[violaine]

tammy, a member of my commitee was not exactly quoted the right way- and she is not amused today! anyway, i am going to post the article about the AC shelter. comments AC made about the humane society are not true. i do not mind the he-said-she-said aspects of the article so much [as other people on my team/the citizens face book page seem to mind], because i'm happy the story is out there finally. any mention of an Advisory Board was all i wanted to see, basically because it just makes sense to have one- and there will not be these kind of issues [plus a lot of ordinances can be changed to work in favour of the animals ].

M = Chief Animal Control Officer of the Animal Control Shelter
RB = friend of M

my/our team = tammy, AL, JK, LN, DG.



today -

Animal lovers fighting like cats and dogs
Commissioners to help settle dispute

By W
D, IND- When the county opened its new animal shelter in 2008, it was supposed to be the reward for a years-long struggle to complete the project. Instead it’s turned into a battle between animal control and animal lovers.

AL & JK have started a Facebook page [exposing problems at X Animal Care & Control] After a few months, it has more than 400 fans.

Its creators and supporters have specific complaints about M, X County’s chief animal control officer, and how she runs the shelter. One is that she supposedly doesn’t allow volunteers to work there.

“There are people in the community who want to volunteer,” AL said. “Open your doors and let us volunteer at the shelter that we pay for.”

JK added, “When was the last time anyone begged their employer to work for free? That’s basically what we’re doing. We’re pleading to work for free.”

They also accuse animal control of not doing enough to get their animals adopted and treating them cruelly.

“None of the animals get names; they’re given a number,” AL said. “There are no bios because there are no volunteers to do it.”

Tammy G. claims to have been at the shelter on three occasions when they were spraying the cages with dogs in them. [the reporter left out a lot here] M, {CH AC O} admits they have to clean the pens with animals in them, but says they aren’t left soaking wet all day, like her retractors accuse her of doing. She also cleans the cages during business hours, so the public has the ability to see the process.

“I have nothing to hide, and if I felt like I was doing something inhumane to an animal, don’t you think the vets of this county would’ve stood up and said something a long time ago?” M said.

RB, who ran X Kennel for 30 years, organized an annual car show to help raise funds for a new shelter. He says the $80,000 the X County Humane Society donated to cover the facility’s architectural fees came with the stipulation that the county use a Fort Wayne firm to design the building. But RB says he and others raised concerns over the design, including that there wouldn’t be enough indoor/outdoor runs to move animals out of the cages while they were cleaned. Or that the pens didn’t go all the way to the ceiling, which meant an aggressive dog could potentially climb out. That latter aspect has since been changed.

“Everything we said has come true,” RB said. “The Humane Society shoves this building down our throats, and now they’re complaining about exactly what we told them would happen.”

M {CH AC O} says volunteers have always been welcome at the shelter.

“We used to have a great relationship with the Humane Society,” she said, and many volunteers came from there. But over time the relationship soured. Volunteer attendance would dwindle to nothing, then later M would get requests for volunteers again. Beth Farmer, a former president of the Humane Society, volunteered and did such a good job that M hired her.

“She was the only one who would show up,” M said.

Those complaints extend to what critics say are a lack of listings of the animals available for adoption at the shelter.

“I offered to put their animals (online),” said DG. “They said they don’t allow volunteers period because of liability reasons.”

Since then, however, a page for the shelter, with a listing of available animals, has gone live on the Pet Finder website. It can be found at petfinder.

M said she heard from three people volunteering to create such a website. The person who ultimately created it was the only one who came through, she added. M said she and her staff took photos of all their animals for use on the website. The shelter also prints information on their animals in local newspapers, including the X County F.

“I don’t know what more I can do, but I’m trying,” M said.

Because of this perceived lack of information, her critics say this county’s animal shelter has a too-high euthanasia rate. Some put it as high as 78 percent of the shelter’s animal population. M says when you remove owner-requested euthanasia, it’s more like 44 percent. M has served as an animal control officer for 20 years, and some of her detractors say she’s become too callous to do the work any longer.

“They’re under the impression I intentionally want to do this,” she said. “Do you know how depressing it is to get up every morning, come to work, and have someone bring a pet in to be put down or a stray brought in when there’s no more room? That is not a fun decision for any of my staff. It breaks our hearts. We don’t want to do that.” [she cries at county commissioner meetings or any time she is questioned about the job she is not doing!].

As LN sees it, “There are two functions going on here. There’s animal control, which is getting the strays off the streets. Running the shelter is a whole other ideal. This county has the animal control people running the shelter, and I believe they are two different things.”

County commissioners are set to vote on a resolution instituting an animal control advisory board at Tuesday’s meeting. If approved, it would be comprised of citizens appointed to one-year terms who would make recommendations on the animal shelter’s operation.
Perhaps that will bridge the gap between the two sides. Or maybe RB's advice should be followed:

“If the Humane Society thinks that building is so good, they need to buy it from the county,” he said. “We’ll take that money and build a building that’s usable for an animal shelter. It’s a nice building, but it’s just so impractical.”