Former staff, volunteers claim SCRAPS needlessly euthanized dogs

Former employees and volunteers at the Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service are accusing the organization of negligence in its care for animals, unethical behavior by leadership and unnecessary euthanization in violation of SCRAPS’ no-kill policy and government contracts.

SCRAPS leadership has denied any wrongdoing, arguing that the animals the shelter has slated for euthanasia were suffering from severe medical conditions, were aggressive or both and were beyond help – either by the organization or the wider community. Officials say they do whatever they can with the resources available to avoid euthanasia.

In back-to-back meetings of the governing bodies of the city and county of Spokane, former shelter associates tallied numerous accusations. They also called for the firing of SCRAPS Director Jesse Ferrari, who has led the organization since October, and Shelter Operations Manager Nick Hobbs Doyle, who started in December. The cities of Spokane and Spokane Valley contract with the county-run SCRAPS for animal control services.

Former associates accused SCRAPS of terminating staff, including behavioral specialists, and pushing away volunteers who had questioned changes in operations. Their accusations centered on three dogs recently slated for euthanasia, only one of which is still alive.

Speaking before the Spokane City Council Monday night, Bryanna Franzen accused the shelter of euthanizing a dog named Amelia, who had metastatic breast cancer but who Franzen said was not suffering from severe pain.

“Under previous leadership, Amelia would have been placed in hospice care,” Franzen said.

Stephanie Hayden, a behavioral team member at SCRAPS until she was fired, stated at a Tuesday County Commission meeting that another dog, Domino, had been slated for euthanasia due to behavioral health issues. SCRAPS leadership undermined her treatment plan, Hayden claimed, and declined to give the dog more time to recover.

Domino was euthanized April 30, Hayden stated.

Finally, former associates highlighted the case of a third dog, Nancy. Nancy was slated for euthanasia due to behavioral health issues and an associated decline in her health, a decision that was reportedly approved by a veterinarian, not a licensed behavioral specialist as required by the shelter’s contract, Franzen alleged Monday.

“The only reason Nancy was saved by one of our amazing rescues in the community is because (SCRAPS) received over 300 letters and hundreds of phone calls advocating for this dog’s life,” Franzen said. “The behavior concerns and medical concerns that they had documented were unfounded.”

Nancy was taken in on May 5 by Spokane Valley-based K9 Tracking and Recovery and has been undergoing training with Maranda Voge, a handler with the organization Colorful Canines. Voge reported that the issues previously identified were correctable, and the dog’s behavior had markedly improved within days of Nancy’s removal from SCRAPS and beginning of training with Colorful Canines.

“To move forward, I am requesting that SCRAPS surrender all current pending euthanasia cases and behavior cases to K9 Tracking and Recovery,” Voge told the Spokane City Council Monday night.

In a Tuesday interview, Hobbs Doyle said he was not broadly aware of the accusations and hadn’t listened to the comments made during Monday’s City Council meeting. In response to specific questions, he said the controversy seemed to have been caused by a difference in definition on what “no-kill” implied, and said the organization was “looking for best practices and trying to figure out what works.”

In the case of Amelia, Hobbs Doyle said her euthanization had come after the recommendation of an on-staff veterinarian who had consulted with other community vets.

“All of them recommended euthanasia as the most humane and ethical thing we could do to ease her suffering,” he said.

When asked about the accusation that Amelia had not been in unremitting pain, Hobbs Doyle defended the prognosis of the staff vet.

“Some of the allegations that we faced while this was happening was that my vet was out to kill all the dogs,” Hobbs Doyle said.

“Unfortunately, she’s still here, and my kennels are still full, so she’s doing a really bad job of it,” he added.

Hobbs Doyle insisted SCRAPS only euthanized in the case of extreme medical or behavioral health issues.

In the case of Nancy, Hobbs Doyle said she was medically deteriorating and had shown signs of extreme anxiety and aggression toward other dogs. At one point, he said Nancy had lunged at another dog in a neighboring kennel, and had wounded her nose as a result.

“She’s been here since I started here,” Hobbs Doyle said. “I had seen a noticeable decline in her mental state, and she was one of my favorite dogs.”

Nancy had been slated for euthanasia also because animal fosters had declined to accept her because of her aggression toward other animals.

“The criteria we’re looking at is today, how can I make it better tomorrow?” Hobbs Doyle added. “If we’ve expended our resources, then what more can we do? So we reached out to other shelters, but her previous behavior, before coming in and in the shelter, reflected a dog that was not well.”

Hobbs Doyle noted that the shelter had not contacted Colorful Canines and had not been aware of its ability to assist with SCRAPS’ dogs.

“We felt that we had exhausted our resources with Nancy and felt that the most humane thing to do was release her from her pain,” he added.

Hobbs Doyle went on to say that he thought reports of Nancy’s quickly improving health were “lovely,” but demurred when asked whether it indicated the dog’s issues had always been fixable.

“Cancer is a fixable prognosis,” he said. “It takes extreme resources. Resources that we cannot provide.”

“That being said, could more have been done for Nancy? Sure,” he added. “She is showing great progress in a new facility. I don’t know what resources they are able to give her.

“That being said, we’re a shelter. We work within our bounds.”

Hobbs Doyle declined to comment on accusations that staff and volunteers were pushed out as a result of differences of opinion with the shelter’s new leadership.

He added that, during his tenure, the shelter had never employed licensed behavioral specialists. Instead, he stated that the “lifesaving specialist” position previously held by Hayden and others were not licensed positions, and likened them to dog trainers. He added that he had received animal behavioral welfare certification through the University of Edinburgh, and that he and other staff were receiving continuing education in animal behavioral health.

SCRAPS has not always operated as a no-kill shelter, but adopted the policy several years ago during the leadership of Lindsey Soffes, who served as SCRAPS director until mid-2022. The policy was made a requirement in 2020 after the city and county of Spokane amended their contracts with the shelter.

According to the amended contract, euthanasia is permitted for “only those cases in which the animal in the care of the facility is found to be in the process of dying or determined by a licensed veterinarian or animal behavioral specialist to suffer from an irremediable prognosis.”

But City Councilman Michael Cathcart, who worked with Soffes to spearhead the amendment on the city side as one of his first acts on council, said he understood the language to require a veterinarian to sign off that a medical prognosis was irremediable, while a behavioral prognosis would require a behavioral specialist.

“It’s trying to spell out that, depending on what the prognosis is, an expert in that field is making that call,” Cathcart said.

The councilman added that he had been trying to contact SCRAPS since the controversy first came to his attention several weeks ago but hadn’t heard anything from the organization. Frustrated with the lack of response, Cathcart said his office had filed records requests with SCRAPS so he could independently see how euthanasia cases over the last few years had been handled, and whether practices had changed under new management.

Hobbs Doyle noted that no other dogs are currently slated for euthanasia, and that the shelter has an over 90% “save rate,” referring to the percentage of animals in the shelter’s care that are not euthanized or otherwise die in the shelter’s care. In 2021, the statewide average was an 89.6% save rate, according to data collected by the Best Friends Animal Society.

In an interview, Soffes, who now works as a program officer for Rise for Animals, a national animal rights organization, said she was aware of the concerns being raised about SCRAPS’ current operations.

While she noted that she had no firsthand knowledge of the accusations, she did discuss how the shelter was managed under her leadership.

“The one thing I want to add about no-kill: It’s on a case-by-case basis,” Soffes said. “It’s not about achieving X percentage of saves or fewer than some number of euthanizations.”

Every measure should first be taken to mitigate factors that could be contributing to an animal’s deterioration, she added, including the shelter environment. She noted that staff would often keep animals in the shelter’s office space, where they were able to emotionally rebound.

“Shelter life can be very challenging for some dogs,” she said. “You have to look at, have we done everything to address this animal’s stress?”

Once the shelter had exhausted its resources, Soffes said the next step was to reach out to every possible community partner for additional support.

“Spokane County has shown it wants to help these animals,” she said.

It can be challenging for shelter veterinarians to have enough one-on-one time with an animal, particularly outside of the clinic setting, to make a determination about an animal’s behavior, Soffes added. While she led the shelter, she said that decisions of life and death were made as a team – a team that included many of those currently protesting SCRAPS leadership.

“I don’t believe that this kind of decision could be made appropriately by any one person,” she added. “Again, the decisions are not always easy, but I’ll tell you, in the cases we had when I was there, we very, very often all ended up on the same page.”