The Caswell Co pound in NC has a website that’s rather, uh – brief. The reason I looked it up was that a reader sent me two screengrabs from Facebook which allegedly show puppies at the Caswell Co pound just before they were loaded for transport to NJ. The kennel appears to be wet and a patch of what looks like suds may have washed into the space from beneath the guillotine door. Were there other dogs on the other side of this kennel and if so, were they healthy? Is that diarrhea on the floor? Did these puppies have health certificates for their trip?
If shelters are going to transport vanloads of puppies, it needs to be done legally – that is, in compliance with the laws of every state the dogs are being transported through; and ethically – with attention paid to the health status of the dogs (as well as those they’ve been exposed to) and with careful consideration of the local dogs being displaced by the imports. I hope Caswell Co is attending to the legal and ethical considerations regarding the transport of any pets.
I used to be more in favor of mass transport for shelter pets but I’ve modified my view in the past couple of years. There seems to be no shortage of transport horror stories – pets escaping en route, pets getting sick and dying after arrival, pets who don’t sell quickly being killed or warehoused in sub-standard conditions, etc. Then there is the notion that northern shelters and rescues “need” to import high value pets such as puppies and lapdogs because the ones they have get adopted quickly and all that’s left is big, black mixed breeds, Pitbull types and others who are challenging to adopt out. This idea goes against the most basic tenet of no kill – that every individual pet has a right to live and that right must be protected. If some of these importing shelters and rescues won’t put in the hard work to find the right matches for the least adoptable pets in their own communities, who will?
My best guess is those aren’t “suds”, but sudsy vomited water. It’s symptomatic of allowing a pup to drink without limit while under stress or while excited. “Drink, drink, drink”…”Uh oh, here it comes right back atcha!”.
Transporters — perticularly PAID transporters who do mass transports — ought to know better.
Were they drink-drink-drinking out of that thing that looks like it was used to bathe a horse’s feet?
The link for Caswell County Pound only lists a single phone number, that number is to Animal Control. There are two ACO’s. they never answer the phone. They drive around in brand new trucks. If you leave a message, your lucky if they call back. They are separate from the animal shelter..And I see the shelter has a new web site. http://apscaswell.org/. FB page..https://www.facebook.com/APSCaswell?fref=ts
There Petfinder page lists 28 dogs.. check it out the zip is 27379. a few are puppies which most likely left on the last transport to NJ. Humm.. 28 dogs listed.. 33 puppies left on transport .. all in a shelter that has they have 12 kennels on each side and 3 isolation runs and 5 crates outside. That’s a lot of dogs.. BUT… 3-5 kennels must be kept empty for AC for strays being brought in.
My transport foster, Corky, is one of those individual pets who has a right to live–but he arrived at the TN shelter he came from intact, blind, with an umbilical hernia, and in need of a dental. He had zero chance of being adopted or even offered for adoption at that shelter. Once he was tagged by rescue, though, he got neutered, the hernia repaired, and they even did the dental. He arrived in my home ready to learn how to be a pet.
The two shelters near me do adopt out pit bulls and other Scary Dogs and black dogs, and dogs who have manageable health problems, and they put training time and effort into dogs that arrive with behavior problems. The area rescues don’t all take every kind of dog, but they refer or transfer dogs of types they don’t handle to the groups that do. It’s very common for one rescue to take a dog, to get it out of its situation, and then hand it over to a better equipped group. The pit bull folks will take a small fluffy and hand it over to the folks that like dealing with them, and vice versa.
That’s not to say that no dogs fall through the cracks, but yes, the dogs that come here on transports are filling a real gap and not displacing local pit bulls from potential homes.
It IS important that transports be well run and well coordinated, and when they’re not, that makes problems for everyone, including the local shelters that wind up picking up the pieces. When they are well run, though, they save the lives of the transported dogs, and the comparatively quick and easy adoption fees for most of them help fund the dogs who need more time and work.
I don’t say this is the case everywhere that takes transport dogs, but it’s the case here.
i volunteer at that shelter. What you see looking like soap suds is exactly that — some suds that came under the door while the outer half of that kennel was being washed. The large round container was full of puppy food, which they have finished eating. It gets washed just like your dishes after meals. So do their water dishes. The puppies are up on a raised platform bed with a blanket, which they get wet and dirty quickly and which gets changed. You know puppies piss and poop everywhere.
There is no Caswell County Pound. The Animal Shelter is listed in the phone book. The Animal Control Officers work for the County Manager and have a separate phone number for the building where they are located.
The transported puppies go in paper-lined wire cages in an air conditioned, heated van. The rescuer has found that if they can see each other they are more content in transit, so she does not use plastic crates. Each dog is washed, wormed, health inspected by a local vet, listed on legal, official health certificate for transport to designated state, and there are stops to change paper in cages. The transporter is the rescuer, and she is not paid. She is ethical and well-established.
This photo shows the inside kennel section before cleaning. As soon as the outside part is washed and has some time to dry, the puppies will be moved there and the inside cleaned.
These puppies are alive today, because we are trying. The snarky tone of this article and the generalized chatter about out of state transport is doing zero to help.
We have a total county population of 25,000, so there is no way to adopt out everything here. It is a conservative rural area where people are accustomed to letting dogs run free. That is changing, but does not stop the breeding or the dog fighters in the region. The numbers regarding how many runs and how many dogs are meaningless. Yes there are 16 runs. Some have one dog, some have two, or even three small dogs, while some have a litter of puppies. Sometimes, if we are full, the director can get fosters to hold litters of puppies till the day of transport so they never even see the inside of the shelter. Keeps they away from possible disease, and they are vaccinated and vetted separately. Some kennels are legally required to be kept available for the Sheriff’s department in case of rabies, dog bites, legal issues, evidence, and custody/ownership problems. We have no choice on that.
Come visit one afternoon.
I’d like to know who the vet is that now comes to the shelter to do the health exams.
In June of 2010 I began my fostering of two of this shelters dogs so they wouldn’t be put down. Progie and Bella Bear. Oct, 2010 I adopted Progie and Bella Bear was put on the transport your talking about heading to NJ/NY. I was there when Dr, Fuller came to do the so-called health inspections/exams. All he did was walk around, look at the dogs from a distance. He never picked up or touch any of the animals. I was there.. I had Bella on a leash, waiting for her turn to be put in the van. He only looked at Bella Bear.. he never touched her, he never looked at my records of her shots/vetting. So who does the health certificates now?