sift out the larger pieces of bone or you put the ashes in a blender so that the ashes look esthetically like “ashes.”  Many shelters have nice bags or boxes they use to return the ashes to the owner.

The biggest problem associated with crematoriums is that the companies that make these units seem to only stay in business a few years.  As you can expect, as the units get older they require more maintenance; but it might become increasingly difficult to find someone to repair them.  It is surprising how many things can go wrong.  I knew a guy that flew around the country from unit to unit repairing crematoriums  after the company went out of business.  He was the last remaining expert.  That was ten years ago.

In an ideal world, I would outsource the cremations, so as to avoid all of the problems that are associated with running your own crematorium.  However, if your volume is too high, even an outside vender may refuse.  This is one aspect that as communities increase their live placements, the need for costly crematoriums become less needed.

As we began expanding our animal placement efforts in Virginia, we saw the added benefit in cost savings to our budget in firing up the crematorium less.

I have always believed that loyalty if the first thing that I should offer as the result of receiving a paycheck.  The security of a steady paycheck should offer plenty of loyalty to those who signed that check.  Many of our new employees do not agree.

Over the years, I have seen an increasing decline in employee loyalty.   Many new employees feel entitled to have a job and have associated employment behaviors to demonstrate that entitlement.  Instead of acting as a team, new employees seem to demand special treatment.  In the last several years, I’ve seen an increase in employees undermining their organization; in small ways, like calling in sick on Fridays or Mondays to extend their weekends; or, in large ways of undermining their supervisors.  It is unfortunate that our hiring processes cannot better identify these people.  A good work ethic seems to have died with the new workforce.

From a political perspective, it is easier to understand how our youth lean towards socialism; in their employment practices, we see them coming to work expecting a paycheck after providing little work.  We are seeing a whole group of people expecting something for nothing.  Fortunately, having managers that are sufficiently diligent in hiring a few good workers to help keep the organization from falling apart; I think, we can partly see how an employee’s love for animals encourages some employees to go the extra mile, if only for the animals.

.It isn’t all doom and gloom, there are wonderful workers out there, it is just becoming harder and harder to find them.

 

I was watching a news program the other day and came to realize that the general public knows very little about working dogs.  It is amazing the number of times that someone will asked if you get an animal hooked on drugs to become a narcotics sniffing dog.  The answer is hell no, that would be really, really stupid.  So, here is the 411 on working dogs.  For the record, I trained military working dogs in the Air Force utilizing sentry dogs, patrol dogs and narcotics dogs.  I later trained and utilized dogs on the Mexican Border looking for narcotics for the Treasury Department.  My dog and I had racked up seizures amounting to two tons of marihuana.

Okay, so back to the dogs; there are basically three types of dogs, patrol dogs, narcotics dogs and bomb dogs.

Patrol dogs are people finders.  They use their sight to detect movement,  their hearing to target noise, and they use smell to detect a person upwind or who have left behind a trail-scent on a path of travel.  These dog’s primary task is to protect their handlers.  In the old days dog were not trained to release from a bite; they would keep biting the suspect until the dog’s handler force the dog to stop.  Let me tell you, I had one dog named Sampson that didn’t like me stopping him from biting.  Sampson taught me to be very quick so that I didn’t find my own hands in this mouth.  Sampson was a sentry dog.  Most dogs today are trained to release on command.  These dogs are called patrol dogs.  The advantage of controlling the dogs by voice prevented two dogs going after the same suspect and then getting into a dog fight over the suspect.  Now, one dog can be called off of the suspect and can be directed to a secondary target or recalled.  Using voice command was a critical aspect of utilizing these dogs.  We went through a phase that I call the “stupid phase” in which police departments would hire trained dogs from Germany.  Yep, you guess it, the dogs were trained in German.  When you are in a tense situation, the first thing you lose is your command of the German language.  Besides, dogs are smart enough to learn English.  Or, just keep your mouth shut and the dog will do what the dog does.

I’ve ALWAYS believed that handlers should train their own dogs.  In the training process the handler and dog form a bond and the handler begins to understand the dog’s world.  Anytime I went to search a building, I would be constantly working the air currents; how is the air moving through the building?  To find drugs or a suspect, it was important to think like a dog and to use your environment to the dog’s best ability.

Narcotics dogs are trained to be aggressive towards narcotics and sees it as a game.  Once the drug is found, the handler throws a toy down to the dog and a game of tug-of war would ensue.  Many years ago the US Customs folks attempted to use small dogs off leash to clear ventilation systems of ships; but, the presence of vertical shafts and keeping the dog from biting into the hidden drugs proved that dog teams must be connected by a leash.  Because the dogs are aggressive towards the drugs, dog handlers would carry three vials of Narcan so as to administer to the dog and/or the handler in the event that the handler had not be watching close enough to stop the dog from biting into the kilo of cocaine and the drug became airborne.  We were directed to get the dog to a veterinarian and then seek treatment for ourselves (thus the third vial).  Fortunately, I never heard of anyone needing to administer the narcotics antidote.

Is it possible to mask the scent of marihuana?  Yes and no, given sufficient time a sufficient number of marihuana particles will rise to the level of detection.  You could experiment and spend the a few years in jail,  or you could just move to a State that has legalized it.  One of the common ways that people would attempt to smuggle marihuana into the United States was putting the drugs inside a spare tire.  But, these damn fools could never sufficiently clean off the smell of marijuana from the exterior of the tire before throwing it into the trunk of the car.  Could the smell escape from the interior of the tire, who know?  All I know is that we were constantly tearing tires apart on the Border.

In most cases, the drivers of the vehicles were just as effective as our dogs in telling us that their cars were loaded.  If a car smelled usually strong of vanilla or baby powder, it was probably loaded.  The Mexican Border gets pretty hot in the summers, cars waiting to enter the Border would start to get hot and the marijuana would begin to bake in the car.  We found that most drug smugglers were not too bright.

Bomb dogs are trained to sit when they smell an explosive substance.  This is one of the reasons that dogs are not trained to search for both narcotics and bombs.  It would become rather annoying to have to call the bomb squad every time your dog alerted on a marihuana joint.  When the dog sits, then, like the narcotics dogs, it becomes playtime.

Portland was my first experience as an Animal Services Director.  It is a first in other ways as well.  Portland was the first County (that’s Multnomah County) to provide protection to gays.  They were first to provide benefits to gay couples as they did to heterosexual couples.

One day, after attending an Human Resources seminar on job protection status, I came to realize that my gay brothers and sisters in government service had taken a giant leap forward in job protection and I had none.  In order to even the playing field, I decided to come out of the closet.  You would have no idea as to how difficult it is for a heterosexual guy to come out of the closet.  I kept insisting that making me prove that I was homosexual was sexual harassment.  When pressed on the issue, I would finally insist that I was a lesbian; I saw myself as a woman who preferred other women.  That was new in those days, but today, people are allow to see themselves as anything… by gender, or ethnicity or ever breed.  I fear that twenty-five years ago, I started a fad.  Fortunately, I was never fired from Multnomah County, so I never had to put my sexual orientation card.

While serving in Multnomah County, I encountered some strange behavior with one of my animal attendants.  It was reported to me that one of my animal attendants was getting himself invited into the homes of single women with young children to take photographs of them and their newly adopted pet.  It seem an odd behavior and I confronted the employee.  He told me that he was doing this off duty and it was none of my business.   I’m usually a pretty calm person, but this guy hit my switch.

I began investigating this person’s life history and discovered that he had previously been a teacher and was fired for having sex with his students.  How the hell didn’t Multnomah County Human Recourses uncover this in this work history.  Anyway, he was now my employee and he was now my responsibility.   I have to admit that our Human Resources Department was absolutely of no use to me.  If I had done it their way, they guy would still be working for the County and molesting children.

But calm minds must prevail.   Since the employee refused to stop meeting with our clients (and their children), I placed him on leave so that he could not access our files.   I sent him to a counselor and after weeks of interviews, the counselor was intimindated by the employee and refused to release his findings.  That didn’t prevent the counselor from sending us a bill for his efforts.  I told the counselor that he had been hired to provide a risk assessment and he failed to do so; if he wanted to see his fees paid, either provide the assessment or take me to court.

I decided to revisit the time that the employee had been a teacher.  Fortunately for me (I guess), one of the students that had been molested had a parent that was a key player at the school.  In talking with that person, I discovered the name of the counselor that the school had used with the employee.  I was fortunate to that the counselor remembered the employee and he was free to give me a risk assessment.  So off to another few weeks of counseling.

The assessment revealed that nothing in the employee’s life had changed, he was as much a risk as he was when molesting school children.  I took all of my findings to our Human Resource Department and they told me to put the employee back on duty… and to watch him.

What the hell?  I explained the danger that this guy presented and all they wanted is for this guy to return to work.  I told them “Hell no, no child is going to be molested on my watch.  If they want to find this guy another job, fine; I’m going to fire him.”  They were not happy with me, but I fired the guy.

The HR guys claim they worked out a severns package to prevent me from being sued.  I told them they has wasted the County’s money, I would have loved to be taken to court by this guy.

This incident, among others in Multnomah County, taught me that sometimes you have to stop listening to “the professionals” in order to maintain the integrity of your organization.  Do what is right and tell “the professionals” workout the paperwork.

Have you ever had a day that you would like to relive?  One of the happiest days of my life was when one of my employees quit to take a job with the police department.  After a few weeks, the police department discovered what I knew all along that the person was a worthless employee.  She could not go into the field alone unless she was following another employee.  It was a funny sight to see two animal control vehicles following one another in North Portland.  After being fired by the police department, she asked for her old job back.

I told her no and the matter went to the County Commission to make the final decision.  Everything was going well until the County’s Legal Department advised me to not say anything bad about the employee.  I have always beat myself up for listening to them.  How can you depict an employees bad performance if you cannot say anything bad?  I was forced to take the employee back and as I learned with the County’s HR department, they don’t have our best interests in mind.  They are just trying to make their own jobs easier.  As you walk the walk of your profession, you’ll have to decide which battles are worth taking on.  Keep in mind that if you are in municipal services, the advice that you receive will only be fifty percent right.  Doing the right thing, frequently comes with a battle.  But it feels good to win them.