HOW ANIMAL SHELTER WILL MANAGE THE RISE IN STRAYS
Officials sometimes have to turn away large dogs and healthy cats.
The Austin Animal Center, buffeted by an uptick in incoming dogs and cats displaced by this spring’s flooding, has had a full house most of the time since March and periodically has had to turn away healthy cats and larger dogs.
The “managed intake” policy has sparked some criticism in the animal activist community. But officials at the five-year municipal shelter in East Austin say the barbs are unfounded, that even with those controls the facility has always accepted 40 to 60 animals a day. And they say, much like a period during the 2015 flooding, there really is no room at the inn.
“We have been at capacity,” said Tawny Hammond, the city’s chief animal service officer. “But at no time have we been closed, at no time did we turn emergencies away. Our doors were never closed to pets in harm’s way.”
So far this year, the shelter has taken in 500 more animals than it has been able to move through the facility — through adoption, transfer to private rescue operations, returns to owners or, a
small percentage of the time, euthanasia.
Occasionally the shelter has posted signs that it is not accepting “healthy cats and kittens” or “healthy medium-large dogs,” which generally means over 35 pounds.
None of those signs were up Thursday, but inside
the shelter, five larger dogs were housed in a conference room, their metal cages shrouded in sheets to help keep the occupants calm. Another big dog, a pit bull mix, was living for a time in a case out back in an open-air truck port. In the facility’s five dorms for larger dogs, which have indoor rooms
connected to outdoor runs by a doggie door, each domi- cile had at least one dog in it. Some had two.
Jennifer Lucas, a Reagan High School English teacher who regularly fosters dogs and cats, said the animal center’s managed intake procedures have been poorly run. She cited several instances of pregnant cats or animals with other health needs being turned away after cursory examination by volunteers.
“This has been a prob- lem for the last six months,” Lucas said. “They might have a genuine space problem, but
closing input to the public is a very short-sighted approach. Regardless of whether an animal appears healthy or not, you at least have to have it looked over by a vet.”
The Levander Loop cen- ter had 485 animals Thurs- day: 280 dogs and 205 cats, according to shelter reports. Another 58 dogs were tempo- rarily living at the Town Lake Animal Center, 487 were in foster care and eight were at veterinarians’ offices outside the shelters. The main shel- ter on Wednesday, according to the report, had taken in 30 dogs and cats.
The report listed “outcomes” for 36 animals on Wednesday, including 15 adoptions, nine transfers to other facilities, eight returns to owners and one euth- anized animal. The facil- ity, according to its 2014-15 annual report, has stayed comfortably above the city’s “no-kill” goal of euthanizing no more than 10 per- cent of the animals that pass through. Of the 17,473 dogs and cats admitted in the year
ending Sept. 30, 2015, 1,001 (or just under 6 percent) were put down. Hammond said help is
on the way in the form of a $5 million expansion of the Levander Loop center. She said that up to 60 larger dog kennels will be added, along with other holding andexercise facilities, parking and improvements in streets and sidewalks around the facility. That project should begin by November, she said, and take
about a year to complete. In the meantime, Kris- ten Auerbach, Hammond’s
deputy, said the center has worked in various ways to stem the tide of dogs and cats, including nearly constant adoption promotions.
“We’re asking for help from the community,” Auerbach said, suggesting that people who pick up a stray dog or cat hold onto it a day or two if possible and seek out the owner before bring- ing the animal to Levander Loop. “We’re in a critical sit- uation. We’re asking, please give us time.”