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Straying from the past
Straying from the past
 Fewer
dogs and cats being put to death
By STEVE URBON, Standard-Times senior correspondent
DARTMOUTH — Well away from all the cats in their playroom
off the lobby and out of earshot of the dogs yelping in the kennels,
Melinda Ventura leafed through the pages of the logbook in the stark,
quiet euthanasia room at the Humane Society of the SouthCoast, where
she is the director.
The listings — maybe five on busiest days — didn't occupy
more than a dozen or so pages for all of the dogs and cats "put
to sleep" in this brightly lit, sterile-looking chamber since
November 2005, 10 months ago.
At least half, "more like three quarters," she said, carried
the notation, "R/O," meaning, "at the request of
the owner," who in all likelihood had walked, grief-stricken,
into the lobby with their beloved pet. The rest in the book-- a
few each week — were deemed either too sick, too hurt or too
out of control before they were put down.
"We haven't euthanized for space reasons for years," she
said.
It's a sad place. But it's a far cry from two decades ago, when
thousands of mercy killings were conducted every year at the shelter's
former location on MacArthur Drive in New Bedford, a much-unloved
facility that went from state-of-the-art to overrun and obsolete
in only about a decade.
Ms. Ventura worked there in those days, when it was called the Animal
Rescue League of Greater New Bedford, and before the society's move
to a gleaming new campus off Faunce Corner Road.
"The number we get these days is minute compared to when I
started," she said, her voice rising. "In 1987 we were
taking in 10,000 animals a year. ... It was not unusual to take
in 50 or 60 cats in a day. I would ask, 'Where are these animals
coming from?' And it was like that every day. Compared to that,
it's a cakewalk today."
Vivian Gela feels the same way. She hired Ms. Ventura for that job
back in 1987 and, for the last decade, she has headed Animal Advocates,
a low-cost spay and neuter clinic on State Road that can claim a
large share of the credit for the wholesale change in the animal
welfare picture in the region.
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"In our eleven years as of next month," said Ms. Gela,
"we will have spayed or neutered well over 54,000 animals,"
she said.
If that doesn't sound like much over 11 years, she begs the public
to consider.
"It means millions — and that's a lot — that have
gone unborn, that have not wound up in shelter or on the streets.
Fifty-four thousand means millions that have not been born to wind
up in Dumpsters or wind up in the woods or be thrown out on the
streets, living there, becoming feral, dying of starvation or being
delivered in boxes to shelters," she said.
But that's not all that has changed in the last 10 or 20 years.
Veterinary procedures have evolved to the point where it is safe
to spay and neuter puppies and kittens at about 10 weeks, months
earlier than the old practice.
Someone adopting an animal for breeding must look somewhere besides
the shelters. Shelters and agencies have also adopted strict rules
about letting no cat or dog leave the premises without having been
spayed or neutered and the public largely has come to accept that.
There are no more half-remembered pledges to spay or neuter an adopted
animal within a month, which was the old system. No need, therefore,
for nagging follow-up phone calls to pet owners.
And high technology has made it cheap enough to implant microchips
to identify every animal, if the owners would only register the
chips with the database.
Breeding Ground
The world of animal rescue has also branched out. At one time,
the Animal Rescue League was just about the only game in town, and
it simply couldn't keep up with the runaway breeding of cats and
dogs in SouthCoast. It was impossible to find suitable homes for
even a small fraction of so many animals, and across the country,
euthanasia was the rule.
But over the years, dedicated individuals, often unhappy, demoralized
and jaded from the endless mercy killings, broke away from the old
institutions and set up their own. Low-cost spay and neuter clinics
opened their doors, sometimes shabby in their low-rent appearance,
but hardly lacking in enthusiasm — and customers.
No-kill shelters, shunning euthanasia, emerged. Some, such as in
New Bedford, won the Animal Control contracts for municipalities.
Small breed-specific shelters sprang up. Others opened to care for
abandoned cats.
It's a field where personal passions, conflicting philosophies (especially
about euthanasia) and lingering public resentment over the old attitudes
and methods served to splinter the movement in all sorts of directions.
Talk to anyone deeply involved and they will have stories to tell,
especially since many of them had worked in other agencies and shelters.
And while they have often gone their separate ways, what unites
them all is a relentless pursuit of the goals of spaying and neutering
along with cutting down the population of homeless, wild cats and
dogs. Helped by a flow of state aid collected through specialty
license plates, the situation has turned around to the point where
a person looking for a puppy to adopt (as opposed to a grown dog)
is likely to be disappointed by the shelters.
"People just don't bring in boxes of puppies anymore,"
said Ms. Ventura.
Ms. Gela said that the trend is not local, but nationwide. "Ten
years ago, they euthanized 15 to 20 million animals a year,"
she said. "Now it's four to six million."
She said it is also remarkable that strays taken from the street
have changed in those years as well. The number of feral animals
has dwindled, often replaced by animals that are "abandoned
with absolutely nothing wrong." She blamed much of the problem
on landlords who refuse to rent to people with pets.
Forgotten Pets
In New Bedford, that means the great majority of animals collected
by Animal Control Officer Manny Maciel find themselves waiting for
adoption at Forever Paws, a no-kill shelter and clinic in Fall River's
south end.
Forever Paws shares much in common with the Humane Society of the
SouthCoast. They're both housed in brand new facilities complete
with grooming and veterinary examination rooms, counseling rooms
for prospective pet owners, and white-walled rooms with shelves
and scratching posts for the adoptable cats, freeing them from the
confines of steel cages.
But even with a no-kill shelter contracting with the city, some
euthanasia remains necessary. Some animals taken from the streets
are badly injured or very sick and are unclaimed after 10 days.
Those animals are returned to the city, which maintains its own
euthanasia facility and crematorium.
In the case of the Humane Society, which handles animals from Wareham
and Dartmouth, the procedure is done at the facility, which moved
its crematorium from the old location at a cost of $100,000, to
meet all the state regulatory requirements, said Ms. Ventura.
At any of the shelters, the adoption-to-euthaniasia ratio runs about
2-1 or better. Today, animals can wait indefinitely for adoption,
as opposed to the old assembly-line practices that forced a fateful
decision after just a few days.
What frustrates Mr. Maciel in particular is that cats seem to be
regarded with far less concern by their owners than dogs.
"People think cats are disposable. I don't know why, but people
don't cherish them as much as they do dogs," he said.
Various groups are trying to change that, with attempts to persuade
the public to keep cats indoors and to equip them with breakaway
collars so they can be identified.
Still, out of the 485 dogs brought in last year by Mr. Maciel's
department, about 320 were claimed by their owners. Yet, "we
picked up over 568 cats. And out of those, four were claimed."
The Right Fit
Kim Silvertsen, manager of Forever Paws, put particular emphasis
on the efforts her agency makes to ensure cats and dogs are adoptable
and then are matched with the right owners.
Every animal gets a behavioral evaluation to see how well they relate
to people and other animals.
And people are evaluated to steer them away from bad choices. "If
someone has a small apartment upstairs, we'll try to make them understand
that it's a bad idea to have a big dog," she said.
Such counseling was once unheard of. People would simply show up,
pick out an animal, pay a small adoption fee, maybe promise to have
the animal neutered, and leave with it.
Ending that practice a decade or two ago amid a tidal wave of unwanted
animals created a lot of ill will. Some prospective pet owners,
not expecting a multi-page questionnaire about their home life and
who were rejected, came to conclude that animal rights zealots were
telling them that the cat or dog was better off dead than in their
household.
The scene is calmer today. Still, shelters and clinics such as Animal
Advocates take hundreds of phone calls and conduct endless networking
to place animals, often with small shelters out of the immediate
area (Federal Department of Agriculture rules have curbed much interstate
traffic following Hurricane Katrina).
Shelter operators credit the public with getting the message, understanding
the responsibilities and facing up to the costs of animal welfare.
Adoption fees are common, varying widely from $40 to $160 or so,
covering such things as spaying and neutering, vaccinations, heartworm
exams, and microchip implants.
The Humane Society and others also charge fees for people who bring
in their pets to be adopted out or euthanized.
Sometimes, though, circumstances may require bending the rules a
little. Ms. Ventura said she has lately been troubled by a steady
trickle of people who are newly homeless, bringing in their pets
because they can no longer care for them. "They say to us that
they're going to be living out of their car," she said. "So
what are we going to do?"
A big part of the job is solving people's problems with animals,
if not actually handling the animals themselves.
Mr. Gela said that of the 200-300 phone calls her staff answers
each day, about half are routine; the rest involve such things as
arranging for traps for feral cats, or figuring out what to do with
a litter of kittens discovered in the back yard.
"It depends on what they need. We have counselors that are
very highly trained."
'Love and Care'
Despite the dramatic change in the animal welfare picture over
the last 20 years, Ms. Gela said she still sees the need for more
effort, especially in adoptions. "They are not being adopted
quickly enough," she said, adding, "There are shelters
that are doing progressive and aggressive means to adopt animals.
The way to get animals adopted is not to go to your shelter and
wait for somebody. You need to get them out in public. You need
to get them out into malls, into Petco and places like that where
people go."
That is especially so with mature animals, especially dogs, that
usually are harder to place than puppies.
Yet even here, Ms. Ventura saw reason for optimism. People are so
busy these days, she said, that a housebroken dog can be a big advantage.
"People don't want to have to go through all that puppy stuff,"
she said.
For all of the improvements in recent years, though, there is not
much prospect of eliminating the need for euthanasia for the hard
cases of sick, injured or otherwise unadoptable animals.
Mr. Maciel is philosophical about it, and sees it from the perspective
that many, or most, of such strays and feral animals have led harsh
lives. "We think of the animal's life, and its unfortunate
to have to put an animal to sleep in a situation like that,"
he said.
"But our guys are trained in euthanasia and it takes only a
few seconds. The animals won't feel pain or anything like that.
It's a peaceful and humane death. It's done with love and care."
he said.
"We don't know what kind of life that they had prior to this,
but we know that the last five minutes could be the best five minutes
of their whole life."
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/08-06/08-20-06/02topstories.htm
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