USA: 1,000 Dogs and Cats Killed After Outbreak at Shelter

[Guest guest]

Depressing implications for animal shelters worldwide. And how important

disease management and adoption is, along with saving animals. How many

animals would the HSUS advise to be killed coming to shelters that are not up

standards outside the USA? And it appears that euthanasia is the accepted

management solution for shelters that legally must take in every unwanted pet

(especially in areas like Las Vegas which have high turnovers) to become up to

standards? These are not new issues but surely the increasing pet boom in Asia

will only add to the challenges everyone faces.

 

“One of the challenges we had was that they had this unusual bacterial infection

that’s not been documented in a shelter before,” she said. “There was some

uncertainty of how to best manage that and what best to do. We were in new

territory and found it in both cats and dogs.”

 

The six-member Humane Society inspection group found a severely overcrowded

shelter where many animals appeared very ill. Tests revealed that hundreds were

suffering from one or more of three viruses and an aggressive bacterial

infection.

 

She said that Ms. Gale and other shelter officials simply thought disease was a

normal part of running a shelter. “Truthfully,” Ms. Layne said, “sheltering is

all about disease control.”

Mr. Fierro said shelter workers knew there was overcrowding and some disease,

but they were also tormented by the need to kill so many animals.

 

“You’re talking about living eyes looking back at you, asking you, “Is it today?

Do I get to live today?’ ” Mr. Fierro said. “They literally were doing

everything they could to save every animal they could. They thought they were

doing the right thing.”

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/us/16animals.html?_r=2 & oref=slogin & ref=us & page\

wanted=print & oref=slogin

 

1,000 Dogs and Cats Killed After Outbreak at Shelter

By STEVE FRIESS

LAS VEGAS, Feb. 15 — An outbreak of disease that national experts say was of an

unusual magnitude prompted a weeklong closing of the region’s main animal

shelter and the killing of about 1,000 dogs and cats.

 

Managers of the Lied Animal Shelter, where the outbreak occurred, said the

severity of the crisis came as a surprise. They had invited a team of inspectors

from the Humane Society of the United States to tour the center this month

because they thought they would be praised for their practice of euthanizing

animals sparingly, in comparison with shelters of similar size.

 

Instead, the six-member Humane Society inspection group found a severely

overcrowded shelter where many animals appeared very ill. Tests revealed that

hundreds were suffering from one or more of three viruses and an aggressive

bacterial infection.

 

By Wednesday night, the shelter chairwoman, Janie Greenspun Gale, tearfully

faced critics at a hastily called public meeting and said that the center’s

policy was “misguided.”

 

Ms. Gale said her organization had been operating the shelter like a rescue

operation and had not been euthanizing enough animals to keep the space safe and

sanitary for the adoptable ones. From now on, she said, unadoptable animals will

be euthanized after 72 hours at the shelter, as the Humane Society recommends.

 

“Our policies were written to save every animal we possibly could,” Ms. Gale

said. “In that misguided policy, we caused animals pain.”

 

Lied (pronounced leed) is the main shelter in the Las Vegas area, a nonprofit

center that is contractually obligated to accept strays and animals turned in by

animal control departments from the Las Vegas and North Las Vegas as well as the

unincorporated areas of Clark County.

 

The shelter continued to do that during its shutdown but stopped its voluntary

policy of accepting unwanted animals turned in by pet owners. When the shelter

reopens on Friday, it will resume accepting unwanted pets, the spokesman for

Lied, Mark Fierro, said Thursday.

 

About 1,000 of the 1,800 animals in the shelter were euthanized this week in an

effort to reduce the population to a more manageable level. In 2005, the most

recent year for which statistics are available, the shelter euthanized an

average of 400 animals a week. It took in about 950 a week and about 250 were

adopted. (Some animals were returned to their owners; others died without being

euthanized.)

 

“People get upset when they hear that 1,000 animals are put down, and, yes,

1,000 is a high number, but these animals have been sick and dying for a while,”

said Kim Intino, director of sheltering issues for the Humane Society and the

inspection team leader. “This was a unique and extreme situation.”

 

Disease outbreaks in shelters are not unusual, but this one was especially

gruesome because there were so many different illnesses at once, said Dr. Kate

Hurley, head of the Shelter Medicine Program at the University of California,

Davis, and one of two veterinarians on the Humane Society inspection team. The

viruses were Parvovirus, canine distemper and feline panleukopenia; the

bacterial infection was a fatal hemorrhagic, or bloody, pneumonia.

 

“I’m not aware of outbreaks of this magnitude,” said Dr. Hurley, a leading

national authority who coincidentally will present a daylong seminar on shelter

outbreaks in Las Vegas on Tuesday at the Western Veterinary Conference.

 

“One of the challenges we had was that they had this unusual bacterial infection

that’s not been documented in a shelter before,” she said. “There was some

uncertainty of how to best manage that and what best to do. We were in new

territory and found it in both cats and dogs.”

 

The situation outraged the president of the Las Vegas Valley Humane Society,

Karen Layne, whose group has expressed concern for years that Lied was

overcrowded. “They’ve been operating a shelter for 11 years and now they’re

saying they don’t know how to run a shelter,” Ms. Layne said. She said that Ms.

Gale and other shelter officials simply thought disease was a normal part of

running a shelter. “Truthfully,” Ms. Layne said, “sheltering is all about

disease control.”

 

Mr. Fierro said shelter workers knew there was overcrowding and some disease,

but they were also tormented by the need to kill so many animals.

 

“You’re talking about living eyes looking back at you, asking you, “Is it today?

Do I get to live today?’ ” Mr. Fierro said. “They literally were doing

everything they could to save every animal they could. They thought they were

doing the right thing.”