![This beloved family pet and mother to a litter of newborn pups was oops-killed by the Jessamine Co pound. [Image via]](https://i0.wp.com/yesbiscuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/mama-dog.jpg)
On Tuesday, the Jessamine Co pound picked up a nursing mama dog who was lost and showed up at an elementary school. Instead of being placed on the legally mandated 5 day hold so her family could reclaim her, she got mixed up with another dog who was owner surrendered and on the way to the kill room. The Jessamine Co pound killed the nursing mama dog in place of the owner surrendered dog. Oops.
The director can’t explain how the mix up occurred:
“Two dogs got switched somehow,” director Mike Cassidy said. “I don’t know if they were cleaning a kennel and they took it out and didn’t put it back in the right one; I don’t know how it ended up getting switched.”
The director did explain how owner surrenders are fast tracked to the kill room at Jessamine Co:
“Typically, when an animal is surrendered, a lot of times there’s a reason for it,” Cassidy said. “It’s either that it’s bitten someone or it has aggression issues and sometimes event [sic] health issues and the animal might need to be put down, but the people just can’t bear to do it, so they surrender it to us.”
Way to dispel the myth that shelter pets are damaged goods, dirtbag.
One manager was present while the mama dog was killed on Tuesday but in response to the killing, the pound will now require two managers to sign off on pet killings. Gee, I was sort of hoping they’d reconsider immediate killing of owner surrenders along with the needless killing of all other healthy/treatable pets. You know, begin actually doing their jobs. But yeah, two monsters in the kill room is good too. And doesn’t sound like WORK so: Bonus.
Cassidy also said if the dog would have had a microchip, the outcome would have been much different.
Sweet. Blame the owner. With another myth. Microchipped pets are killed in pet killing facilities all the time because that’s what these places do. Instead of blaming the killing on the owner, why not do your job and actually shelter the animals in your care?
I hope local pet advocates rally for reform at the Jessamine Co pound. If the current director won’t do his job, replace him with a compassionate leader who will. There is no excuse for the needless killing of shelter pets, especially when there are proven lifesaving alternatives available. Jessamine Co should get two managers to sign off on the No Kill Equation instead of pet killings.
The dead mama dog’s pups are reportedly being bottle fed. Let’s hope they survive without their mother and that they never get lost in Jessamine Co.
Fair warning: Any asshat who attempts to come to the blog and leave disparaging comments about the owners because the dog got lost, had puppies, wasn’t microchipped or whatever will have their offensive comments immediately removed and be permanently banned.
(Thank you Clarice for the links.)
NO EXCUSES. A nursing mother killed? Dripping with milk? Good Lord OR COURSE there are puppies somewhere!!! Any search for them? No…and they can’t tell the difference between a nursing mama and another dog? Lazy dirt bags is right.
That was my thinking too, Karen. How they could not have noticed she had recently given birth before racing her to the kill room is beyond me. I have an office job and check, double-check and usually triple-check before deleting a document to make sure I won’t need it – you would think the same procedures would apply before taking a life.
What disgrace!
How do these people sleep at night? And how can they defend their actions by claiming it was a mistake, instead of waking up and realising that they shouldn’t be murdering animals anyway?
How much you want to bet that their “response” was to go get the “right” dog and kill him/her as well?
THIS is why we need shelter reform. Because these people THINK that running a shelter means regular pet killing all day, every day.
You pretty much took the words right out of my mouth (as always :) ), Mikken.
Seriously how stupid do these people need to be to mix up 2 dogs like this?! Sounds to me like they just wanted to kill them all and then when people went back for them, they just went “oh..oops”. That poor baby, look at that cute little face!
They don’t even know how or when the mix-up occurred, but they’re saying a microchip would’ve somehow magically prevented it? Aside from being a gross attempt at shifting blame to the owner, it’s absurd. If they don’t know how it happened, how can they say with such confidence that anything in particular (other than not being in such a rush to kill animals) could have prevented it?
If this was a no-kill shelter, both of these dogs would still be alive and the puppies would have their mother. Damn them anyway.
HOW would a microchip have prevented the killing? They didn’t think the dog was a stray, so they wouldn’t have been surprised if she was positive for a chip. It’s always a poor excuse to blame lack of a chip for a shelter’s actions, but in this case it’s completely illogical.
Is the picture on this post a picture of Mama? Her tail’s wagging.
And you can tell she’s a nursing mom. Yet NO ONE there spared a second thought about killing her. Evil bastards.
There is so much of the message that some lives don’t matter in the least in this killing it’s hard to take in. The dogs are so worthless to these people they don’t recognize them as individuals. This just seems like a whole new level of bad. And trying to shame the owner adds that much more bad. A mountain of bad, and a commenter who really needs a thesaurus to cover this behavior.
unforgivable..
I agree with Mikken .How do they sleep at night ? And yes those kind of people have too be EVIL .
“I don’t know…”, what kind of SALARIED director is Mike Cassidy???? Probably someone from bottom of rusted metal barrel, clothed in suit – doing the ACTUAL dirty work without getting dirty!!! PLEASE, do not BS us with pathetic excuse! Look at the word “shelter” – what doe it MEAN??? Let me copy the FIRST listing in Dictionary.com. “1. Something beneath, behind, or within which a person, animal, or thing is protected from storms, missiles, adverse conditions, etc.; refuge.” So… since we have shelters for homeless, storm victims and refugees – do we just “oops-kill” them and said, “I don’t know….” ??? SCREW YOU, CASSIDY and other ‘oops-shelters’ TOO!!
I heard hell is a really aweful place.
EVIL!!!
People need to realize ,shelters are over run, under funded and under staffed. Donate to local shelters and volunteer. I volunteer at our local shelter and they’re barely hanging on. Shelters are not government funded,it’s all public donations! Putting a collar and ID upon intake would help so they can ID a dog,double check everything too. Volunteer and help take some burden off these workers can help with this too,plus help socialize animals and get them adopted!
Just about every shelter that is connected to the county or city they are in is paid for by governmental money – the key word to look for is COUNTY or City in the name, like this one (Jessamine COUNTY). They are staffed by people who are paid by PUBLIC money and they should be held to the highest standards to justify their salaries. Sadly, for so long, so many county/city workers for whatever department have been allowed to slack off and collect paychecks for doing crummy jobs. It’s one thing when they’re task is street cleaning and something completely different when they are supposed to be caring for living, loving pets. But in too many places you the impression that the workers and their supervisors think “Leaf pickup or animal care, what’s the diff?”
Don’t give any of these monsters the idea about sucking up lost pets with a truck sized machine please.
I know, Kate. Its so disheartening. The Memphis situation is especially bad about this. You email the city officials and they dont care. You email the Mayor and he says email the city officials. You email the Governor and he says email the Mayor. No one cares. Maybe its because I dont live in TN and theyd be more likely to care about someone who lives there, but theres only so much I can do from AZ.
WTF! This county needs to get rid of these heartless excuses for humans.
evil is as evil does. Folks in Jessamine Co MUST stop this!
chip or no chip I don’t believe they check because they haven’t got the time all dogs deserve a future not dumped and death so crule poor babys R.I.P. little mama
when are they going to realize that probably 99.99% of owner surrenders is because the “owners” suddenly decided they can’t be bothered with the animal anymore and it doesn’t fit into their “lifestyle” “status” any longer?
This is disgraceful! She may have accidentally gotten pregnant before a spay surgery, and may have just been given to her family and they did not realize she was pregnant. Nobody knows why this poor girl was out, without a microchip, and had a new litter of puppies! The moral of the story is, how can these lazy jerks not see the tieets of this mama? Are they freaking that lazy? Honestly! How can a mix-up occur when she appeared to have a collar on? What kind of paper work do they do on stay holds? What in the name of gravy are these fools thinking? Now 2 managers watching as they kill innocent animals? That is crack!