Doggy crap game: Las Vegas gambles again on a “no-kill” panacea

Founded to fix dog & cat overpopulation,  the Animal Foundation turned to shuffling the animals instead

LAS VEGAS, Nevada––Perpetually overcrowded,  especially with pit bulls,  the Animal Foundation of Nevada “is offering to pay people who commit to a four-week foster of a dog,”  Elaine Emerson of FOX5 announced on September 2,  2024.

“Those who complete the four-week fostering will receive $200 upon completion.”

That detonated ANIMALS 24-7 reader Scott McIntyre,  among others,  who is a longtime close observer of the Las Vegas and Clark County,  Nevada resolute retreat from the verge of achieving at least the possibility of community no-kill animal control a quarter century ago,  to farther away now than ever.

“A dozen or more years behind in offering free s/n”

No mere bystander,  McIntyre told ANIMALS 24-7 that he has “volunteered with both private rescue and three public shelters including the Animal Foundation.

“Clark County like much of the country,”  McIntyre emailed to ANIMALS 24-7,   “is a dozen or more years behind in offering free spay neuter and programs such as low cost vet care and transitional housing that would keep companion animals out of shelters.

“It’s not bad enough that the life value of a shelter pet has been reduced to zero,”  McIntyre wrote.  “Now the same crew who brought us ‘clear the shelter’ and ‘just one day’ have discovered bribing people to take” unadoptable dogs.

“For years,”  McIntyre said,  “my position has been that rather than adopt animals for free,  those funds should be redirected into paying people to spay/neuter.

“Too little solid data and too many people profiting”

“Even if a few ‘bounty hunters’ game a system like that,”  McIntyre opined,  “I have to think the net result would be more positive than all the free dogs relegated to existing on the end of a chain or kenneled all day.”

Earlier McIntyre told ANIMALS 24-7 that,  “It is estimated that Clark County has 200,000 free-roaming cats,”  even though one local organization has sterilized 50,000 cats since 2009.

“I found an article from 2013,”  McIntyre said,  “that estimated Clark County had from 250,000 to 500,000 free-roaming cats,  which is quite the margin of error.

“If we went from 500,000 to 200,000,  kudos,”  McIntyre offered,  but suggested that going from 250,000 to 200,000 “seems too much suffering for too little result.  Therein lies my concern,”  McIntyre explained.

“We have too little solid data and too many people profiting off the suffering of public shelter animals and workers.

“Those cats still die”

“With regard to return-to-field,”  McIntyre added,  meaning the tactic of emptying animal shelters by releasing cats where found,  on the theory that they can find their own way back to homes they may not have had in the first place,  “Those cats still die and many very soon after release.

“Not included [in the allegedly improved euthanasia statistics] are the cats who die because many now are never able to enter a shelter in their jurisdiction,  or those who died after being dumped to ‘give the cat a chance,’  since the no-kill community has seriously maligned public open intake shelters as ‘kill shelters.’

“As with my concerns about free roaming cat welfare,” McIntyre continued,  “I find it equally disturbing that too few organizations are taking full ownership of free-roaming cats within their jurisdictions.  The Best Friends Animal Society,  Maddie’s Fund,  and their ilk could have long since set up cat drop stations where spay/neuter checks and vaccines could be performed before a cat hits the streets.

“Heavy lifting left with public shelters”

“Instead they have left most of the heavy lifting with public shelters.  No wonder many have responded by closing their doors to admissions.

“As a country,”  McIntyre charged,  “we have moved away from shelters mostly doing humane euthanasia to ‘euthanasia by proxy’ at the expense of animal welfare.

“Managed or no admission policies make euthanasia statistics as suspect as under any other approach.  The public should understand that many of these animals left to fend for themselves lead horrible lives and die terrible deaths.

“No kill agendas have added needless suffering,”  McIntyre observed,  “while death has been shifted off the balance sheet.

“Meanwhile,  organizations touting no kill are sucking resources from the organizations that take in the animals who most desperately need saving and end up doing most of the killing.

“I suspect that neuter/return has been so poorly managed in Las Vegas,”  McIntyre concluded,  “that the total free-roaming cat population here will soon surpass what it was” when neuter/return was introduced to the community circa 1990.

Las Vegas was long ago a good example

ANIMALS 24-7 receives similar complaints from longtime animal advocates around the U.S.,  and indeed,  around the world,  almost daily.

Las Vegas,  however,  forty years ago––and as recently as 20 years ago––appeared to be an outstanding example of a community using credible statistical assessment to get ahead of dog and cat overpopulation.

(See Can Las Vegas really get to no-kill animal control? Don’t bet on it.)

A landmark study of dog and cat acquisition in Las Vegas,  done in 1984 by researcher Rudy Nassar,  found that 26.3% of pet dogs and 10% of pet cats came from breeders,  kennels, and pet shops;  50% of pet dogs and 43% of pet cats came from other pet keepers;  11.4% of pet dogs and 14% of pet cats came from pounds and shelters;  8% of pet dogs and 24.5% of pet cats were adopted as strays;  and 4% of pet dogs and 9.7% of pet cats were born at home.

High-volume,  low-cost s/n

If all or most of the animals obtained from other pet keepers and born at home were considered to be from ‘accidental’ litters,  and this figure was combined with the numbers adopted from pounds and shelters and as strays,  the total could be interpreted to mean that 74% of pet dogs and 90% of pet cats were the result of accidental breeding.

Taking that finding to heart,  Las Vegas entrepreneur Mary Herro in 1988 formed the Animal Foundation to do high-volume,  low-cost spay/neuter,  emulating techniques developed by Los Angeles spay/neuter surgeon Marvin Mackie.

The Animal Foundation clinic,  opened in January 1989,  soon performed more than 10,000 spay/neuter surgeries per year.

About one surgery in four was done at no charge for low-income pet keepers.

The Animal Foundation later operated branch spay/neuter clinics in both Los Angeles and Dallas,  Texas,  but found working at multiple sites unsustainable.

Pledged to make Las Vegas no-kill

Meanwhile,  the Animal Foundation in 1995 wrested the Las Vegas city animal control contract away from Dewey Animal Care,  a for-profit firm which continued to do animal control for Clark County and North Las Vegas.

This involved a bruising multi-year political battle,  lawsuits,  and years of media attacks,  during which Herro won public favor by pledging to make Las Vegas a no-kill city.

Moving from the former Las Vegas city animal control shelter into the $3.5 million “state-of-the-art” Lied Animal Shelter on February 8,  2001,  which proved to have critical design flaws,  Herro retired from personally directing shelter operations to focus on running the Las Vegas pet licensing program.

Herro hoped that pet licensing would help to maintain the momentum of the Animal Foundation spay/neuter program,  and would fund further progress.

Licensing programs fail

That did not happen.  Around the U.S. and the world,  pet licensing programs have consistently failed to pay for animal control and sheltering services.

Most notoriously,  the American SPCA took over the New York City pound contract and pet licensing in 1894,  then lost money on the deal for 100 years in a row before returning the contract and pet licensing authority to the city.

Offering licensing discounts for spayed or neutered dogs helped to boost spay/neuter rates in the 1970s,  but less and less over the years,  as licensing compliance has never verifiably risen above 25% nationwide,  while more than 70% of the U.S. dog population (pit bulls excepted) were spayed or neutered by 1990.

Budget cuts

Apart from those misjudgments,  the Animal Foundation was especially hard-hit by the national economic crash that followed the implosion of inflated high-tech stock prices in early 2001 and was worsened by the terrorist attacks of September 11,  2001.

Unpopular budget cuts followed the unrealistic promise that Las Vegas might be able to get to no-kill animal control decades before enough targeted spay/neuter of pit bulls and feral cats was done to make that an actual possibility.

Trying to get to no-kill by promoting adoptions,  the approach emphasized by the Best Friends Animal Society,  Maddie’s Fund,  and the No Kill Advocacy Center,  though it has had no verifiable success anywhere,  the Animal Foundation put less emphasis on providing spay/neuter service to Las Vegas and Clark County.

Heaven Can Wait

Picking up the slack was a new organization called the Heaven Can Wait Animal Society,  founded in 2000 by former dice table manager turned video rental entrepreneur Harold Vosko.

Meanwhile the Lied Animal Shelter was expanded in 2003 to also hold animals impounded or owner-surrendered from Clark County,  after the Animal Foundation won the Clark County animal control contract in another litigious conflict with Dewey Animal Care.

Dewey Animal Care had historically killed most incoming animals soon after arrival,  as did most U.S. animal control shelters.

No quarantine facilities

As there was no anticipation that many animals would be in long-term care,  and therefore at risk of catching diseases from constant exposure to newcomers,  shelters built before the 21st century––including the Lied Animal Shelter––usually did not incorporate provision for isolation-and-quarantine of sick animals.

The most common reason for quarantining shelter animals then was to see if a dog who had bitten someone might be rabid.  The quarantine time in such a case was typically two weeks,  but shelter designers rarely anticipated that a shelter would have more than a few dogs in quarantine at any given time.

Cats were rarely if ever quarantined until ambitions of no-kill sheltering spread in the mid-1990s.  Recognition has only gradually followed that keeping healthy cats in large numbers requires quarantining new arrivals to avoid the spread of upper respiratory infections of all sorts,  to which cats are much more susceptible than dogs.

Pit bulls

Noting that 60% of the dogs in the Lied Animal Shelter were pit bulls,  the Las Vegas city council in August 2005 briefly considered an ordinance similar to one in effect in San Francisco since 2006 which would have required that all pit bulls be sterilized.

The proposal failed,  opposed by the Animal Foundation.  The Animal Foundation held out for a non-breed-specific ordinance,  to be enforced through pet licensing.  This also predictably failed.

2007 disease outbreak

What should have become the pivotal event in the history of animal sheltering in Las Vegas and Clark County,  but did not,  came in February 2007 when a six-member Humane Society of the U.S. shelter evaluation team joined Lied Animal Shelter staff in euthanizing more than 1,000 of the 1,800 animals in custody,  in facilities built to hold half as many.

About 150 of the animals were ill,  and 850 were believed to have been exposed to the illnesses,  with a high likelihood of becoming infected.

The evaluation team,  headed by then-HSUS director of animal sheltering Kim Intino, found both parvovirus and distemper among the holding kennels for incoming dogs,  and discovered panleukopenia among the incoming cats.

University of California at Davis shelter medicine program chief Kate Hurley,  who was one of two veterinarians on the HSUS inspection team,  also identified a bacterial infection that caused a fatal hemorrhagic pneumonia.

“New territory”

“This  had not been documented in a shelter before,”   Hurley told Steve Friess of The New York Times.   “There was some uncertainty of how to best manage the bacterial infection and what best to do,”  Hurley said.   “We were in new territory,  and found it in both cats and dogs.”

Hurley,  incidentally,  who recommended mass euthanasia then,  was and is the same individual who over the past decade has promoted “return-to-field” of cats found at large.

(See San Diego cat control “trial of the century” is continued until August.)

“We didn’t realize this was happening,”  said Lied Animal Shelter manager Diane Orgill.

Animal Foundation president Janie Greenspun Gale,  who had succeeded Mary Herro three years earlier,  “tearfully faced critics at a hastily called public meeting,”  Friesse wrote,  “and acknowledged that the Lied Animal Shelter animal intake policies had been misguided.

“Operating shelter like a rescue”

“Gale said her organization had been operating the shelter like a rescue operation and had not been euthanizing enough animals to keep the space safe and sanitary for the adoptable ones,”  Friesse summarized.

“Our policies were written to save every animal we possibly could,”  Gale told Friesse.

“Our problems became unmanageable,”  Gale told ANIMALS 24-7,   “when we began getting in 200 or more animals every day.  We scrambled for space,  even though we built a shelter three times larger than the new one we built five years ago,  but still the issue of space and [finding enough] vets to do [both] high-volume spay/neuter [and shelter disease control] were our Waterloo.”

The central conflict between public expectations and what the Animal Foundation could do had escalated for years,  even though the Animal Foundation killed about a third fewer animals than Dewey had,  with comparable intake.

“Major criticism”

Explained Gale to ANIMALS 24-7 in a September 2002 e-mail,   “The major criticism we encounter is that early on we said we wanted to make Las Vegas a no-kill city,  with our new [shelter as the beginning of the process.  Now all the other groups throw that at us, saying we are not no-kill,  and we are perpetrating a fraud on the community. “

ANIMALS 24-7 reminded Gale in response that,  “The now-defunct No-Kill Directory and all literature for the No-Kill Conference series,  1995-2001,  always carried on page one the phrase,   “Implicit to the No-Kill philosophy is the reality of exceptional situations in which euthanasia is the most humane alternative available.   Those exceptional situations include irrecoverable illness or injury,  dangerous behavior,  and/or the need to decapitate an animal who has bitten someone,  in order to perform rabies testing.”

Incompatible missions

ANIMALS 24-7 also warned Gale that the humane society mission of trying  to save every animal,  limited only by donor generosity,  is inherently incompatible with the animal control mandate of protecting the public,  limited by what taxpayers are collectively willing to support.

Guiding both the Lied Animal Shelter and the Animal Foundation successfully,  ANIMALS 24-7 advised,  would require building a firewall between their respective roles,  to avoid having animal control issues jeopardize humane objectives.

Shorter holding time

Suspending most routine shelter operations for a week to cope with the emergency,  the Lied Animal Shelter reopened with a pledge to hold animals deemed unadoptable for only 72 hours on the chance that they might be reclaimed.

“We are not abandoning our principles,”  Gale emphasized.   “We are just being more vigilant in identifying unadoptable animals and letting go of them earlier.  The others will have 120 days to find homes,  and rescues are always welcome.

Animal Foundation spokesperson Mark Fierro said the Lied Animal Shelter would also begin vaccinating all incoming animals against the most common serious shelter diseases,  as recommended by HSUS,  and already practiced by progressive shelters worldwide.

This policy,  however,  added militant anti-vaxxers to the legions of no-kill literalists and Dewey loyalists who already whetted grudges against the Animal Foundation.

Numbers did not “speak for themselves”

Former Clark County assistant manager Christine Robinson succeeded Janie Greenspun Gale as executive director of the Animal Foundation on April 10,  2007.

Las Vegas in 2010 adopted a differential pet licensing ordinance.

Said Robinson in 2012,  “For the first time in the history of our organization, our intake numbers are starting to go down,” she said.

“Certainly the numbers speak for themselves, and we are trending in the right direction.”

But the pet licensing numbers,  as everywhere,  lagged far behind the spay/neuter rate,  while the numbers did not “speak for themselves” to disciples of the Best Friends Animal Society,  Maddie’s Fund,  and the No Kill Advocacy Center,  who failed to realize that as the proportion of easily adoptable puppies and kittens received by an animal shelter goes down,  the percentage of dangerous dogs and untouchable cats among the remaining intake goes up.

Simple math

The math is simple.

Suppose a shelter receives an average of 100 animals a day,  of whom 50 are accidentally born litters of puppies and kittens,  25 are adult dogs,  and 25 are adult cats.

These were the typical shelter intake ratios in the time frame from 1995 to 2005.

Of the incoming adult dogs,  15 are pit bulls impounded or owner-surrendered for behavioral reasons,  and 15 are untouchable cats.  These were also typical shelter intake ratios as of 2005.

Thirty percent of the intake were essentially unadoptable,  and were therefore euthanized.

Now suppose the shelter does enough spay/neuter in the community to eliminate the puppy and kitten intake,  who were mostly also euthanized circa 1970,  but by the mid-1980s were mostly adopted.

Shelter intake drops by half,  but those same 15 pit bulls and 15 untouchable cats are now 60% of total intake instead of 30%.

No-kill activists flunk

Las Vegas,  Los Angeles,  Chicago,  New York City,  and many other communities have reached that situation at various points in recent decades,  only to have statistically illiterate no-kill militants fixate on the higher euthanasia percentage instead of the vastly lower numbers of actual euthanasias,  leading to the firings or forced resignations of leaders who were actually making progress,  replaced by populist demagogues whose “no-kill” practices have only led to repeated disaster.

Robinson was viciously attacked because 61% of Lied Animal Shelter intake were euthanized in 2012.

Critics demanded a 90% “live release rate,”  which could only be achieved through a combination of not taking in all the animals in need of sheltering,  and rehoming vicious dogs.

By February 2014,  meanwhile,  60% of Lied Animal Shelter dog intake were pit bulls and Chihuahuas.

On October 1,  2018,  a pit bull rehomed by the Lied Animal Shelter four days earlier killed Susan Sweeney,  58.

(See Safety agencies failed woman, infant killed by pit bull mixes.)

“They could spay or neuter 0ver 360,000 dogs & cats”

Robinson appealed to the Clark County and Las Vegas municipal governments for funding for $28.8 worth of shelter construction and renovation work.

But expanding the Animal Foundation holding capacity and facilitating more adoptions had at best only marginal potential for reducing shelter killing.

“If the Animal Foundation was really concerned about lowering their kill rate,”  argued critic Michael William White,  “there are countless other ways they could effectively do that with $28.8 million.

“For example, they could spay or neuter over 360,000 animals at no charge.  This would effectively ‘fix’ every dog and cat in the county and drastically lower intake numbers.

“They could offer 230,000 free adoptions,  keeping their kennels empty for up to six years.  They could also start treating minor medical issues,  such as upper respiratory infections,  allergies,  and ear infections,  and provide dental work and rehabilitate the shy,  anxious or fearful,  instead of choosing killing.

“Filling 80 more kennels is not going to solve the problem”

“Unfortunately,”  White charged,  “the Animal Foundation did not ask for millions of dollars for any of those worthwhile endeavors;   they asked for money to construct unnecessary buildings.

“In April over 1,500 dogs found their way to the shelter,”  White said.  “Filling an additional 80 kennels is not going to solve the problem.”

But White did not deny the need for Lied Animal Shelter improvements,  noting that “The main shelter building,  built in 2001,  has serious issues like swamp coolers instead of air conditioning units and flooring that cannot be properly sealed.

“It’s a dingy place with the original kennels for dogs that were installed when the building was built.  The current structure for cat adoptions is a tent!”

Another no-kill pledge

White recommended that fellow Animal Foundation critics should read Why we cannot adopt our way out of shelter killing.

Under city and county contract pressure,  the Animal Foundation in June 2015 committed to going “no kill” by 2020,  following an adoption-focused plan little different––if any––from the plan Mary Herro offered twenty years earlier.

Heaven Can Wait Animal Society founder Harold Vosko,  who died at age 66 in 2019 from a heart attack,  was skeptical.

“We have spayed and neutered 113,000 cats and dogs,”  Vosko told Denise Valdez and Kyle Zuelke of 8NewsNow.

“So what is being euthanized in the shelter?  Cats,  pit bulls,  Chihuahuas,”  Vosko said.

“Guess what we do here?  We’re doing cats,  pit bulls and Chihuahuas.”

Lower animal intake but worse conditions

Robinson in August 2021 retired amid complaints reported by Darcy Spears of KTNV that the Animal Foundation was “turning away strays and delaying or preventing owners from reclaiming their pets or adopting animals by requiring appointments,  which can be backlogged for weeks”;  was “understaffed,  cages are filthy,  animals are being neglected and staff are overwhelmed”;  and was “adopting out animals who have not been spayed or neutered.”

All of this was reportedly happening,  along with the resignations of the entire veterinary staff,  even after Lied Animal Shelter dog and cat intake plummeted to 25,000 per year,  half as many as a decade earlier.

Another disease outbreak

The Lied Animal Shelter managed to stagger through another year,  though,  before a pneumovirus outbreak on October 3,  2022 temporarily shut down dog intake and limited dog adoptions.

Even after the shelter resumed nominally normal operations,  reported

Victoria Saha for KLAS on December 14,  2022,  “the next available time slot for animal intake was on January 19,  2023.”

Two years after that,  alleged Scott McIntyre in his emails to ANIMALS 24-7,  “Among other things,  the Animal Foundation is still turning unfixed animals back to the public.  They weren’t doing this in 2019,  when I left,  but ever since have had a mass exodus of staff.  Never mind that their managed admissions policy has for years kept unfixed animals out of the shelter.

“Too much of the public has no idea how sheltering should function”

“Nowhere is this more pronounced than with ‘community cats.’  People are routinely told to leave them where they are.

“Too much of the public has no idea how sheltering should function,”  McIntyre said.

“You would think people in the rescue community would understand the importance of educating them.   That is,  of course,  if saving lives and maintaining public safety are really the goal.”

Please donate to help support our work: 

www.animals24-7.org/donate/

The post Doggy crap game: Las Vegas gambles again on a “no-kill” panacea appeared first on Animals 24-7.