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Every Day Across the Nation
The article below was originally published in the Spring
2007 issue of
Modern Dog Magazine. It is about the
Whatcom Humane Society
in Bellingham, Washington,
although it could be any of thousands of open-admission shelters
across the nation. We were graciously allowed to reprint the
article here at la-spca.org. As an open-admission shelter we
live the anguish, pain, and inspiration expressed in this
article every day.
Writer’s note:
For three years I have ghostwritten for the Whatcom Humane
Society (WHS), an organization on the front lines of animal
rescue. The stories of the animals arriving at WHS are repeated
in shelters across the U.S. and Canada with only the names and
dates changing. The heroes working and volunteering at animal
shelters do their best to save these abandoned pets in the face
of a staggering overpopulation crisis caused by human
irresponsibility.
Give Me Shelter
Second chances are a gift for abandoned animals
Written by Carreen Maloney
In their seven years, Brewster and Brandi’s biggest crime was to
miss their human guardians too much. Left alone in the backyard
most of the time, separation anxiety set in for the Beagle
brother and sister. Craving the companionship of the pack, the
Beagles bayed in the sharp timbre that earned their breed a
history of hunting duty.
Neighbors complained about the howling, and two weeks before
Christmas, their owner had enough of their lonely cries. The
Beagles were dropped off at the Whatcom Humane Society (WHS) in
northern Washington State, and any interest in their care or
future was surrendered with a single signature on an intake
page.
Like most animals landing at community animal shelters, the
details of Brewster and Brandi’s lives are sketchy. In their
cement kennel, the two dogs bonded since birth move like shadows
of each other. One mature Beagle would be difficult to place,
but a bonded pair is nearly impossible. At the WHS front desk,
customer service staff member Christa DeLano reports that a
Beagle purebred rescue group has been notified about Brewster
and Brandi’s arrival, but like animal rescue groups everywhere,
they are usually full.
“I never realized until I worked here how many people surrender
animals,” says Jessie Pitts, who also works the front desk.
“They come in all shapes and sizes.”
Whatcom Humane Society, located near the Bellingham
International Airport, has animal control contracts with local
governments to serve a population of about 85,000 people, but
the shelter will accept animals surrendered from owners living
anywhere. In 2006 almost 3,300 animals were accepted into the
tiny, dilapidated facility staffed by 16 people. The non-profit
organization is assisted by 75 volunteers. The kennels have no
access to sunshine or fresh air, and barking dogs blast out a
cacophony of noise. Areas for exercising and socializing animals
are nearly non-existent. Most animal shelters (including WHS)
receive no government funding with the exception of what amounts
to break-even animal control contracts. They depend entirely on
donations to survive.
WHS is an open-door shelter accepting every animal without
considering his or her age, health, physical condition and
temperament. The agency’s space limitations also aren’t a
factor. That means making hard choices: euthanize animals, or
risk warehousing them indefinitely.
“We put people in solitary confinement for murder,” says WHS
executive director Penny Cistaro. “How can you call that humane
treatment for an animal?”
Because of rampant overpopulation, “no kill” animal rescue
organizations accept a limited number of animals, admitting only
those they know they can place or house. When no-kill groups are
full, which is often, animals are turned away and they
invariably land at an open-door shelter in the region. The harsh
reality is that there is a drastic shortage of homes for
unwanted companion animals. Statistics aren’t reliably compiled
and tabulated, but animal welfare groups estimate the number of
animals euthanized annually to be as many as nine million.
Animals are surrendered to shelters for a variety of mostly
trivial reasons; at WHS, moving is the most popular reason
cited. Like swinging by to drop an old couch at the garbage
dump, dogs, cats and other pets are left at the shelter on the
way to the next destination. A minor requirement such as paying
a pet damage deposit might motivate a citizen to relinquish a
companion animal. Not having enough time for a pet is also a
popular excuse, even for those turning over cats requiring
little more than food and shelter, DeLano says.
“There’s a constant barrage of animals being dumped for various
reasons,” says Laura Clark, WHS community outreach and humane
education director. “It’s not getting better.”
Clark, a 10-year veteran of shelter work, remembers feeling
shell-shocked after her first interview at a large San Francisco
Bay-area shelter. “I cried all the way home, but I knew this was
the only thing I wanted to do,” she says.
It’s a job that would defeat many animal lovers, but the
successes and happy endings inspire the workers and volunteers
to press on. A call to shelter staff from the family of Pepper,
a 115-pound Chow adopted the previous day, proclaims she is
thriving in her new home. A picture of Sarah, the large
mixed-breed dog adopted recently after spending eight months at
the shelter, is posted in the lobby. Sarah’s head is poking out
the window and her ears are flying in the wind as she takes off
in her new owner’s car. Holiday cards with photographs enclosed
from adopters buoy the spirits of the staff who focus on the
second chances given to forgotten animals.
Against all odds, Beagles Brandi and Brewster found a loving
home. Clark took them to Bellingham’s KAFE radio station, where
the dogs appeared with her on the popular KAFE Kritters spot.
For rescued animals, the morning show is the equivalent of the
Holy Grail. Radio personalities Shari Matthews and Dave Walker
are animal lovers and avid supporters of the shelter’s efforts.
They publicized the Beagles’ plight on air until a listener came
forward to offer them a home together.
Not all visitors to the shelter are surrendering family pets.
One woman stopped by to donate $750 of supplies including beds,
food and toys for the animals, causing the staff to marvel at
her generosity.
“I find this to be an inspiring place,” Clark says. “I don’t
find it to be sad.”
Director Cistaro, who has worked in animal sheltering for 32
years, says it was the first few animals in severe distress she
encountered early in her career as a young field officer that
made a stark impression on her. They helped her realize death
wasn’t the worst fate that could befall an animal. “I have seen
the worst things happen to homeless and stray animals, and I
have seen the pain, torture, suffering and anguish. I would
rather euthanize an animal than see the horrors that can happen
to him when he leaves here.”
Cistaro says it’s a daily battle for shelters to fight against
“hungry puppy syndrome”, referring to the phenomenon of getting
so caught up in feeding and caring for an overwhelming and
endless torrent of homeless animals that little time is left to
dedicate to fundamental community outreach: spaying and
neutering, raising money, humane education, and programs
teaching children and adults that animals are sentient beings
deserving of respect and compassion.
The importance of community outreach programs, particularly the
low-cost Spay Neuter Assistance Program, is illustrated by the
shelter’s new arrivals. As Christmas descends on WHS, seven pit
bull-mix eight-week-old puppies are dropped off. The litter is
so large (11 in all) that staff name them after Santa’s
reindeer: Cupid, Comet, Vixen, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and
Blitzen.
The pups aren’t socialized. Volunteer Katy James shows great
patience and dedication, spending many hours sitting on the
floor of their kennel playing, petting and reassuring. In just
one week they are clamoring to the front of the cage to get
closer to visitors. One by one they are adopted.
Still, staff members and volunteers agree “it’s an emotionally
and physically taxing job. There’s not a day you don’t go home
mentally and physically exhausted,” Clark says. Salaries are
low, and statistics show that the burn-out rate is high,
especially within the first one to two years on the job.
Even the volunteers feel the toll at times. “There are days we
all take turns crying,” says Lynn Graham, who spends two days a
week volunteering at the shelter.
Difficult decisions are made almost every day. As of this
report, WHS was swamped with cats. That’s not unusual. The small
isolation bay is bursting with sick cats, and shelter manager
Dennis Neumann paces the floor and weighs his options. The
shelter has inadequate ventilation – infectious diseases can’t
be stamped out before they spread through the population. If the
percentage of ill cats grows too large, all the cats will be
threatened. Some will be sacrificed for the good of the group.
“I can feel pressure right now,” Neumann says. “All week I’m on
an emotional roller coaster. No one wakes up in the morning and
says they want to kill animals that they love and hope to save.”
It’s chaotic, and the faces of workers and volunteers are
starting to show fatigue as a steady flow of animals comes in
needing help. Down the hall, an aggressive Husky is fed a
meatball stuffed with 14 Valium pills. It’s still not enough to
drop the 90-pound dog so he can be handled by humans. Animal
care technician Sarah Hansen crawls into reach of the dog with
an anesthesia-filled syringe on a pole. Finally the Husky goes
down in a heap. It is now safe for technicians to approach and
euthanize him where he lies in his cement kennel.
The shelter is already overloaded when the 17th cat comes
through the WHS doors carried in a taped-up Home Depot box. Her
previous owners sold their house and left her behind three weeks
earlier. Clark knows this 13-year-old cat won’t be put up for
adoption and informs the new homeowners of her impending fate.
They say they have done all they can, and Clark is consoled that
at least they had the heart to bring the cat to the shelter
rather than turning her out onto the streets to fend for
herself.
The cat doesn’t get checked into a kennel – it would only
prolong the inevitable. There are none left anyway, and the
reality is that an older cat can’t compete for the few available
homes. Potential adopters fear veterinary bills and the prospect
of having to say goodbye in only a few short years. Instead she
is taken down the hall to a small modest room painted peach,
where she is euthanized. There is nowhere else for her to go.
“She died a very peaceful death,” Clark says of the cat,
acknowledging that tough calls like this one are made by shelter
workers every day. “Somebody in some shelter somewhere is
kneeling over a cat like this right now. We’ve figured out a
space for everybody else for now, but if we get more animals in,
difficult decisions will have to be made.”
Once the sodium pentobarbital is injected into her peritoneum (a
sack in a cat’s stomach cavity holding the vital organs), she is
placed inside a cardboard carrier and covered with a blanket to
eliminate light, sound and touch. This blocks stimulus so she
can drift away peacefully. Clark diligently checks each
euthanized animal’s vital signs several times to ensure death is
complete. The body will not go into the freezer until all signs
of life have ceased.
Clark wraps up the cat in a blanket and carries her outside to
the walk-in freezer. Opening the metal door, she gently places
the body into one of the large blue plastic barrels. Most are
filled to the brim with fur corpses. Clark never puts an animal
alone in a barrel, waiting instead for the next that will
inevitably be along shortly. “Sometimes the only thing we can do
is be there at the animal’s final moment.”
Carreen Maloney was a journalist in Canada for 10 years at the
Ottawa Citizen, the Winnipeg Free Press and Business in
Vancouver. She has rescued animals for 15 years. Her experience
served the New Orleans area well, in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina, when she became part of the largest animal rescue
effort in history. She writes about animals and runs
Fuzzy Town,
a U.S.-based toy and pet products company. She can be contacted
at carreen@fuzzytown.com.
FACT BOX
Pet overpopulation crisis
Shelters face flood of homeless animals
There are more than 5,000 animal shelters operating
independently around the U.S. and Canada. National annual
statistics aren’t reliably compiled and tabulated. Animal
welfare organizations working to curb overpopulation can only
estimate lives saved and lost. The following figures were
gathered from several sources, including the Humane Society of
the United States (HSUS) and the American Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA):
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8 to 12 million companion animals land in animal shelters each
year
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5 to 9 million animals are euthanized annually (approximately
50 percent of
dogs entering shelters, and 70 percent of cats)
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Euthanasia rates at shelters can be as high as 80 percent.
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3 to 4 million cats and dogs are adopted from shelters
annually
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From 15 to 30 percent of dogs and 2 to 5 percent of cats at
shelters are reclaimed by their owners
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About 18 percent of owned dogs are obtained from shelters
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25 percent of dogs entering shelters are purebred
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