Shelter Faces Tough Choice WSU Offers Cda Shelter Controversial Way Out Of Financial Straits
It’s a debate that pits animal lover against animal lover.
Should an unwanted dog or cat be simply and humanely euthanized, or should it first be used as a teaching tool so other animals can be better cared for?
It’s a not-so-simple question the Kootenai County Humane Society will soon have to answer.
Faced with growing numbers of abandoned animals and shrinking donations, the beleaguered animal shelter is attempting to crawl out of a deep financial hole and give meaning to the deaths of hundreds of animals euthanized there each year.
Washington State University has stepped into the picture, offering to take some of the animals marked for death and let veterinary students learn by working on the animals before killing them.
The school also has offered to have vet students spay and neuter some of the shelter’s animals and then return them to Kootenai County for adoption.
Although shelter officials last week decided to accept the spaying and neutering offer, they are still considering WSU’s other proposal.
Supporters say the arrangement would ease the shelter’s financial woes - and the stress on shelter employees who must euthanize so many unwanted animals.
“Ideally it would be great if we could adopt out all the animals that are turned in. But it’s impossible,” said Rick Lopes, vice president of the shelter’s board of directors. “If you look at the big picture, this benefits more animals and more people.”
But the WSU proposal appalls some animal lovers who fear the dogs and cats will be further traumatized. They say shelters have no business wheeling and dealing with animals.
“It’s really inappropriate for humane societies to be giving, selling or trading any of the animals in their care for outside purposes,” said Teri Barnato, director of The Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights based in California.
“It erodes public trust in shelters,” she said. “People look to shelters to make sure that when animals are there, they are well-taken care of, and if they don’t get homes, they are euthanized in the most humane way possible.”
The barking, yapping and howling in the dog adoption section at the Kootenai County Humane Society is nearly deafening.
Animals - mostly large dogs - press wet noses through the wire and slip their paws out, begging for attention from people who stroll past their cages.
A lethal injection delivered in a back room has ended the lives of thousands of such animals - the sick ones, the mean ones, the ones nobody wanted. And the shelter’s volunteers and employees - people who love animals - know the numbers are growing.
Of the more than 4,000 cats and dogs brought to the shelter in 1996, employees had to kill about 2,000.
Financial figures are equally grim. The shelter ended the year $13,000 in the hole, said treasurer Phil Waring. The humane society was another $3,000 in the red by the end of January.
Waring said the cost of buying food, medicine and cleaning supplies continues to rise. Meanwhile, income from donations, license fees and adoptions is dwindling.
“We are really in dire straits at this point as far as finances go,” said director Sherwin Edwards.
To raise money, shelter officials want to increase dog-license fees from $3 to $7 for fixed animals, and from $7 to $15 for unfixed dogs. They want to double the fines for allowing pets to run at large from $25 to $50. And they have proposed licensing cats at a cost of $5 for fixed animals and $15 for unfixed animals.
The shelter may even have to cut back operating hours or consider keeping animals for a shorter time before killing them, Edwards said.
Lean times make the offer from WSU all the more attractive to shelter operators.
Few people take issue with the first part of WSU’s proposal allowing students to spay and neuter animals in order to learn the procedures. A professional vet would monitor the students. Animals then would return to Kootenai County for adoption, said Dr. James Lincoln, director of the WSU vet teaching hospital.
With WSU helping out, the shelter would save money on procedures its own vet usually does, Edwards said. It also would give their vet more time to spay and neuter the public’s animals, thereby bringing in more money.
It’s the other part of the proposal that galls some animal-rights activists.
Veterinary students would use animals marked for euthanasia to practice surgical procedures and physical exams, give X-rays and administer anesthesia, Lincoln said.
WSU officials say the animals would not suffer. “I want to be very clear, we would never do a procedure and then wake them up and then have them undergo another procedure,” said Dr. Shirley Johnston, who chairs the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences.
It is called “terminal surgery.” The animal is anesthetized and then operated on. When the students are done, the animal is killed before gaining consciousness, Johnston said.
WSU’s offer could benefit both the school and the animal shelter, proponents say. But animal-rights activists say dogs and cats would pay too high a price.
“I think humane societies should think long and hard about becoming suppliers of disposable animals,” said Mary Beth Sweetland of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in Virginia. “A humane society is a haven for homeless animals. If they can’t find a home, they should be humanely killed at that point. They shouldn’t undergo any further trauma.”
The debate isn’t new to the Inland Northwest.
In the 1980s, a similar deal with Spokane County Animal Control drew a firestorm of criticism. Today, the shelter continues to provide WSU veterinary students with animals. Last year, it sent 212 dogs and 72 cats to the school for student training and eventual death, said director Nancy Sattin. In return, the facility received $8,042 from WSU.
Although Kootenai County shelter officials have not discussed an exchange of money, Johnston said WSU usually pays about $30 per dog.
Waring said he would be uncomfortable taking cash for doomed animals, but said the shelter could ask for supplies instead.
Such an arrangement also would mean fewer animals euthanized in Kootenai County. Last year alone, Edwards estimates he had to kill 500 animals.
“I euthanize them, I put them in a bag and I take them to a landfill,” Edwards said. “If that isn’t a waste of life, I don’t know what is.”
The emotional pain of euthanizing thousands of dogs and cats, in part, drove the previous humane society director from his job last year.
The shelter also would save money in the cost of drugs it uses to kill the animals and the cost of disposing of the animals 20 miles away at the Fighting Creek Landfill.
The debate is at the heart of an ethical question confronting veterinary medicine with growing persistence. It’s a tug between those who believe some animals must perish for the benefit of others and those who believe modern technology can find more humane alternatives.
Working on living animals gives future veterinarians invaluable training, said Sherron McKelvey, the Kootenai shelter vet.
“There is positively no substitute to working on a real animal,” she said. “I have heard a couple of real horror stories where new graduates (who haven’t worked on living animals) have just kind of panicked and fallen apart.”
And, “We believe it gives meaning to the life of the animal that dies,” Johnston said.
Wayne Johnson of the Northwest Animal Rights Network said he reviewed WSU’s research protocols when the issue arose in Spokane.
“They do just outrageous things to dogs,” he said. “I was there when they were anesthetizing dogs from the Spokane pound, breaking their bones to teach veterinary students to reset bones and then killing the dogs afterward. It’s just one series of outrages after another.”
At WSU, an alternative surgical program has been developed for students who have a philosophical problem with killing the very animals they are being trained to care for. The students use a variety of models rather than killing a living animal.
Medical arguments aside, people opposed to WSU’s offer say further manhandling of condemned animals is tantamount to torture.
“I feel that those animals in the shelter have already been stressed out enough,” said Linda Buffy, a concerned Coeur d’Alene resident who has been following the issue. “To put them in a cage, to transport them and then to keep them for up to a month before killing them, I don’t think it’s right.”
WSU’s offer to take death-row animals has been tabled for further consideration, said board president George Braden Jr. Several members plan to tour WSU’s vet facility before making a decision.
The Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights plans to outline its concerns in letters to the university and shelter.
“We are trying to help as many animals as possible,” said Lopes, the shelter vice president. “These are compassionate people. We don’t want to put any animals down, but this is the real world.”
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