AL Pound Kills Freshly Bathed Cat Upon Arrival

Things to do when a Good Samaritan brings a kitty into your animal shelter:

1. Ask the finder the location where the pet was found.
2. Get kitty vaccinated, scanned for a microchip, photographed and logged into your records system.  Get him set up in a cage where every visitor to the shelter can see him.
3. Upload kitty’s photo, description and area where found to your shelter’s website, Facebook page, and any other social media accounts.
4. Assume the cat is a lost pet and start reviewing your shelter’s current lost cat reports as well as Craigslist and the Facebook page for lost pets in your area.  Contact all owners whose descriptions even vaguely match the kitty.
5. Let your ACOs in the field know that anyone going by the area where the cat was found needs to look for Lost Cat fliers and knock on some doors.
6. Hold the kitty at your shelter for the period mandated by state law.
7. If no owner reclaims him, contact anyone who expressed interest in adopting him during his hold period and offer him for adoption.

These tasks clearly take several days and possibly longer to complete.  But the first five should generally be completed within the cat’s first hour or two at the shelter.

Kaitlyn Hughes gave her cat Porkchop a bath one day in January.  Porkchop was a neutered, vaccinated orange tabby cat.  The next day, he slipped out the door without the owner realizing it as she left her apartment.  When she returned home, she figured out what must have happened.  Ms. Hughes put out wet and dry food, water, a toy, and a pair of her shoes hoping to attract Porkchop.  She searched the apartment complex where they lived and began putting up fliers.  A neighbor told her the next morning that he had mistaken Porkchop for a stray and taken him to the Mobile Co pound.  Ms. Hughes immediately went to the pound to reclaim her pet.  It turns out, the Mobile Co pound killed Porkchop less than 10 minutes after receiving him from the Good Sam.

I don’t see any possible explanation for this killing other than someone at the Mobile Co pound was eager to kill Porkchop.  There is no way anyone can claim they did everything they could for him – indeed, they appear to have done nothing at all for him.  I don’t think it’s reasonable to consider the possibility that there was some sort of clerical error or other mix up.  Porkchop was only alive at the pound for a few minutes, hardly enough time to get him confused with another cat.  Nor do I think laziness is a plausible explanation.  We have heard sometimes that shelter staff are too lazy to set up a cage for an incoming pet so instead of doing their job, they will simply take the pet to the kill room.  But in Porkchop’s case, immediate action was taken upon his arrival which doesn’t strike me as the behavior of a lazy person.  I would posit that whoever killed Porkchop  was very eager to do so and the swift death could possibly be described as a thrill kill.  No other explanation strikes me as plausible.

But don’t criticize shelter workers because we all want the same thing and nobody wants to kill pets and people don’t spay-neuter…

Ms. Hughes was understandably distraught over the needless killing of her beloved pet.  Someone at the pound suggested she take home another orange tabby, because he looked just like Porkchop.  Animal Services=Family Services.  Which part of that equation does the Mobile Co pound not get?

(Thanks Clarice for the link.)

The Irresponsible Public Helps Reunite a Family in Memphis

A reader who visited the Memphis pound this month was waiting in the lobby when she saw a senior citizen holding a small dog with grey around the muzzle at the payment window.  The man was telling the MAS employee, “But I don’t have the money, I don’t get my check until the end of the month.”  The woman approached the man to ask him what was going on.

The gentleman explained that his dog has escaped his home and been picked up by a Memphis ACO.  He said he called MAS to ask about reclaiming his dog and was told to come on down and get him.  When he got there, they gave him his dog and sent him to the payment window.  When he got to the window, he was told there was a $55 redemption fee.  He said no one had told him of the $55 fee previously and, since he was a disabled veteran, he could not afford to pay until his check arrived at the end of the month.  The owner had tears in his eyes.  MAS did not offer any type of payment plan or alternative way for the dog to go home with the owner.

The woman offered to pay the fee but MAS refused to accept her check, saying that the name on the check did not match the name of the owner.  She then offered a credit card and they took her money. The woman wrote to me:

The man was very grateful and asked me for my name and address and said he would reimburse me when he got his check. I told him how much I appreciated him serving our country and this was the least I could do. He then said, “You know, my dog is my only friend. I don’t know what I would do without him.” I gave him my phone number and asked that he stay in touch with me and told him we would be friends.

Pet killing facility employees and enablers often tell us the so-called irresponsible public is to blame for the killing of shelter animals.  They claim they are doing the best they can and that no one wants to kill shelter pets.  In this case, the dog in the pound had an owner who came there to take him home.  He just couldn’t afford the redemption fee on that day.  Why would MAS, or any pet killing facility, want to prevent sending a dog out alive, back to his permanent home over a matter of money?  Do they really want dogs like this to take up cage space at the pound and possibly get sick?  Do they want to break up a family over $55?  Would MAS have held the dog until the end of the month and not killed him after the 5 day mandatory hold expired like they do so many others?  And if they did hold the dog, what would the redemption fees have amounted to by then?

And yet it is the irresponsible public who came through for this dog – the owner coming to the pound to immediately reclaim his lost pet and the good Samaritan offering to pay the ransom.  Ordinary people did the right thing here.  Because the pet killing facility wouldn’t.  Thank you irresponsible public, once again.

Animal services=family services.  Any questions?

Even a 12 Year Old Boy Knows It’s Wrong to Hurt a Dog

New Zealand: On Thursday, a 12 year old boy named Damon Boyer-Marwood was walking home from school when he heard a dog crying out in pain.  He found a group of school boys with a dog pinned down to the ground.  The boys were taking turns kicking the dog and hitting her with a cricket bat.  Damon told the boys to stop and they ended up running off.  He picked up the injured dog, carried her to a friend’s house and called the Wellington SPCA.

Via a microchip, the dog was reunited with her owner.  The owner asked to meet Damon in person:

“I want to thank him from my heart, I want to know his face.”

Rose the dog with her grateful owner and Damon, as shown on the TVNZ website.

Everyone involved is applauding Damon’s bravery and action:

Damon’s grandmother Jenny Marwood said she was proud of him. “It makes you wonder what would have happened if he didn’t step in.”

Yes, it makes you wonder.

Permission to Donate a Dollar

The idea behind charitable donations is not that your individual contribution will rescue every shelter pet, save the whales or feed the world.  Unless you fall within the top 1% of income earners and have an extremely generous nature, your donation is a drop in the bucket.  And that’s usually how buckets get filled – one drop at a time.  No drops=empty bucket.

As such, I always like to see organizations making donation pleas which specifically ask for a dollar.  I remember recently a reader posted a link to a plea from Olympic Animal Sanctuary where they asked each FB fan to donate 48 cents.  These sorts of pleas plainly give permission to donors to contribute a small amount of money.  For various reasons, many people seem hesitant to donate small amounts, especially when it’s not a relatively anonymous act (such as dropping change into a donation jar).  If you donate online or by check, your personal information is forever attached to your donation and that seems to unsettle some would-be donors.

I am here to announce that now and forever, you not only have permission to donate a dollar (or cents) to the worthy cause of your choice, but to remind you that your donation is very valuable and much appreciated.  There is no shame in donating money to a good cause.  I don’t know how that notion ever came to be but let’s kill it with fire.  Donating money is a selfless act of kindness and anyone who is able to do it should be proud of their contribution.

99% of us must live within our means and budget our expenses.  In today’s economy, that means many of us have very small amounts of money available to consider for donation.  If you are able to budget a dollar a day/week/month for donation to a charitable organization, good on you.  And thank you.

The Spirit of the Season

In addition to Kapone’s return to his family, a couple of other stolen dogs have been returned to their homes this week.

A seizure alert dog named Bella was returned to the epileptic infant she helps in San Diego.  Police are investigating the possibility that an ex-girlfriend of the baby’s father stole Bella out of spite.  The tipster who called in Bella’s whereabouts refused the reward.

A Pitbull was stolen from a MA dog pound nearly two months ago.  His owners live in CT.  This week, he was returned to an ACO at the pound by two women requesting anonymity who said they wanted the dog to be home with his family for Christmas.  They refused the reward.  Look at the Lexus sized bow the pound put on this dog for the reunion!

(Thank you Arlene for sending me these stories.)

Have you seen any other stories about people doing the right thing for pets this week?

The Unwashed Masses Strike Back: NC

You might recall the story of the Chihuahua owner whose truck was stolen (with his dog Boo’kie inside) recently when he went into the pharmacy.  Good news:  Both the dog and the truck have been recovered.  The truck was spotted by a friend of the owner’s, parked at an apartment complex, but Boo’kie’s return is a pretty uplifting story.

Boo’kie was saved by a woman who was laid off January 1st.  She’s been scraping to get by all year and her house is up for sale.  After seeing the Chihuahua in the road in the rain, she stopped her vehicle, picked him up, brought him home and cooked him a chicken dinner.  The next morning, she began making calls, feeling certain that the dog had an owner who was missing him.  She also took him to her vet for a check.  The vet recognized the dog from the local news story and placed a call to the owner.  While they waited for the owner to arrive at the clinic, the vet’s office gave Boo’kie a new collar and implanted a microchip in him, free of charge.

The owner had offered a $500 reward for the return of Boo’kie since the dog was his faithful companion through some hard times including the death of his wife in 2009 and his ongoing treatment for cancer.  He tried to give the reward money to the good Samaritan who rescued the dog but she refused it, suggesting instead he make a donation to the clinic since they regularly help pets in need.  The owner did that and then took Boo’kie out for a cheeseburger.

So we have a laid off worker willing to pick up a strange dog in the rain and take him home.  She could probably really use $500 but she declines to accept the money.  Then there’s the widower, suffering from cancer, whose dog meant so much to him he was willing to offer a $500 reward he probably couldn’t afford.  And we have a vet clinic, most likely having a hard time in this economy like other businesses, giving away services, which they apparently make a habit of doing.  Is this the “irresponsible public” we hear so much about from kill shelters looking to deflect blame for their needless pet killing?  Dang, I think I’ve got something in my eye.

 

Harper: Where There’s Life, There’s Hope

A man at a chain store parking lot was selling eight-week-old Pitbull puppies for $50 each.  A woman approached him and asked about the moving garbage bag he was holding.  He tried to blow her off but she pressed the issue and he eventually gave her the swimmer puppy that was in the bag.  The Good Samaritan took the puppy to the local shelter where staff determined the puppy should be killed.  Erica Daniel, a foster home provider who was at the shelter at the time the puppy arrived, asked if she could take her home and give her just 24 more hours of life.  Ms. Daniel named the puppy Harper.

Harper at the time of her rescue.

Ms. Daniel made an appointment for euthanasia at a veterinary office for the next day. She decided to do everything she could think of to help Harper, who was stuck in the splayed position seen in the above photo, up until that time:

“The longer she was like that, the more she stayed in that position,” Daniel said. “It felt like rigor mortis — like her legs might break.”
Despite that, Daniel kept massaging Harper’s tight muscles, hoping to alleviate at least some of her stiffness and pain. Within just a few hours, Harper started lifting her head and looking around. Her front legs became more limber as well, so much so that she tried using them to walk and pull herself around.

Daniel’s reaction: “WHOA.”

Ms. Daniel cancelled the euthanasia appointment and took Harper to a vet for second opinion.  Although that vet was not initially hopeful, they decided to conduct the appropriate tests in order to make an informed decision:

And, as it turned out, the rumors of Harper’s demise were greatly exaggerated. Her organs were functioning just fine, and she had no heart murmur or serious brain abnormalities. The medical conditions she did have required treatment — but nothing that warranted putting her to sleep.

Whoa again.  A canine hydrotherapy clinic heard about Harper and offered free swimming and massage therapy.  The pup responded very well and soon developed the ability to walk.  Harper is now 11 weeks old and enjoying being alive.

Harper's face says it all.

Thank you to the kind-hearted woman who cared enough to rescue Harper from the trash bag in the store parking lot.

Thank you to Ms. Daniel who didn’t give up hope, even when the shelter staff wanted to kill Harper.

Thank you to the veterinarian who, despite misgivings about a positive prognosis, conducted the necessary tests to determine if those fears were founded in factual evidence in Harper’s case.

Thank you to the canine hydrotherapy business for donating services to help Harper thrive.

Thank you to everyone who has donated money for Harper’s medical bills and to Ms. Daniel’s organization, Dolly’s Foundation, which rescues bully breeds in need.

The irresponsible public strikes again.

The Unwashed Masses Strike Back – Part 3

I’m sure you are all familiar with the evil public:  Irresponsible pet owners who refuse to neuter their pets and callously force kindly shelter workers to spend their work days killing friendly pets.  You know – those people, a.k.a. all of us.

It is the public’s fault that bad things happen to shelter pets.  Which is why it was so shocking to come across these recent stories of members of the public responding to a need in our communities.  Clearly, these are aberrations, just like the folks in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series:

• This article profiles three home based rescues on Orcas Island, WA.  One focuses on less likely to be adopted senior dogs, another on Dalmatians, and the third networks to save dogs in rural shelters in CA.
• After 25 neglected dogs were rescued from a debris filled home and brought to a NJ shelter, the shelter was “inundated with calls” from people offering to donate, adopt or otherwise help.
• In Georgia, rescuers are raising money to build a shelter so they can help more dogs than the ones they currently house at an area vet clinic.  A local teenager is helping by selling eggs from her pet chickens and donating the money to the shelter.
• A mom in FL visited her local shelter and saw the dogs lying on the cold concrete floor.  She found plans to make dog cots on the internet and sits at her dining room table with her two sons making dozens of durable dog beds out of mesh and PVC.  Volunteers get them delivered to area shelters in need.
• A pet owner in MI was thinking about getting a second dog (in addition to her Chihuahua) when she came across a listing for a 10 year old rescue dog weighing 99 pounds.  She offered to bring him home, sight unseen, thinking he might not have that great of a chance at being adopted.  Provided all goes smoothly at home, she’ll be adopting him permanently.

Let’s be clear:  There are irresponsible people in the world.  Some of them have pets.  Of those, some just need education and a hand up to become responsible pet owners.  Others though, seem to be willfully irresponsible.  They represent a minority with regard to pet owners in general but to some shelter workers, that minority may seem far bigger than it really is due to the nature of their work.  I can understand how someone could lose perspective.

As such, I feel it’s important to remind ourselves that most people are well-intentioned, caring folks who love their pets.  When they learn about a homeless pet in need, they will try to help.

The public is every shelter’s best friend.

That’s why I hate to hear shelter directors blaming “the public” for the killing of healthy/treatable pets.  Imagine if we stopped the blaming, stopped the killing and established a strong relationship with the aim of  making every community a no kill community.  The public has the will.  Will directors of kill shelters join us and help lead the way?

The Unwashed Masses Strike Back – Part 2

I’m sure you are all familiar with the evil public:  Irresponsible pet owners who refuse to neuter their pets and callously force kindly shelter workers to spend their work days killing friendly pets.  You know – those people, a.k.a. all of us.

It is the public’s fault that bad things happen to shelter pets.  Which is why it was so shocking to come across these recent stories of members of the public responding to a need in our communities.  Clearly, these are aberrations, just like the folks in Part 1:

*  A shelter volunteer in GA hated the idea that dogs at her shelter had to sleep on the concrete floor.  She set a goal to put a cot style bed in every single one of the 177 dog runs at the shelter.  Collecting donations from friends and neighbors in the community, she managed to meet her goal.  Many members of the community enclosed a note of thanks with their donations which helped to encourage her along the way.

*  Dianne Prout in VA transports shelter pets away from kill shelters and toward adoption, volunteering her services all over the region:

In the end, her husband is just as dedicated as Prout herself. From fostering 40 cats in their garage, to paying for a new transport van, both Prouts are equally dedicated to saving the world, one dog or cat at a time.

*  In Chesterfield Co, SC, a network of foster homes look after dogs saved from the local kill shelter until they get picked up for transport to NY by Last Chance Animal Rescue.  The foster families get the dogs veterinary care with funds provided by Last Chance so by the time they are transported, the dogs are vaccinated, neutered and ready for new homes.

These are stories of the public responding to shelter pets in need of beds, transportation and temporary housing.  Surely the irresponsible public wouldn’t help shelter pets in other ways – would they?  Stay tuned for Part 3.

The Unwashed Masses Strike Back – Part 1

I’m sure you are all familiar with the evil public:  Irresponsible pet owners who refuse to neuter their pets and callously force kindly shelter workers to spend their work days killing friendly pets.  You know – those people, a.k.a. all of us.

It is the public’s fault that bad things happen to shelter pets.  Which is why it was so shocking to come across these recent stories of members of the public responding to a need in our communities.  Clearly, these are aberrations:

• A lady in CA who, upon hearing of the increase in surrenders at shelters which serve communities impacted by the BP oil spill, mailed six cans of cat food to a LA shelter.
• A woman in NC who saw a story on her local news about an area shelter running low on pet food.  She packed up her car with every bag of food she could squeeze in there and drove to the shelter to donate.
• A pet food salesman in NC who couldn’t stand to see so much perfectly good pet food wasted simply due to things like torn bags or expiration dates while rescue groups and individuals struggled to feed their pets.  He started a non-profit group to keep that pet food from going to waste – and now he has plans to go national.

These are stories of the public responding to pets in need of food.  Surely the wretched public wouldn’t help shelter pets in other ways – would they?  Stay tuned for Part 2.