Animal control & rescue
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:
Neutering
Animal Aid of Tulsa made 362 follow-up
calls to animal adopters from January 1
to July 23 to check neutering compliance. Ten
percent couldn’t be located, but 80% had
neutered their adopted pets, nearly twice the
rate of compliance that other shelters found in
studies done in the 1970s and 1980s.
John Schultz, animal warden for
Medina County, Ohio, passed out 111 certificates
good for a $20 discount on neutering
adopted dogs between July 1 and September
11, but only 10% were used by September 21.
The Fund for Animals mobile neutering
clinic was to visit the Zuni and Navajo
Indian Nations in New Mexico, Arizona, and
Utah from October 14- 29, expecting to fix
300 to 400 dogs and cats with sponsorship
from the American Humane Association, the
Houston Rockets basketball team, Solvay
Animal Health, and Holiday Inn. In addition
to the mobile unit and a fixed-site neutering
clinic in Houston, the Fund plans to open a
low-cost “super clinic” in New York City next
year, said spokesperson Sean Hawkins.
Regulation
After long debate, the Chicago
City Council on October 2 adopted an ordinance
which allows the Department of Animal
Control to designate a dog “dangerous” after
investigation of an alleged bite, attack, or
threat, and to order that the dog be euthanized,
exiled, kept behind a six-foot fence, or be
muzzled––but the final version deleted a
requirement that dangerous dogs be insured for
$100,000 liability, and included no enforcement
budget. Chicago Animal Control has just
four inspectors to investigate 10,000 bite
reports per year.
Vail, Colorado, replaced the common-law
concept of “running at large” with a
more precise definition of “failure to control”
in a new comprehensive animal control ordinance,
and made neutering enforcement easier
with a clause stating, “It shall be unlawful to
possess any unsterilized dog or cat when such
dog or cat is required to be sterilized under the
terms of any applicable sales or adoption contract,
regardless of where the contract originated.”
This allows for enforcement via summary
citation instead by a civil suit.
The Cork SPCA has asked the
Ireland Department of Agriculture to introduce
regulation of dog breeders, not covered in the
1987 Control of Dogs Act. Dog breeding for
export has become an Irish cottage industry.
A west Cork puppy-miller was recently convicted
of cruelty to 67 dogs, but Cork SPCA
spokesperson Alan Tuohy says enforceable
standards would be preferable to prosecutions.
Responding to the June 18 mauling
of a two-year-old girl by a hybrid “jungle
cat,” the city council of Aurora, Illinois,
on October 19 banned non-domestic animals
and domestic/non-domestic hybrids.
LISA cracks down
Legislation In Support of Animals
on October 18 awarded its annual Black Star
Award, for the worst shelter in the south, to
the Jackson Shelter in Jackson, Mississippi,
the subject of complaints for at least 25 years.
Violations of basic care standards have been
documented since 1992 not only by LISA but
also by the Hines County Grand Jury, the
Humane Society of the U.S., and In Defense
of Animals. LISA has inspected 76 shelters in
Louisiana and Mississippi since 1990, winning
a string of lawsuits forcing communities
to improve shelter conditions. On September
28, LISA asked district attorney Paul
Carmouche of Caddo Parish, Louisiana, to
formally probe allegations by animal control
officers that Caddo Parish commissioners,
especially in the city of Vivian, “routinely
direct them to circumvent the law and/or
departmental policy,” to do favors for pals.
Ideas
Corliss Moore, 37, a former
Arizona Animal Welfare League volunteer
now serving a sentence for forgery at the
Arizona Center for Women in Phoenix, has
adapted police suspect description charting
methods to track the cats in a prison
neuter/release project she began in 1992.
Each I.D. sheet offers blank outlines of a cat’s
face, left and right side views, and sitting
posture. She then shades in each cat’s distinctive
markings. Her system could easily be
used by any shelter or rescue group. Moore is
eligible for parole in August 1996.
Organizations
City of Cape May animal control
officer John Queenan is president a n d
Latham Foundation child and animal abuse
prevention project chair Phil Arkow is vice
president of the newly formed Animal Welfare
Federation of New Jersey. “Membership is
open to individuals and organizations which
support the principles that all life possesses
inherent value and that human beings have a
responsibility to ensure the welfare of all animals,”
said Arkow. Write to POB 478,
Madison, NJ 07940, or call 201-377-7094.
Alex Wolf, 45, has formed the
Fondation Jolicoeur Pour La Defense Des
Animaux in Montreal, Quebec, to do humane
inspection and education. A longtime critic of
the perennially embattled and all-but-bankrupt
Montreal-based Canadian SPCA, Wolf organized
a slate that seized control of the CSPCA
in May 1994 but was ousted as executive
director in November 1994, and was convicted
in March 1995 of having uttered death
threats against former CSPCA president
Raymond Lemoyne in a February 1994 telephone
call to then-CSPCA vice president
Louise Slattery. He was fined $2,000 and
given two years on probation.
