Stray population a problem for region
Dog Training
LIMA ' A scrawny tom cat meanders down the alley on his way to what he hopes will be dinner, his head on a perpetual pivot, looking for food, enemies or both. He's a grayish tiger, long in the legs but thin for its size, scarred and rough and a little torn up by life.
Today's stop is a rusted green dumpster behind a downtown restaurant. Bad aim and overspill make it a fairly reliable spot for a daily meal. The tom isn't the only one who has figured this out. By the time he arrives, there are others staking out the site ' a big yellow tom, a couple of once-white tabbies and a herd of gray-brown kittens a little too mobile to get a reliable count on. Before long, there are a dozen or more cats wandering the alley.
Some may be feral, others either are or once were someone's pet. They are all a problem.
The same scene repeats itself daily in alleys and fencerows across the region. Hundreds of stray cats and dogs wander around in search of food and mates. While the number of agencies working with the animals seems to multiply almost as fast as the pets, the situation doesn't appear to be improving.
'We have a big problem here, and I'm not sure it's getting better,' said Sandra Laing, director of Angels of Animals Rescue League, one of the more than a dozen area agencies working to take care of strays. 'It doesn't end. You adopt one out, another comes in. And we're only seeing a part of it.'
The trouble with strays
The actual number of stray and homeless cats and dogs in the area is impossible to peg. Right now, there are more than 400 dogs held in area shelters. The number of cats is more than twice that. That's just the animals they have room for. Hundreds more are out there with no place to go.
'We here at the Humane Society of Allen County, as well as Angels for Animals and Cat Haven, none of us have any room to accept,' said Humane Society Executive Director Mark Twyford.
The Humane Society can house about 70 dogs and 200 cats at a time. Last year alone they took in 863 cats and 492 dogs. Right now, they are at capacity and have a waiting list of people who want to drop off dogs or cats they can no longer care for.
It's pretty much the same story everywhere in Allen County. The Allen County Dog Warden's shelter on Seriff Road can hold about 45 dogs, not counting puppies that can be stored two or more to a cage.
Last year they took in more than 2,200 dogs. Of those, 470 were eventually picked up by their owners. Another 556 were adopted out through other area shelters or breed rescue programs. The rest were killed.
'Unfortunately we have a lot of people who don't spay or neuter their pets. Others don't purchase a dog license, or they do purchase them and don't have them on them. Either way, they end up here,' said Allen County Dog Warden Julie Shellhammer.
A local problem
The problem doesn't necessarily translate to other parts of the region. In Auglaize County, Shelter Manager Tammy Kinstle sees plenty of unwanted dogs and cats come in, but not as many as Allen County sees. In the first six months of this year, her shelter took in 300 dogs and 166 cats. Almost all were adopted or returned to their owners.
'We don't have the bigger city or the dog fighting, things that add to the numbers,' Kinstle said. 'Actually, our biggest issue is farmers who come in a month after their dog's missing looking for him. They didn't look earlier because they were used to him taking off for a while.'
Putnam County Dog Warden Mack Schroeder said the size of his county's animal problem seems to vary. Right now, there are five dogs in the shelter, and four of them have owners who just haven't picked them up yet. At other times, there are more dogs than he can find space for. As much as he'd like to find homes for them, it's not always easy.
'We're talking about getting some stuff lined up with other shelters around where we can get them out for adoption. But everybody I talk to now, they all have waiting lists,' Schroeder said.
It's difficult to compare the region's stray population with the rest of the nation. No one organization keeps numbers on strays. Allen County appears to have a bigger problem then other counties in the area, and Laing believes the problems here may be among the state's worst.
'I have people come here from Cleveland and other cities to adopt because we have so many more dogs available,' Laing said. 'It's economics. We have a lot of people who can't afford to spay and neuter their animals.'
If the local numbers are disturbing, the national statistics are downright overwhelming. The Humane Society of the United State estimates between six and eight million dogs and cats enter American shelters each year. Of those, about half are adopted or returned to owners. The rest ' three to four million dogs and cats each year ' are killed.
About 1,200 dogs were euthanized at the Allen County Dog Warden's office last year. They do not take in cats. The Humane Society no longer euthanizes healthy animals. But in 2003, the year before it became a no-kill shelter, its employees euthanized 2,242 cats and 401 dogs.
The cost of managing pet overpopulation runs well into the millions each year. Beyond that, there are social costs, animals roaming the streets, disease, illness and the problems that come from bad breeding.
'The quality of the dog is at issue. You wind up with dogs with temperament problems and health problems,' Shellhammer said. 'By not spaying or neutering, you end up with aggressive dogs. We have over 500 calls each year for dog bites because of dogs with aggression problems.'
A dog's life
If the overpopulation problem has a face, it ought to be Dolly, a massive brindle mastiff Laing picked up from the Allen County Dog Warden's shelter, where she had been taken after being hit by a car. She had been so abused and starved she couldn't even gather the strength to stand up on her own. At the time Laing brought her home, she weighed about 60 pounds. She should be closer to 200 pounds.
'Someone has to have just starved her,' Laing said, stroking the dog's massive head. 'Who knows how many litters she's had. Who knows what she went through?'
After a weekend of round-the-clock supervision and a few weeks on the farm, Dolly is improving. Her eyes are clearer. She can walk around the yard. She's even put on some weight.
But even at her current 125 pounds, she looks tragically thin.
Despite all the abuse, she trusts. Her tail twitches as you approach her, hungry for attention. Her head nuzzles into your hip and tilts as you scratch her neck, eating up the affection.
'She's such a sweet dog. That's what makes it hard sometimes. They don't deserve to be treated like this,' Laing said. 'You wonder how people can do this.'
Dolly's future is fairly bright, as abandoned animals go. She'll spend some time in the prison program where she'll get basic obedience training and, hopefully, put on some more weight. After that, she will stay with Angels for Animals until someone takes her home.
For Laing, finding a home for a stray is always a victory. She knows it's not the real answer to the problem.
'I love adopting them out. But that's not the real answer,' she said. 'If I adopt her out, I help her. But the real answer is to spay and neuter. When you do that you provide help for generations.'
'Fixing' the problem
A cat can produce three litters a year. Given the exponential nature of stray breeding, a single female cat and her offspring can theoretically produce as many as 420,000 cats in a seven-year period. For dogs, the number is around 67,000.
While people may question those numbers, there's little question as to how serious the problem is. There's a consensus among those who help clean up after the problem exactly what the solution is.
'Controlling animal overpopulation is a problem that could be solved immediately if every guardian or animal control-related entity would spay and neuter,' Twyford said. 'This isn't a problem that we don't know how to correct.'
The roots of the problem may vary ' irresponsible owners, bad breeders, even poverty plays a role ' but in the end, it is a simple equation: the more animals fixed, the fewer animals. After long enough, you wind up with few enough animals that there's a home for each of them. Call it supply and demand for the pet set.
'There simply are not enough homes for the animals out there. If we got that number down, there might be. But there's only one way that's going to happen.'
Almost all the area's animal agencies have some sort of spay-and-neuter adoption policy.
The Allen County and Auglaize County Humane Societies and Angels for Animals make sure all animals are fixed before they leave the building. People adopting animals too young to be sterilized must agree to have it done and are scheduled for later appointments. The cost of sterilization is included in the adoption fee, which ranges from $30 to $90, depending on the place and pet.
'No animal welfare organization or department of animal welfare should allow an animal to be adopted out that isn't spayed or neutered,' Twyford said.
In Allen County, only the dog warden's office adopts animals without sterilizing them first. Shetlander said that is an issue of law and economics, but it's one she's working to correct.
'The dog warden's responsibilities are very clear. It doesn't include having a vet or sterilization. That takes finances that are not in the dog warden's budget,' she said. 'But we are trying to initiate a program.'
Finding the funds
The solution might be readily available, but the funding for it isn't. On the while, animal welfare organizations struggle to get by on the money they have. Through donations, some grants and the use of volunteers to supplement staff, most are able to take care of the animals in their care. But to step out beyond that would take a real money commitment.
'If we got a grant and could just feed off that, maybe enough to spay and neuter animals for free, that would make a real difference,' Laing said. 'But it takes money, more than we have right now.'
Angels for Animals opened a spay and neuter clinic in Elida last year. Local veterinarians work the clinic for $50 an hour and can spay or neuter about three animals an hour. To date they have fixed more than 700 animals. But that's just a drop in the bucket.
'If we got, say, a $50,000 grant, we could spay a heck of a lot of animals. It just takes the money,' Laing said.
Twyford believes it will take more than groups working on their own to really fix the problem of pet overpopulation. He is in the process of coordinating an Animal Welfare Summit to pull all the local animal welfare groups together to work on the problem.
'The Humane Society can't just do this by itself. And it can't be done with just the animal welfare organizations either. Local government would have to play a substantial role,' Twyford said.
Twyford hopes eventually to create a universal database of animals housed in Allen County facilities that would help owners or potential owners find animals. He also wants to see the group work together to educate the public on the problems and to promote legislation aimed at decreasing the number of homeless animals.
Rhode Island's General Assembly recently passed legislation that would prohibit any person from owning a cat over 6 months old that's not spayed or neutered without a $100 annual breeding permit.
Twyford admits that legislation and money won't end the problem of pet overpopulation. Ultimately, it comes down to pet owners taking responsibility for their animals.
'Some people wouldn't get their animals altered if you offered it for free,' Twyford said. 'Irresponsibility is really the second prong of the issue.'
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