[hulkamaniac]

I heard our local animal control had moved into a new building so I went up there to take a look. Their old building was awful. It was small and cramped. The dogs there were kept in cages similar to what you see in pet stores or some puppy mills. Basically iron crates where the waste drops on newspapers or some other media under the cage. The cages were about the size of pet store cages too except they had adult dogs in them. Needless to say the dogs were extremely cramped and conditions were horrible. Waste had clearly sat under the cages for ages and the whole place smelled horrible. I refused to go there as I found the whole thing depressing, but I did understand why it was that way. They had outgrown their facility and had no money to expand or build a new one.

Our local Humane Society has it's own facility across town that is also old, but is well kept. Yes, the paint is peeling, but all dogs are kept in runs that are at least 4'x8-10'. About half of the runs have access to an outside area that's about the same size. The place reeks of bleach most days, but you rarely see old waste and it's not uncommon to see employees/volunteers climbing in and out of the cages to clean up after the dogs. It's still a run down building though and you can tell they are cramped for space.

Fast forward to the present where someone had the brilliant idea of combining Animal Control and the Humane Society into one building. Animal Control will now handle all surrenders and strays and the Humane Society will handle all adoptions. Animal Control's side of the building opened last month (Humane Societies hasn't opened yet) so I figured I'd go check it out. I was both shocked and disgusted. I have several pics, but I'm only going to share a few.

The size of the kennels the dogs are kept in is not any bigger than what it was before. The only difference is they are now about 6-8' tall so the dog can actually stand up. There was waste in nearly every single kennel that had a dog in it and some of it didn't appear to belong to the dog that was in there. There were several that had no dogs, but still had waste in them. The whole place still reeked of animal waste. This is the size of all the cages:

You can get a sense of how big by looking at the water bowl and the small chihuahua shivering in the corner. They had everything from small toy dogs like you see here to huge labs and coonhounds in the same size cages. Thus, they force the dog to sleep and stand in their own waste that is never cleaned up. None of the kennels had access to the outside. Bear in mind that this is a brand new multi-million dollar facility that is surrounded by a couple of acres. You'd think they would put that in their plans. The metal partition in the back of the cage will open to provide more room, but they had not done that on any of the cages. The cages they had in their "puppy" room were the same size and dimension of pet shop cages except they were solid stainless still. Every single one of them had waste in there somewhere.

Check this out -

The dog in the cage is a lab mix. He's the only dog in the cage. It's pretty obvious that the smaller feces don't even belong to him. The great civil servants at our animal control didn't even bother to clean the cage before they put him in there. Either that or he's eaten the smaller dog and left nothing behind.

I'm not a cat person, but the conditions the cats were kept in were even worse. The cats didn't even get a freaking litter box. Come on now. You're keeping cats in a cage without a litter box? WTF??

This is what will happen in our city to people who surrender their dogs. They end up in this horrible place. I've not seen the Humane Society building yet as it's not open. I know the people there struggle to run a classy operation and I've always been impressed with them. If I was forced to surrender a dog I would've taken it there in a heart beat. I'd almost have my dog PTS rather than surrender either one of them to this place if that was my only option.

I saw a Sharpei there who broke my heart. She had been taken in as a stray and was only 4-5 months old. She was mellow, laid back and readily came up and licked my hand. I'd have taken her home in a heartbeat just to get some dog out of that horrible place, but legally I'm only allowed to have two dogs. How do you guys deal with it when you see dogs that you just can't save, but who desperately need saving? These dogs will likely spend the rest of their lives living in their own wastes until one day they're PTS. Most people won't adopt a dog who's laying in it's own urine and feces. They make a disgusted face and walk on by. Who can blame them? But this is what my fair city chooses to do with it's multi-million dollar facility and this is how they choose to address our animal problem.

Excuse me. I need to go hug my dogs now.

 

[K9companions]

Ugh, that really sucks. I'm sorry your having to deal with that and just by reading it, I am frustrated. The best advice I would give is just complain, complain, complain. Tell people and get the word out how horrible this place is. You might even want to think about asking a local newspaper to see if they would be interested in finding out where the tax payers' money went, because it obviously didn't go into building an adequate animal shelter. Maybe someone would be interested in visiting the shelter and writing about it's conditions.

That's a shame and I'm sorry you gotta deal with it. *hugs*

 

[Katzyn]

That's disgusting.

I agree - alert a newspaper or new agency.

 

[jencam]

Go to the city council to get funds allocated for better facilities. And I agree about the media too.

I guess I am lucky in my city - the dogs have that two-part you mentioned, where they can be inside or outside. I don't know the dimensions, but very reasonable looking. I saw NO waste. They must be 'johnny on the spot' with that.

And there is a special block for dogs that a rescue group has deemed very adoptable but just haven't been for some odd reason. The pound lets these dogs have a very extended period - mine had been there 6 weeks.

I am so grateful to them and the rescue group for holding onto the best dog I ever had!

 

[Spicy1_VV]

Looks like a lot of shelters to me. Ours has smaller kennels then that. They are narrow, "long" (not that long but they are small rectangles) runs inside. Although they do have a proper grated floor which allows urine to drip down and I don't see lots of feces in the cages. The times I've went I can't recall seeing any though I'm sure they are not always immediately cleaned up, but they seem on top of it. They don't have outside access, concrete walls. As far as smaller feces I can't really say if it is the same dog lab mix or not, you'd have to have it analyzed for that. Considering a dog can poop different sizes, not to be gross or anything but mine sometimes have smaller poops that look like from smaller dogs and other times they look like they are from bigger dog then what my dog is. Do you know the approximate size of the new kennels? I do not know what state you are in but you would have the check your USDA requirements to see if everything is proper as far as flooring, kennel sizes, housing dogs together (size, ect requirements). It could be an issue of leaving one dogs poop in a kennel where another dog now is if that is in fact what happened.

I went to shelter of neighboring town which was terrible. It was truly disgusting, a lot more then that. Urine and feces, multiple dogs in kennels. These were very small kennels and they'd have like 2 lab sized dogs in some. They were cement cells basically with gate fronts, tiny boxes. It also always stank. The lady acted as if she could care less about the dogs or people wanting to adopt them. Frequent enough dogs died of contagious diseases that would spread from a sick dog coming in. Which says how little sanitizing they do. They too build a "new" facility (was supposed to be) which was basically revamping the old one. It was a little better but not much. Same attitudes of course but the kennels were hardly bigger and still not kept very clean. I was surprised that it was supposed to be the new super great place we hoped for.

 

[hulkamaniac]

Go to the city council to get funds allocated for better facilities. And I agree about the media too.

I guess I am lucky in my city - the dogs have that two-part you mentioned, where they can be inside or outside. I don't know the dimensions, but very reasonable looking. I saw NO waste. They must be 'johnny on the spot' with that.

And there is a special block for dogs that a rescue group has deemed very adoptable but just haven't been for some odd reason. The pound lets these dogs have a very extended period - mine had been there 6 weeks.

I am so grateful to them and the rescue group for holding onto the best dog I ever had!

The city council was reluctant to spend the $6 mil on this place to begin with. Can't say I blame them. We do have other issues in town that you could argue needed to be addressed first. In any case, I seriously doubt they're going to spend money to redo a brand new facility. They do need clean house there. I don't think it's unreasonable to keep a facility filled with dogs as clean as possible. Here's another picture I didn't include earlier:

This cage is empty yet there is still urine on the floor. This place had been opened a week when I took this picture. I don't think this is a stain. I can't tell from my crappy cell phone pic if the water bowl is empty or not so it's hard to tell how long this cage has been unoccupied.

 

[Tofu_pup]

I would volunteer and encourage friends and acquaintances to volunteer. I used to be a volunteer and I will be again. My duties were to clean poo, pee, litter boxes, and sanitize food/water dishes. I'd spend HOURS doing just that. But if I worked fast enough, I'd have time to take the dogs out to run in the fenced in acre. I could work with them to make them more adoptable thus combating the harm it does them to be in such tiny kennels.

 

[Spicy1_VV]

Did you see any workers there actually doing anything?

 

[Inga]

Ugh! There have been rumblings of the same thing happening here. The humane society that is here in town is so ill run, I guess it wouldn't make much difference but I hate to see that. The cages here are that size as well with a guillotine door between the two sides, a drain in the middle for liquid waste to flow down into. These places truly are sad. The best we can do as animal lovers is encourage adoptions and help to stop the over population of pets in the first place. I feel so sorry for the ones that are not the highly adoptable dogs.
The Pit Bulls and Lab mixes and such that sit for days, weeks and in some cases months in crap facilities like those. I always come home and hug my dogs after days in rescue. It keeps us sane.
Like someone said, volunteer and make a difference if you can. Encourage others to do the same. At least getting the dogs out for a daily walk and some fresh air makes it a little better. If you can get someone to teach basic skills like "sit" and "don't pull on a leash", it gives them a better chance of getting adopted.

 

[hulkamaniac]

Did you see any workers there actually doing anything?

There were 2-3 employees who seemed be pushing papers at the front desk. That was about it.

It saddens me because the local humane society is very well run, but they'll be sharing facilities with this crappy place in a couple of weeks.

 

[opokki]

That is really sad. It amazes me that the people working at such facilities can just ignore that. I wouldn't be able to. I can't imagine how stressful this must be for the dogs and especially the cats without litter boxes.

 

[Lolas_Dad]

Brand new building and still horribly run?. You say you can't do anything?. Sure you can do something alert the investigative branch of the local news media in your area. Let them publish on air the stuff that is going on and then heads will roll.

 

[sheltiemom]

The shelter Scarlett came from was like that, only like 50 years older. One of the worst things I've ever seen, my husband and I both left in tears. Cages were small, dirty, dogs looked sick and were matted with feces...and the smell was unbelievable. It was staffed with convicts, but I will say this, these guys, these convicts, seemed to really care about the dogs. One guy was talking about how they are so scared when they come in, and how when he cleans the runs he takes them out and talks to them, and how he tries to handle the puppies and get them used to people, and how he can really see a change in them once they get used to him. People make the difference...one sure way to help is to volunteer...maybe even ask if they have a foster program, the HS here does, and usually a foster does not count toward a dog limit.

 

[hulkamaniac]

Brand new building and still horribly run?. You say you can't do anything?. Sure you can do something alert the investigative branch of the local news media in your area. Let them publish on air the stuff that is going on and then heads will roll.

Since my post I've written a letter to the editor of the local newspaper and sent some of my pictures and a short e-mail to the local TV stations. I have a feeling it's not going to get a lot of coverage since George Tiller (a (in)famous local abortion doctor) was just shot and killed in front of his church an hour or so ago. I've been eclipsed by real news.

 

[BrittanyG]

Stuff like this really kills me. It always makes me think of how these poor things must feel, after being dumped by their families, and then having people not care enough about them..GRR.

 

[Elana55]

I find this infuriating.

First of all, it is the best way to unhousebreak a dog to live like that. Second it is the best way to give a cat Cystitis and a urinary blockage to not provide a CLEAN (spotlessly so) litter box for cats brought in.

While the dog is being unhousebroken and trained to pee and poo where he sleeps, and being made unadoptable in the process, a good house broken dog will hold it painfully long.. also causing canine cystitis and unrinary tract infections. Same with cats.. problem is that develop crystals in their urine and can't pee at all. They die in 24 hours and the process is painful.

What you have depicted is not a SHELTER. This is a Freaking POUND.

Where I live there is NO animal control and that can drive me up the wall too. The only shelter is no kill and it covers this county and the next one.. and there is NEVER any room at the Inn. The Inn is filled with APBT and AST and crosses that can live there for years.. while other dogs end up being dumped "in the country" in the night or shot if they are unwanted. Same for the cats.

And yet, looking at this, I can tell you I PREFER my situation of NO SHELTER than one run like that. Best to just PTS every animal that comes in and never let it see a cage.

Looking at this shelter I wonder where the $6 million went?

I don't know where you are Hulk.. but I am afraid if I went there and saw this heads would roll.... and that might happen b4 I left the place. Of course, I would first take the employees and lock them in the poo cages and leave them there.. and take the phones off the hook and their cells away from them too.

 

[hulkamaniac]

I am planning on going back there sometime this week just to see if what I saw was some random, weird anomaly. It's possible that a whole lot of someone's were all having bad days at the exact same time. I doubt it, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. The building itself is very nice. The neglect of the staff members is equally horrid.

 

[Lolas_Dad]

Since my post I've written a letter to the editor of the local newspaper and sent some of my pictures and a short e-mail to the local TV stations. I have a feeling it's not going to get a lot of coverage since George Tiller (a (in)famous local abortion doctor) was just shot and killed in front of his church an hour or so ago. I've been eclipsed by real news.

It might not get coverage right away but I am sure if they care they will look into it. There has been a lot of news lately on dogs getting rescued from puppy mills, dogs left abandoned and dogs being abused lately in the area our news covers. Places like the one you describe would be entered with undercover cameras so they can see how the conditions really are. After that they will confront the proper people and then do a follow up. So it might take a few weeks before you hear anything about it on the news. If you do not hear anything from the media in a weeks time or so you might want to follow up with them to see if anything is being done.