Animal Control Watch

So, Monday this was posed to Austin Rescue (with permission to crosspost):

PERMISSION TO CROSS POST

Last Friday Bev Gainer (GSD Rescue of Central Texas) and I took an
emaciated young female Cattle Dog mix and her 6 nursing pups (about 4 weeks
old) from a woman who was unable to care for them. Bobbi, the mother dog,
had lived her entire life on a chain.

When I first saw her, the chain was so tangled she couldn’t even reach the
front of the dog house she had and a callous had formed on her throat from
rubbing on the chain. There was no food, either outside or in the woman’s
house. The only available water was in a black rubber pan, too filthy to
drink. It was already 90 degrees. Bobbi’s pups were under a ramshackle
shed and I had to crawl in the dirt to get them out. I gave a grateful
Bobbi some kibble and water before we left.

Neither Bev or I had any plan; we only knew that this starving mama and her
babies could not be left in this nightmare. What we didn’t know was that
Bobbi’s nightmare had only just begun.

Desperate to find safe haven for this little family, we went to Austin
Humane Society and Bev begged them to come see the sweet and affectionate
Bobbi and her adorable babies. Upon seeing them, Austin Humane Society
agreed they were wonderful and we began intake.

Bobbi’s temperature registered 104.3 and she was terribly dehydrated.
Without blinking an eye, Bobbi submitted to the administration of 200 cc of
sub-q fluids, Pyrantel and a blood draw for her heartworm test. We then
took all 7 dogs to the back to their new kennel home, cool, clean and dry.
Bev and I gratefully each gave sizeable donations and left with wings on our
hearts.

Saturday, yesterday, Bev received a call from Austin Humane saying that
Bobbi had passed all of her temperament evaluation. All, that is, except
for the Assess-A-Hand test. This starving dog had snapped at a rubber hand
trying to take food away from her. Bobbi was deemed unadoptable and Austin
Humane agreed to allow her to stay for a few days while Bev and I tried to
find other accommodations for her.

We thought Bobbi was temporarily safe with intelligent, humane people. But
this morning Bev called me to say she had received an email saying that we
had until 4 PM TODAY to get her out or she would be euthanized! They said
she was not safe for their staff.

Frantic, I raced down to see her and the pups. I was shocked to find that,
not only would they not allow me to see her unless I was taking her back,
but that all of her still-nursing pups had been taken from her and placed in
foster homes!

To say I was irate would be an understatement. To think that this place,
where we trust people to provide humane care for animals, would take a
stressed, starving, frightened dog, take her pups away and then expect her
to pass a food test is incomprehensible. To think that they would take pups
of that age away from their mother and then even separate them is
unimaginable! Where are the animal behaviorists? Where is the common
sense? Where is the humane treatment? For Austin Humane Society to
literally snatch 6 adorable pups from their mother’s breast and then abandon
her is unethical, unconscionable and certainly inhumane.

When they brought Bobbi out to me, her tail was wagging and she jumped up to
kiss my face. The pictures attached are of the same dog, whose kennel notes
say ‘MUZZLE AND HANDLE WITH CAUTION’. It is important to note that not once
has anyone at Austin Humane Society said that Bobbi had bitten. We believe
that Austin Humane agreed to take Bobbi only because they knew we would not
willingly separate her from the pups and they never had any intention of
helping the one dog who needed them most.

Bobbi is again safe, thanks to a Rottilove Rescue foster home, but only for
a few days while we try to find her someone who understands dog behavior and
can work with a loving girl who has spent her whole life starving at the end
of a chain. We believe that with simple hand feeding and consistent meals
Bobbi will no longer feel she has to protect her food. We would also like
to reunite her with her pups who so desperately need her and the lessons
only she can teach them. Unfortunately, we cannot reclaim the babies
without a place for them to go.

Bev and I will sponsor 100% of Bobbi’s care to any reputable group that is
willing to take her. If you can take the pups as well, all the better,
because we do not believe Austin Humane should make a single penny from
their easy adoptions. Other than needing heartworm treatment, Bobbie is in
amazingly good health, and is a sweet and gentle little girl. Five of the 6
pups look like Mom, and the last is a tiny, shy girl I have named Goldie
because she looks like a pure yellow Lab.

Although we would prefer this little family to stay together for now, we
understand if you are only able to help one or the other.

Toni Liguori

KPRR

Austin, Texas

www.kprr.rescuegroups.org

Now, we don’t see how shipping the dogs and cats you don’t want to deal with off to TLAC to be killed meets in any way the definition of a no kill shelter.  This kind of behavior gives *real* no kill shelters a bad name.  We are extremely disappointed in this behavior by the Austin Humane Society. 

If you are as outraged at this as we are, here is the contact information:

Austin Humane Society

512-646-7387

Director - Frances Jonan - fjonan@austinhumanesociety.org

Community Relations - Lisa Starr - lstarr@austinhumanesociety.org

Later that day, the above was posted on Craigslist. 

Then, someone posted the following:

From Craigslist:

It may very easy to spin this issue and claim a group of individuals as being heartless, cruel, and otherwise demonic. Just to give everyone some information in general about food aggression in a shelter environment, here are the main concerns with a dog that exhibits these behaviors:

1. If the dog shows any shot of aggression and has the potential to bite a human, the staff and volunteers at that shelter can no longer handle the dog in any way. That means NO WALKS, NO PLAYTIME, NO INTERACTION. The liability becomes astronomical every time a person attempts to even feed the dog in question.

2. The dog cannot be adopted out by the shelter ever. The main concern with food aggression deals with younger children. Little children love to stick their hands in a dog’s food bowl while the dog is eating. Imagine the consequences of a food aggressive dog around a small child who is only playing with their dog.

The HUMANE thing to do is to get a food aggressive dog out of a shelter environment as quickly as possible. When a dog cannot be played with or interacted with at all, the negative mental affects on that dog are exponential.
Also, food aggession usually has NOTHING to do with the environment the dog is subjected to. Overweight dogs who have never missed a meal in their life can be just as food aggressive as emaciated dogs, and often time emaciated dogs show no signs of food aggression ever.

My hope is that the educated readers of this forum understand the liability of an aggressive dog in a shelter, and will not let a group of people who are manipulating emotions deter you from supporting an organization whose policies and procedures are in place to protect man and animal alike.

 

Except that this is kind of um, not true. 

But what happens if a shelter puts in place a

protocol that is fair and rigorous, and the dog

“fails”? Should that mean a death sentence?

Not necessarily. Implicit within the no-kill philosophy

is the understanding that some animals,

such as those who are irremediably suffering

or hopelessly ill, will be killed for reasons

of mercy. Dogs who are vicious, with a poor

prognosis, are also included in this category.

But, a sick, injured, or traumatized animal with

a behavior problem such as aggression can

have varying degrees of prognosis, one of the

complexities a shelter should consider in determining

a strategy for post-temperament testing.

If the prognosis for rehabilitation is good, fair,

or even guarded, a no-kill shelter is obligated

to provide treatment. Conditions such as upper

respiratory infections, broken bones, and, in

the case of behavior, food-related aggression

are usually treatable. In two years of using our

current temperament testing protocol, we have

never killed a dog for food aggression, because

the prognosis for rehabilitation is almost always

better than guarded.

 See Nathan Winograd’s excellent article, “Temperament Testing in the Age of No-Kill” at http://www.nokilladvocacycenter.org/pdf/Temperament%20Testing.pdf

 So we sent the author an email:

“Food aggressive” dogs can certainly be in shelter environments.  Nathan Winograd has proved that repeatedly.  If you claim to be a no-kill shelter, you need to own that and not kill dogs (or cats).  That includes not sending them to TLAC to be killed.  If you kill dogs and cats, then you need to own that and admit the truth to the public so they don’t donate to something that is misrepresenting itself.

Any starving dog will be “food aggressive.”  Sue Sternberg’s temperament tests have killed an awful lot of dogs.

We’ll be blogging about this.  We haven’t seen much evidence so far that AHS is very “humane.”

AnimalControlWatch Staff

And we get the following back from the author:

From: Pat Riot <pat_riot2006@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 9:04 PM
Subject: Re: Why a Food Aggressive Dog CANNOT Be In a Shelter Environment
To: animalcontrolwatch@gmail.com

You can have your own opinions on the matter, but your harsh words against the Humane Society mean nothing to me. You may believe that sending threatening, menacing emails will get your point across and scare others into believing in your false reality (and deranged mentality).
 Have fun blogging in the rumor mill, and trust me, the only ones paying attention to what anyone says in the blog is within your own little group. Send me anything else and I will report your ass.

Peace Out,
 Someone Who Doesn’t Give Two Shits What You Think

 

Now, first of all, obviously this person does care - quite a bit - and secondly - report us to whom?  The email police?  For what?  Sending an email?  And we kind of missed the part where we were threatening or menacing - oooh, we’re such scary people!  We can only hope that this person is a 16 year old volunteer of AHS, albeit one with a good vocabulary, and not an actual paid staff member.

Why is this important?  Because every dog, cat, and other companion animal is important.  Because we hold the belief that every life really is precious - and that if you claim to be a no-kill shelter, you shouldn’t ship animals to kill shelters to be killed so that you can look good and rake in donations. 

 Bobbi, and every other starved dog who snapped at someone who tried to take a meal away from them - and how would *you* feel if *you* were starving and someone gave you a plate of food, you took one bite and they snatched it back - is important.  To us, anyway.  Perhaps not to the Austin Humane Society.