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The most effective way to improve the treatment of domestic
companion animals is for the community to take more personal
responsibility and for humane advocates to accentuate the
positive, says Alison Smith, director of the Walker County
Animal Shelter.
Smith, in addition to 22 years of experience working in
veterinary clinics, is also chairman of the North Georgia
Animal League, a nonprofit group that promotes animal welfare.
The Animal League works in tandem with several area animal
control programs to set up adoption of dogs and cats, perform
fundraising for spay/neuter programs, and raise awareness
about humane animal treatment through education.
Smith’s vet experience and work with the Animal League
brought about her being hired by Walker County Commissioner
Bebe Heiskell to be the new animal shelter director last
summer.
Alison
Smith, Walker County Animal Shelter
director
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One of the
Heiskell’s goals since taking office in 2000 has been to
improve the county’s animal control services. Part of that
goal was reached with the opening of the new shelter on North
Marble Top Road outside Chickamauga.
According to Walker County Coordinator David Ashburn, the
$600,000 facility employs three full-time staff and three
part-timers. The county provides more than $200,000 in its
annual budget for shelter operations, supplies and staff
salaries.
Under the county police and codes enforcement portion of
the budget, three licensed officers and their vehicles are
provided for animal control, Ashburn said. Additionally there
is the cost for the disposal of dead animals, which are br
Nine-year-old Alyssa Hanson of Rock Spring cuddles a
rat terrier puppy at the Walker County Animal Shelter. She
was there to adopt an animal. (Messenger photo/Matt
Ledger)
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ought to a
transfer station outside of Walker County.
Smith says that even with a new shelter three times larger
than the old one, the runs and cages keep filling up, and that
her transition from being a volunteer advocate to now heading
a county agency has been has been quite a wake-up call.
“With North Georgia Animal League we’ve hoped to be able to
reduce the tremendous euthanasia that happens here,” she said.
“The reality check for me in coming into this position was the
gross neglect that the community has for their animals.
“I will never understand why dogs are chained up or left in
a 10-by-10 pen indefinitely, without exercise and interaction,
or conversely why some people think it’s okay to let them run
loose without being spayed or neutered. Both those extremes
totally negate what these domesticated animals are wired for.”
Walker County Animal Shelter pet adoptions
are available Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.,
and on Sunday, 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Cost is $2.50 for each day
the pet was boarded, plus $7 for a rabies shot voucher,
redeemable at local veterinarian clinics. For more information
call the shelter at (706) 375-2100.
North Georgia Animal League offers a
rebate up to $50 for pet spaying/neutering surgery. Pet owners
need only complete the Animal League rebate form and send it
in with an itemized receipt from their veterinarian showing
the service was performed. The rebate forms can be obtained at
the Walker County Animal Shelter on Marble Top Road.
No kill?
Estimates vary widely on how many animals are euthanized
annually in the United States, though it is certainly several
million. Smith says that is due primarily to not having enough
responsible owners and the ensuing neglect from
overpopulation.
“That’s the root cause, and it’s sad to say but there are
fates worse than death for these animals,” she said. “I have
seen it firsthand. I’ve helped, healed or otherwise patched up
what neglect creates. As an animal lover it kills a little
part of me each time an animal dies, because it’s dying at the
hands of an irresponsible community.”
Currently, Smith estimates the Walker shelter’s adoption
rate at about 15 percent — that is, nearly 9 out of 10 animals
brought in end up being euthanized.
Among companion animal advocates is a movement which began
in the 1970s that calls for “No Kill” shelters. Until
responsible spay and neuter practices become the norm, Smith
says, achieving absolute No Kill status is impossible. “The
lack of public funds as well as a lack of volunteers committed
to such a huge goal also adds to the task.”
An animal shelter in Tompkins County, N.Y., has been touted
by one No Kill group as a success story of their cause, in
part by logging 12,500 volunteer hours annually.
Smith said she hopes to improve upon Walker County’s
volunteer input, which she estimated to be currently about 100
hours per month.
“My objective in my first year here is to lay a foundation
that would enable this facility to be a pet placement center,
and improve the adoption rate to 70 percent or better,” she
said, adding that it would take 5-7 years to achieve that
goal. “My ultimate dream would be to see this shelter
privately funded and operated.”
To the rescue
Smith says that while she could definitely use more
volunteer help, many animal rescue groups are combative toward
euthanasia and have naïve expectations about how many animals
can be saved.
“I have a problem with some activist groups who are so
shortsighted as to demand that an animal stay in confinement
indefinitely so as not to kill it, but then not provide
volunteers that can walk them, bathe them, groom them and
train them. That is not fair to me or my staff, and it’s not
fair to these animals who get cell-bound and eventually lose
their social skills and become unadoptable.”
Other groups like Dog Pack Rescue (www.dogpackrescue.org),
a No Kill group based in Bartow County, have been extremely
helpful, Smith said. “They are efficient and thorough, and
when Dog Pack says they’re coming to get ‘x’ number of dogs, I
know I can count on that. I could use more of that positive
energy.”
The group often ends up taking even more dogs when they
arrive. “I feel confident that every time they walk out of
here with dogs, each one of them will get good care until it
gets a home.”
But Kenneth Cox of Pet Friends of North Georgia, a private
shelter based in Chickamauga that consistently houses 30 or
more dogs, says the Walker shelter has a long way to go.
Cox’s group was formed before the Animal League, of which
he was once a member, and he expressed disappointment in the
ineffectuality of the latter group’s efforts with the county.
“We keep hoping the county will step up and start educating
people about spaying and neutering like they’ve said they will
do, but I have yet to see any efforts toward that.”
Among a list of other complaints, Cox said the often-fatal
canine parvovirus is still a big problem at the new shelter.
“We’ve had to stop pulling puppies from there because we don’t
have the quarantine capabilities at our shelter,” he said.
Ashburn said the county cannot budget for full service
vetting of animals that come in.
“Animal control is pretty low on the list of essential
services for the majority of taxpayers,” says Ashburn. “But
like a lot of things, it’s the minority who is most vocal
about their desires.”
Watchful eyes
Smith said that the Georgia Department of Agriculture makes
routine unannounced visits to the shelter, and that the
department has given all the facility’s practices passing
marks.
A representative from the Humane Society of the United
States inspected the shelter while it was under construction
last year, and is scheduled to return next week to survey the
operations.
Ashburn said they have to be wary of who adopts from the
shelter, as there have been numerous cases nationwide of
people adopting animals only to sell them to research labs.
“We turned down a group from Alabama last year who said they’d
take every dog we had. But they wouldn’t say what they were
going to do with them.”
He said there is also the problem of dog fights, common in
Walker County, adding that the shelter does not adopt out pit
bulls for that reason. “We’ve picked up pit bulls and then two
days later had the shelter broken into and the dogs stolen.”
Animal lovers have sometimes created problems as well,
Ashburn said, citing numerous cases of large-scale neglect in
the area. In one recent case Dade County authorities
discovered 35 dogs and five horses in bad condition at a
residence of a woman who was supposedly rescuing the animals.
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