The Montgomery Co pound in Texas has a sign taped on the front door asking the public for donations of towels, blankets, quilts, puppy pads, pet food and various other items typically requested as donations by shelters. We’ve all heard this one before: municipal shelters are underfunded and the staff is forced to kill animals because of the irresponsible public and blah.
Well in Montgomery Co, the irresponsible public kindly donated many of the requested items on the pound’s list. And the staff threw the donations into the dumpster. Volunteers had to dumpster dive in order to retrieve the brand new pet beds, food, puppy pads and other donations.
When a KHOU reporter asked pound director Dr. Aubrey Ross for an explanation, he was all oh gee, misunderstanding. But a reporter with The Courier of Montgomery Co got more details:
Included in the items was unopened, unexpired pet food, the volunteer said. The situation was reported to the shelter’s director, who helped pull the items out. According to the volunteer, the director did not know who instructed employees to trash the items.
[…]
However, Precinct 4 Commissioner Jim Clark, who is overseeing the transition of the shelter’s new management, said the situation was a misunderstanding between Dr. Aubrey Ross II, who is now managing the shelter, and staff.
He said items were not “brand new.”
[…]
Clark said Ross gave the nod to discard the items under the impression that the items were not usable.
“We didn’t have all new stuff there,” said Clark, adding that many of the items were torn or broken.
Volunteers say many of the donations still had tags on them. I guess the filthy rat bastard public must have ripped up the donations after paying for them and before leaving them at the pound.
On its website, the Montgomery Co pound has two months of statistics – September and October 2013. Those two months reflect a kill rate of 46%. I think the misunderstanding here has to do with the meaning of the word shelter. Get some management in there who understands what it means to actually shelter animals and I bet the donation hurling stops all by itself.
(Thanks Arlene for the link.)