Remember when Kern Co pound director Jen Woodard noted in a report that one of the problems in the community is ignorance of “basic pet responsibility” which she attributed to the notion that “much of the community is uninterested in hearing this message”? Now hear this: Last week at the Kern Co pound, one dog killed another when they were left together unattended in a cage. Pairing animals is apparently a common practice at Kern Co:
Woodard says with up to 100 animals coming in each day to the shelter, separate kennels for all is impossible. But, officers evaluate every dog individually before it’s paired with others of comparable size. In this case, Woodard says neither dog had acted aggressively before.
Here is my concern: With up to 100 animals coming in daily, are officers being given sufficient time to evaluate dogs and are the dogs being given sufficient time to settle in at the pound before being evaluated? Of equal importance, are the officers trained as behaviorists? Or are the people doing the evaluating just winging it in between killing puppies with adopters waiting and hiding from the media?
I am all for pairing up pets to save lives if necessary but as with all things, there are ways to do it responsibly and ways that are going to result in dogs being mauled to death in the night. If Kern Co is pairing up animals responsibly to save lives, it’s not evident to me in this article. Especially when I read this bit near the end:
Woodard says since no one was there to witness what happened, they’ve scheduled a necropsy on the dog that died.
Way to dodge. The dog that died reportedly had bloody neck wounds consistent with a dog mauling. But yeah, maybe he had high cholesterol or aliens experimented on him or something. Doing the necropsy might have some value, except they already killed the other dog in the cage. Apparently Kern Co doesn’t require witnesses for that.
(Thanks Clarice for the link.)
So they…killed the other dog (apparently for dog aggression), but they’re doing a necropsy on the dead dog to see if …he had heart attack or something?
They’re getting in a 100 dogs a day. What kind of efforts are made to return lost dogs in the field to their homes in order to prevent them from ever entering the shelter system? Are they scanning for microchips, checking lost listings, using social networking? How well/quickly do they get stray intakes up on the web so that a searching owner can find their pet? In short, what are they doing to keep dogs from coming in and to get dogs moved out as quickly as possible so they aren’t overwhelmed with intakes? Or does hand wringing and public blaming substitute for actually doing their jobs?
Or does hand wringing and public blaming substitute for actually doing their jobs?
Yeah, that
Oh good grief! You kill one dog because that dog killed another dog…they think. Sounds like another blame game to me, along with irresponsible and inefficient “shelter” management. And that seems more typical than not these days, unfortunately.
Wow. The first part of the story and most of the comments seem to be all about “blame the pitbull” because he’s…well…a pitbull.
Yeah I left the “breed” out of my post since it’s irrelevant. The facility is failing to do its job for all breeds.
since both dogs are now dead.. why spend the money on that? That procedure can’t be cheap. That money could be better spent on something else.