Recent events, attitudes and budget manipulations at Dallas Animal Services and the Dallas Animal Shelter and Adoption Center have inspired a movement to get the attention of city officials.
This is the official logo of the campaign to make things good and decent from the bottom to the top of Dallas Animal Services: “NOW or NEVER.”
Eye-catching, isn’t it. And the people from the Metroplex Animal Coalition and Dallas Animal Advocates are hoping it catches the eyes of the Dallas City Council and Mayor Tom Leppert during the current budget talks.
MAC President Elaine Munch and supporters have launched a letter-writing campaign to the mayor and council regarding the critical condition of Dallas Animal Services. We can’t list all the things said to be wrong with the city shelter, but we’ll take a shot at some of these “talking points” "Now or Never" suggests that people use when they write to their council member and the mayor. Each of these came up during last week’s meeting of the Dallas Animal Shelter Commission. Among the “talking points”:
--The manager was indicted for felony animal cruelty because he allowed a cat to die inside the walls of the shelter;
--The position of animal services director has been eliminated under a new budget plan and those responsibilities will be divided among other employees – all equals, no boss at a shelter lacking in leadership;
--Because Animal Services is under Code Compliance, the upper management regards the animals as if they were unpleasant weed lots or old abandoned cars rather than living beings;
--The method of 311 handling of animal-related calls is slow or non-responsive and Code Compliance has no idea of how these calls are handled.
--Animal ordinance violations are allowed to continue in perpetuity as long as a Code Compliance staffer declares that “we’re working with them” on the situation. (At least two situations have persisted for years.)
--Animals marked for rescue – tagged by rescue groups – have been killed anyway.
--Some personnel at the shelter either have no training in handling animals or ignore their training (as in the recent case of a cat whose jaw was broken when a staffer known for rough handling of animals used, against standard procedure, a canine catch-pole to extract the cat from the overnight drop box).
--The shelter’s ultra-expensive air-conditioning system, custom-designed against airborne illnesses (critical in a shelter full of un-vaccinated animals), is being allowed to deteriorate because of maintenance budget cuts and poor management.
The list goes on and on.
When, against great political odds and after years of struggle, this shelter was opened on Oct. 20, 2007, the Dallas Animal Services Shelter was the pride of the city. Mayor Tom Leppert, early in his term, showed up to cut the ribbon and make a nice talk. Other city council members were there, as were people representing many rescue groups and animal welfare concerns.
The mood was buoyant. Then-Mayor Pro Tem Elba Garcia, a great friend to animals and the shelter movement, spoke of using the shelter as a place to teach the city’s young people to be kind to animals, to treasure them and treat them with respect.
People smiled during tours of the new building. Animals were adopted on the spot. The fantastic structure was a hit. Ambitions were high that this shelter, this adoption center, would become the leading animal facility in the nation. Dallas would have a great symbol of compassion and skilled management.
Yet in less than three years the shelter has become a controversial place where animals are killed, careers are ended and tax dollars are both frittered away on avoidable legal problems or denied to the shelter because of managerial decisions.
The killing pattern and the sorry state of the two notorious animal shelters it replaced, rather than being recalled for the lessons they taught, are now living on in the sorry state of affairs in the new shelter.
Less than three years have passed and the shiny new shelter is a symbol of regrettable behavior.
If you want to know how to get involved in the Now Or Never movement, go to Dallas Animal Advocates HERE.
The answer to shelter management, as suggested by some people at the Animal Shelter Commission meeting, is to move Animal Services out of Code Compliance and, perhaps, into its own department led by people who understand the animal welfare profession and are concerned that the care of animals is not held equal to bad plumbing, poor wiring, weed lots or old cars. These are lives, not water sprinklers running during a drought, overgrown lots, signs on telephone poles or vacant lots. Living beings -- and their only hope is the goodness in human hearts.
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