Robeson Co Animal Shelter in NC recently failed two state inspections due to multiple issues including failing to maintain the shelter in accordance with standard disease control practices and failure to provide veterinary care for sick pets. The shelter manager explained the inspection failures as being due to overcrowding. She further described the arbitrary killing of all dogs under 1 year of age as “merely disease control”. Last week, there was a meeting to update the county on how things are going at the shelter:
Members of the Robeson County Board of Health heard a mostly positive report Thursday about ongoing improvements at the county animal shelter.
Mostly positive? Whaaaaa?
The shelter update, however, did not include details about a recent parvo outbreak that forced staff to euthanize more than 50 puppies last week.
And [shelter manager April] Lowry made no mention of two state inspections the shelter has failed in the past month.
Oh. I see. Well I guess if you leave those minor killing and neglect issues out, the picture does get a whole lot rosier.
When asked specifically about the failed state inspections, a shelter supervisor appeared to be spinning the same yarn as the shelter manager:
[Environmental Health Director Albert] Locklear said most of the violations were the result of overcrowding at the shelter. A new policy requiring adopted pets to be spayed should help when it goes into effect Oct. 1.
How is spaying adopted pets in October going to address current issues of neglect and the spread of disease due to employee laziness? Will spaying pets in October cause the people in charge to quit lying about why they failed state inspections and start doing their jobs? I’m not seeing it.