Animal Welfare Movement – Page 23 – A perspective from the trenches

November 24, 2019November 24, 2019

Euthanasia Discussion

A few weeks ago, Dave Perry wrote an opinion piece, “End the euphemism for killing unwanted dogs and cats; it’s not euthanasia.” The point that Mr. Perry was trying to make is that the word euthanasia comes from the Greek meaning “good death.” Many definitions go further to suggest that the word means to perform this good death to alleviate pain and suffering. It connotates being a good thing that we administer.

There is nothing good about the fact that we must kill animals because they are born into a world that doesn’t want them. I know, I know, the no-kill world claims that there is no pet surplus; but, they are idiots. The surplus of animals differs from community to community. It is an indicator as to a community’s sensitivity to responsible pet ownership that includes spaying and neutering their animals.

Mr. Perry focused on the usage of the word. But the act of euthanasia or “killing” takes an emotional toll on the animals and on shelter staff. Performing this act speaks to the failure that we, as humans, deal with a problem that is caused by us.

I have to agree with Mr. Perry that there is nothing good about the killing of adoptable animals in our shelters. We can attempt to soften the blow by finding a fancy word to describe our actions, but in the end the animals is dead. All we have done is to bring the least painful method to killing an animal that is stuck in a small cage. Those of us who have worked in animal shelters know that the longer an animal sits in a small cage, the more inhumane the confinement becomes. So the question is to the length of time that an animal must be held in a cage so that you can justify claiming that you are relieving the animal’s pain and suffering to call its death euthanasia. The question that is always asked is how long is too long to hold an animal while calling its confinement humane? That differs from animal to animal and it depends on the enrichment programs that are offered to the animal during its confinement. The fact that we keep an animal in a cage for two years before it begins to become cage crazy and the animal is “euthanized;” we have to ask if we should look back and claim if holding the animal for such a long period of time, only to be euthanized is humane? Probably not, but we are always hopeful for a positive outcome.

The no-kill movement doesn’t want us to blame the people responsible for causing the pet overpopulation problem; but, they want to blame the ones who must clean up the mess.

November 21, 2019November 21, 2019

Street Dogs

The other day, I found myself watching Disney’s new version of Lady and the Tramp. I have no appreciation for Disney’s portrayal of the dogcatcher in any of their movies. Throughout the movie, the dogcatcher was trying to convince everyone (including himself) that in removing all of the “dangerous” street dogs that he was providing a valuable service.

The dogcatcher’s view on street dogs reminded me of a time in my life in which I was asked to oversee the transition of a government contract from one humane organization to another. The first humane organization has carried the contract for many years and refused to work with local dog rescues; and as a result, they have an 80 percent euthanasia rate.

Several of the dog groups got together and created a new humane organization and submitted a bid for the government contract. When they were awarded the contract, they were required to bring in an experienced director to oversee the operation; that is where I come in.

Over a brief period of time, the euthanasia declined sharply. We were eager to tout our success. Throughout my employment, I received numerous calls from the board of directors of the first humane organization lambasting our adoptions, convinced that 90 percent of the stray dogs were not worth saving. To be honest, I was dumbfounded by the idea that these people could be so damn stupid to think that 90 percent of the dogs were a danger to the public. For whatever reasons, they needed to believe that fallacy to justify the killing of the dogs under their watch.

I’d like to say that the first organization was an insignificant organization, but it wasn’t. It had a national following. It always amazed me that an organization could have such a national following when their mission was to kill off all of the stay dogs in their community. Not every stray dog is heroic like Tramp, but you can bet that most of the dogs are worthy of finding new homes.

I am happy to report that the first organization has found its new mission and is doing great things now, in their community. It is a testament that our profession has evolved well.

November 18, 2019

Common Courtesy

One of our most important tasks is to notify pet owners that the animal shelter is in possession of their lost pet. Most pet owners want to be notified as soon as possible, but out of courtesy I never call anyone before 10 AM, unless they have instructed me to do so. Even keeping to this courtesy, I have apologized numerous times to day sleepers. I always figured that day sleepers would think to turn their phones off to ward away unexpected phone calls.

Record of each phone call attempt should be documented in the animal’s record. It is amazing that owners will accuse you of negligence for not calling them, when they are avoiding your phone calls. A record log of your attempts will allay their accusations. Although I hate leaving messages on voicemail, a general script should be used, so that you can copy and paste that script into your computer record. You should also note when leaving a message as to the deadline as to when the pet owner should call you. A large portion of owners will never call before the deadline, so any disposition of the animal should occur a day or two after the deadline. It isn’t a bad idea to repeat your phone call attempts several times each day. You may discover that the pet owner will not be actively looking for their lost pet and how difficult it will be to actually reach them.

If you are able to determine the address of the pet owner, it isn’t a bad idea to send an Animal Control officer to their house to post a notice. We should exhaust ever effort to get a lost pet back to their owner. In most areas of the country, pet owners will appreciate your efforts. If you decide to send out a letter to the owner, make sure you adjust you holding time to accommodate the time necessary for the Post Office to deliver your letter and for the owner to respond. If the letter returns undeliverable, make sure you record that information in the animal’s record as well.

If after a few days of failed attempts of reaching the pet owner, I throw out my common courtesy and begin calling early in the morning or late at night. People have odd schedules and many of them fail to set up voicemail on their phones.

I cannot tell you enough how important it is to record all of your attempts to reach the pet owner; one day you might need to present those records in court to prove that you were not negligent in performing your duties. We live in a world in which the people want to point out negligence in others and not see it in themselves.

November 6, 2019

Free Cats

A couple of the animal shelters in my area are hoping to reduce their overpopulation of cats by offering them free for adoption. One of the advantages of living in the northern States is that we experience one less breeding cycle due to extreme cold weather. That benefit does not seem to hold for this winter. It is odd to see infant kittens entering the shelter in the winter months in which it gives a reprieved to shelters dealing with the excess cats in the community. But, it appears that the cats are adapting.

Many communities face the problem of surplus cats and the cause is a result of our own good intentions. We see a hungry cat at our door, we feed it. As I have always said, “If there is sufficient food, cats will breed.” Well, we must be feeding the hell out of cats.

Every time an animal shelter starts offering “free cats,” someone will come out of the woodwork exclaiming that by doing so, we are devaluing cats. A free cat sends the message that cats have no value and people will treat the cats as having no vlaue. I have never witness anyone mistreating a cat because the cat was free. Animal Shelters face the problem of people giving away free kittens in front of shopping malls. An Animal Shelter would be smart to compete and fill the community with spayed and neutered kittens than to push their community to the free unsterilized cats offered for sale by irresponsible cat owners.

The fact that Animal Shelters are offering cats for free is evidence of the following:

The No Kill Movement is lying to us that there is no pet overpopulation.
Low cost spay/neuter programs are necessary to curb the overpopulation problem.
Trap, neuter and release (TNR) programs are a critical component of reducing the feral cat problem in our communities.
The community needs to understand their role in creating this problem.

I wish the shelters well in their efforts.

November 4, 2019

Broken People

Broken people are those who fail to meet societal norms. They make up many of the hoarders and homeless people of our nation. They live beside us and provide little impact to our society; until, they drag other species into their nightmare.

In every community that I have served, my staff and I have had to deal with animal hoarders. It is the condition in which these animals are kept that force the need for our intervention. Before responding to the residence of a hoarder, it is necessary that animal control officers have access to the proper equipment upon enter the house. The equipment should include latex gloves, foot covers, disposable coveralls, face mask (with the ammonia/methane cartridge), and lots and lots of flea spray. It doesn’t hurt to carry a methane detector to give you probable cause to enter the residence.

In Gainesville Florida, we came upon a hoarding case in which the fire department’s hazmat team refused to enter the house, even in their protective suits. Sometimes it gets that bad. Also in Gainesville, we had to deal with one of the largest cat hoarding cases in the United States in which we had to seize nearly 700 cats. Yes, it gets that bad.

In Salt Lake County, we had quite an effective system in dealing with hoarding cases. We would arrive on scene with law enforcement personnel and health department personnel. Hoarders can give you a difficult time accessing their residence, unless you have a health department official condemning the property. The health department takes lead in returning the house to “living conditions,” that includes removing animals.

In Salt Lake County, I had to deal with a guy living in a delivery truck with five dogs. The conditions inside that vehicle we not fit for man nor beast. I tried to use the guys dogs as leverage to get help for him and his dogs. I could not break through his mental illness. I eventually was forced to seize his dogs and he dedicated his life to calling me every five minutes to condemn me for my actions. He was one of the few people that I encountered that I could find no work arounds. People are allowed to be like him, but laws are in place to prevent him from taking his pets down that path.

The animal welfare profession is a career of working with pet owners to make the lives of their pets better. Because we are working with people, we are going to encounter broken people who will show that they are not capable of taking care of themselves, let alone another animal. It is important to prepare for broken people and their pets.

October 28, 2019

Washing Machine Incident

I recently came across an article about an animal shelter in my area purchasing an industrial washing machine to handle the needs of their shelter’s load of bedding for their animals. Their volunteers were delighted.

This wasn’t the case in Roanoke, in which a local rescue organization was providing volunteers to our shelter and were told to complain about everything. I suspect that they wanted the municipal contract to take over the sheltering operation. So a lot of the complaints from our volunteers just didn’t make sense. The biggest example was when we decided to start adopting animals directly from our shelter; the volunteers all walked out.

But, back to the washing machine. We were attempting to use household washing machines and were constantly wearing out the machines and we had to continuely replace them. It became clear to us that normal household washing machines could not stand up to the load of being used in an animal shelter. I convinced our Board to allow us to buy an industrial washing machine and dryer. The machines would allow us to run larger loads, less frequently. It was a smart decision.

When the volunteers heard about us spending $20k on the machines, they went nuts. They thought that any funds used in the shelter should go directly towards the animals. There was no convincing them that the animal’s lives were improved by sleeping on clean bedding. There was no convincing them of the fact that the industrial washing machines would save money by not having to be constantly replaced.

Roanoke is a reminder that in our business, every decision that you make in this profession is going to be second guessed. Every action by your volunteers might be part of another agenda. And that agenda might not be in the interest of your organization or of the animals. Stay alert.

October 14, 2019

Defining your core values

The core values of an organization is what keeps the committed to driving your boat in the same direction. It gives meaning to the work that you perform. Being united in the same value system keeps your organization on track and together. It is critical that you hire employees that share your same organizational core values.

The core values are just as important and your organization philosophies, mission statement, and statement of purpose; it is the foundation of your organization. Here are some links to aid you in creating your core values:

18 core company values that will shape your company.

Defining your company’s core values: The Complete Guide (with Templates).

You would be surprised as to how the development of your core values will bring your staff together for a common purpose.

October 13, 2019December 16, 2020

Shelter Diets

Each budget cycle you may be faced with determining if you are providing an adequate food source for the animals in your care. Although you are in the business of short term care, your decision on what you feed your animals will determine the stools that your staff will face and the complaints from owners reclaiming their pets. I have always resorted to using mainstay products like Purina and have found that in most cases the food that I was feeding my shelter animals were in all likelihood better than they had been receiving at home.

But, before we start hitting the store shelves, lets see what the experts say. The problem with most animals are that they have delicate constitutions and any change in their diet is going to result in diarrhea. It will usually take a few days for an animal to adjust to a new diet and by that time their stray hold is up and it is time to move the animal into a new home, where they will once again undergo a dietary change. Smart shelter will send home a bag of food that the animal is used to and suggest that the owner stay on that diet. It is a common issue that people take an animal home only to discover their animal has diarrhea and believes that the animal is sick and not as a result that they changed the animal’s diet..

There are several pet food companies that offer products for animal shelters: Hill Pet Food and Purina are the two most common. I have not used these plans because Hill Pet Food demands that you use only their food and that prescription food recommended by your veterinarian has to be approved by their corporate office. It is my responsibility as to what I feed the animals in my shelter and I felt that the Hills program bullied their oversight on us. If you are a municipal organization, your city/county attorney might question their contractional demands. The Purina program only offers their Pro Plan in which the food is more expensive. Both programs seem to fail to recognize the fact that animal shelters work with limited budgets and it is silly to be offering premium food to our pets when in a few days the animal will return home to their usual diet.

You many not be able to afford premium food, but it is a mistake to buy the cheapest food. There is a lot of bad food products out there and having a shelter full of animals with dietary problems will impact your staff’s cleaning time and cause potential adopters to look for a pet at another shelter, thinking that all of your animals are sick. Your food choice can give your organization a bad name. It is important that you make your volunteers aware of the foods that cats should not eat.

October 3, 2019October 14, 2019

Animal Limit Laws

Our species is unable to live a life of moderation. For that reason, laws are made so that our lack of moderation does not adversely effect the quality of life for our neighbors. Pet limit laws are a good example.

Barking dogs is an area in which a pet owner can be in possession of one or more noise nuisance animals and the owner just ignores the adverse effect that their dogs have on their neighbors. Clearly the more uncontrolled animals that a person owns makes the conditions untenable for the neighbors. The fact that pet owners care so little for their neighbors requires that communities create laws that limit the number of animals per household.

The formula is different for each community. Many communities will allow more animals per household if the animals have been spayed or neutered. We’ve even allowed fostering of animals from the local animal shelter to be exempt from the animal count at a specific household.

The formula becomes even more complicated when you are looking at single family housing verses multifamily housing. Exceptions are made for underaged animals, so that infant animals can remain with their mother until such time as they are eating on their own.

Kennel licensing is a method in which you throw out your pet limit law to allow people to house greater numbers of animals. The issuing of kennel licenses are frequently the case of neighborhood disputes. Animal Control Officers should use great care in determining if a person is able to care for a large number of animals without impacting their neighbors.

I have frequently found that in dealing with animal complaints, people who have lived in the neighborhood the longest seem to believe they have more rights than people who have lived in the neighborhood the shortest period of time. They are always shocked to learn that their seniority offers no perks over that of their neighbors.

Animal ownership is one of the major factors that limit the livability of a neighborhood. The more callous the pet owner, the greater need for laws. If pitbull owners had proven themselves more responsible, breed bans would not be considered in communities. It is unfortunate that a few bad pet owners make things harder on everyone else.