I’m going to pretend that I run an animal shelter for a county in FL. The area of primary focus for my shelter would be getting pets out alive – by adopting them out or returning lost pets to their owners or TNR for feral cats. To facilitate this, one of my priorities for the shelter would be making sure we have SOPs and that all staff are trained on them. But for the sake of argument, let’s say I don’t have those SOPs for whatever reason. Let’s say I just start each day with a team meeting in which I announce, “Go out there and do whatever you think is right”.
If you work for me, what would you think is the right thing to say to a person who calls the shelter and inquires about a dog she saw listed on the shelter’s website in the LOST section?
I’ll give you a minute to think about your response. Remember, you are an animal shelter employee and, like any animal shelter, our shelter’s goal is to get pets out alive. And this person is calling to inquire about a dog who we’ve got up on our website as LOST.
OK, time’s up.
Here are some good possible answers:
- Do you think this might be your dog?
- How soon would you be able to come to the shelter to see the dog in person?
- We normally only hold strays for 3 days before we kill them but if you are definitely coming, I could place a hold on the dog for you.
When a dog escaped a family home in Broward Co last month, the owner searched online to see if the dog might have been brought to a local shelter. To her relief, she found her dog on Broward County’s website under the LOST PETS section. She immediately called the shelter and guess what happened? (Hint: None of the above)
First she was given misinformation about the dog’s location. Thankfully she questioned it enough to call back and ask again. She was then told the correct location of the dog. That shelter was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays (she was calling on a Monday) so she wouldn’t be able to get into the shelter until Wednesday. She shared the good news with her four kids and everyone was eager for their pet to come home. Wednesday morning, the owner called the shelter to let them know she would be coming to redeem her dog. Oops, they already killed him.
Again, what would you think is the right thing to do at this point if you work at this shelter? My thoughts:
- Offer a sincere apology to the owner.
- Explain the circumstances that led to the dog being killed to the best of your knowledge and promise to look into the matter further to ensure it never happens again.
- Emphasize your commitment to reuniting lost pets with their owners and reassure the woman that this has never happened before.
- Apologize again and ask if there is anything you can do to assist the family at this time.
- Give her your card and tell her to call on you personally if ever she ever has pet related concern or need.
- Offer to waive the adoption fee for any available shelter pet of her choosing should she decide to get another pet in future.
What actually happened?
A Broward Co spokeswoman blamed the owner saying she “should have identified herself as the dog’s owner and made it clear she wanted the dog kept alive until she could pick him up”.
But what about the staffer who took the owner’s call – shouldn’t he have asked if she was the owner and if she wanted the dog – you know, not dead?
Animal Control said, their employees are not obligated to ask the person on the other line if they are the owners of any animal, and are not obligated to inform owners they have three days to pick up the animal, and if they do not, that animal will be euthanized.
I don’t know if Broward Co has any SOPs for their shelter staff but hopefully they do. Presumably they contain guidelines on how to reunite lost pets with owners. Even if Broward doesn’t have SOPs, isn’t it just all kinds of sensible to think that someone calling you about a lost dog that you’ve got on your website might be that dog’s owner? How likely is it she was not connected to the dog but just calling to see if the dog was there because she was curious? (Does the shelter get many drunk-dials from college kids inquiring about lost pets for giggles?) Isn’t your primary goal to get pets out of your shelter alive? Wouldn’t you do any reasonable thing within your power to achieve that goal?
Sure, maybe you’re not obligated to ask callers a simple question that would mean the difference between life and death for a dog in your care but if you work at a shelter, wouldn’t you just want to do that, like automatically, even though it would mean speaking an extra sentence? I mean, you would in fact be paid for the time it took you to say those extra words – paid by the taxpayers of the community you serve.
To my mind, this is yet another sad case where a tragic mistake is made worse by the handling of the event afterward.
Broward Co, by the way, is the same shelter that let a cat with a microchip named O’Malley suffer in a cage for 5 days without care and then killed him, only contacting the owners when it was too late.