Pet theft cases plummeted in 2001

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2002:

ALLENTOWN, Pa.–Allegedly smashing a stolen van through the
door of a local pet shop at 5 a.m., grabbing two Chihuahuas and two
exotic birds, and attempting escape with police in hot pursuit,
Luis Antonio Bracero, 24, and Ramon Alberto Maldonado-Cruz, 20,
of Allentown, Pennsyl-vania, on January 12, 2002 apparently
exemplified most of the current trends in pet theft: they took both
birds and dogs, took only animals of high resale value, and got
caught.

Read more

Courts push zero tolerance for dangerous dogs

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2002:

AUGUSTA, OMAHA, LONDON, OTTAWA, CAPE TOWN, LOS ANGELES–Annette
Heggs, of Augusta, Georgia, spent three weeks in the hospital at
cost of $100,000 after she was attacked on a public sidewalk on
December 30 by Frederick Gardner’s two pit bull terriers. She will
continue to need skin grafts and physical therapy.
Gardner will spend the next 60 days in jail for failing to
vaccinate the pit bulls and keep them leashed, Richmond County
Magistrate Court chief judge William D. Jennings III ruled on January
24, imposing the maximum sentence on each count.
Read more

Serial & rampage dog attack data

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2002:

Pit bull terriers and Rottweilers together appear to commit
about two-thirds of the reported serial attacks on humans (65%), and
more than three-fourths of the rampage attacks (79%), ANIMAL PEOPLE
has learned, in a review of files on approximately 1,500 dog attacks
in cases in which a person was killed or maimed, or police shot the
dog.
Serial attacks are defined as instances of a dog injuring
someone after having injured a person or an animal on a previous
occasion. ANIMAL PEOPLE found that about 5% of the dogs involved in
life-threatening or fatal attacks on humans, or shot by police while
attacking, had attacked a person or killed a pet on an earlier
occasion.

Read more

Kabul Zoo relief; aid for Afghan cats, dogs, equines; bulletins from the front

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2001:

KABUL–The American Zoo Association, European Association of Zoos and Aquaria, and World Association of Zoos and Aquaria in late November set out to raise $30,000 in relief aid for the Kabul Zoo. By December 20 they had raised $202,000, and were asking callers to help the Afghan Animal Fund instead, a separate account set up to help Afghan cats, dogs, donkeys, and horses. The Afghan Animal Fund had collected $28,536 through December 17. Both funds are directed by Davy Jones, 57, president of both the North Carolina Zoo and the board of the London-based Brooke Hospital for Animals.

Since October the Brooke has had as many as 300 workers helping the equines of Afghan refugees in and around the camps in Peshawar and Quetta, Pakistan. The Brooke, the only western animal protection charity to maintain a close presence during the Taliban years, rehearsed in July 2001 by rescuing about 60 racehorses who were left to starve at the Karachi Race Club after the track closed temporarily due to a dispute with the Pakistani government over licensing fees. Another 70 horses died before the Brooke learned of their plight. The track reopened on July 31.

The British Royal Air Force is to fly a three-member team to Kabul in January 2002 to spend eight to ten days at the zoo, treating sick and injured animals and developing a plan to put the facilities in order. Included will be former Kabul University dean of science Ehsan Arghandewal, who fled to Germany after the Taliban came to power; former Kabul Zoo head keeper Taufik, now working at the Koln Zoo in Koln, Germany; and wildlife veterinarian John Lewis.

“Renovating the zoo and giving the staff the ability to buy food, equipment, building materials, power, and water can make the Kabul Zoo a key area for recovery of the whole city,” Jones said, emphasizing the role the zoo has in Afghanistan as a national symbol.

Built in 1967 by Kabul University, the 100-acre zoo was then considered the best in Central Asia, with 417 animals and annual attendance of 150,000 by 1972. From 1992 until 1996, however, it was caught in fighting among mujadin and Communists, warring mujadin factions, and mujadin and the Taliban. Many of the animals were eaten by the fighters. Then bandits in 1997 killed longtime keeper Agha Akhbar. The collection was down to about 40 wild animals and 60
animals of domestic species by the time the Taliban surrendered Kabul to the Northern Alliance.

Even before much outside aid arrived, the Kabul Zoo lions, wolves, and bears received a December 10 feast, through the misfortune of two oxen who escaped from an open-air meat market and rampaged through the remnants of the embassy district before a militia member shot them both dead. Afghan law requires one handler per ox, but the owner
reportedly escaped a fine by donating the carcasses to the zoo. The oxen were considered unfit for human consumption because they were not killed by hallal procedure.

Kenya link?
Kenya Wildlife Service chief Nehemiah Rotich, who staunchly opposed radio-collaring rhinos because it enables poachers to find them, was suspended in mid-November by Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi. “There were press reports linking his suspension to differences with prominent personalities with interests in the posh KWS-owned
Rangers Restaurant at the KWS headquarters in Nairobi, which is leased to Garian Investments Ltd. of South Africa,” reported John Mbaria of the East African. Regardless of why Rotich was ousted, four black rhinos were soon afterward poached in Tsavo East National Park, the first rhinos poached in Kenya since 1993. KWS rhino program coordinator Martin Mulama told Christian Science Monitor staff writer Dana Harman that he suspected Somali involvement, possibly stimulated by the need of Al Qaida to build its finances after taking heavy hits during the U.S. war on terrorism. Somali militias with ties to Yemen have reputedly done most of the ivory and rhino horn poaching in Kenya since circa 1970.
Al Qaida cowboy

Australian rodeo rider David Hicks, 26, of the Adelaide suburb of Salisbury, was among the Al Qaida soldiers captured
fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghan-istan, Australian attorney general Daryl Williams disclosed on December 12. Hicks was reportedly taken into custody by Northern Alliance troops several days earlier. Hicks apparently left the Australian rodeo circuit in November 1999 to train for combat in Pakistan with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a guerilla faction seeking to take Kash-mir from India and unite it with Pakistan. Lashkar-e-Taiba is one of the two factions linked by
India to the December 12 attack on the Indian parliament that left nine Indian citizens and all five attackers dead. After fighting against India in Kashmir, Hicks fought with Al Qaida in Kosovo under the name Muhammad Dawood. He reportedly told his father about two weeks after September 11 that he had gone to Afghanistan to help the Taliban defend Kabul.
Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan Society for the Protection of Animals president Azar Garayev announced on January 1 that the parliament of the Azerbaijan Republic has agreed to consider ratifying the European Union Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals in 2002, and that the mayor of the capital city of Baku has agreed to work with the Azerbaijan SPA to start an animal shelter. Azerbaijan, a former Soviet state, is located between Iran and Turkey.
Frontier Gandhi

ANIMAL PEOPLE is seeking information about the animal-and-diet-related teachings of the late Pashtun leader Abdul
Ghaffar Khan, 1890-1988, called “the frontier Ghandi” for his dedication to nonviolence and forgiveness. Allied with Mohandas Gandhi, 1930-1947, Ghaffar Khan led the Muslim wing of Gandhi’s Congress Party, seeking a secular subcontinental nation uniting Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. He later sought autonomy for Peshwar.
The “link”

A jury in Santa Ana, California, on December 20 recommended the death penalty for one-armed butcher John Samuel Ghobrial, 31, convicted nine days earlier of raping and killing Juan Delgado, 12, in 1998, in a classic case of violence toward animals preceding violence toward humans. Ghobrial hacked Delgado apart with a meat cleaver and buried the remains in cement. Ghobrial won repeated trial delays after September 11 as defense attorney Denise Gragg contended his ethnicity would preclude a fair trial. Gobrial, a Coptic Christian from Egypt, won religious asylum in 1996 after telling the Immigration and Naturalization Service he lost his arm when a mob pushed him under a train. He turned out to have fled Egypt after he was arrested on suspicion of molesting his seven-year-old cousin and stabbing him with a penknife. Ampu-tation of the arm may have been a penalty under the Islamic fundamentalist penal code of sharia for previous conduct of a similar nature.

“No-kill, no shelters” catches on in Costa Rica

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  December 2001:

SAN JOSE,  Costa Rica–Gerardo Vicente, DVM,  policy advisor to the Costa Rican Veterinary Licensing Board and former board president,  shocked even unconventional thinkers at the No Kill Conference in Tucson 18 months ago when he explained that Costa Rica has no animal control shelters and does not want or need any.

But Vicente made a point that was hard to deny:  shelters take a lot of money to build and run.  Even the U.S.,  spending $2 billion a year on animal sheltering,  between public and nonprofit investment,  does not yet have complete shelter coverage of every community.   After more than a century of energetic shelter-building, half of the rural counties in the U.S. still have no shelter,  public or private–but shelter-building proved to be an ineffective response anyway to the problems associated with homeless dogs and cats.

Enough shelter space can never be built to contain every dog and cat without a home,  so long as dogs and cats breed freely.  Nor is it possible to lastingly reduce dog and cat overpopulation by killing the surplus.  No matter how many dogs and cats are killed,  the fertile remainder can always breed rapidly up to the carrying capacity of the habitat,  somewhere between becoming a public nuisance and suffering starvation.

Developing nations,  Vicente emphasized, cannot afford to repeat rich nations’ mistakes. Besides,  he said,  Costa Ricans love their animals.  They do not wish to have so many that stray dogs and cats spread disease or harm wildlife,  but they do not wish to slaughter them,  either.

Animal control shelters will always be slaughterhouses,  Vicente said bluntly,  if dog and cat reproducttion is not controlled before the shelters are built.  If the population is controlled,  the role of animal control shelters in housing the relatively few animals who require quarantine or special care could be done as efficiently by shelterless nonprofit humane societies.

Since then,  Vicente’s “no-kill,  no shelter” concept has proved an attractive theme to the Ticos,  as Costa Ricans call themselves. Indeed,  it echoes the national motto:  ¡Pura vida!,  meaning “Pure life!”

About 60 veterinarians participate in the McKee Project,  the largest of the many “No-kill, no shelter” sterilization programs in Costa Rica, founded in 1998 by American expatriate Christine Crawford with the help of then-Veterinary Licensing Board president Alexander Valverde, DVM.

The most unique aspect of the McKee Project is that–at Valverde’s suggestion–it loans U.S.-built anesthesia machines to Costa Rican veterinary clinics on a semi-permanent basis,  in exchange for the clinics doing a specified volume of low-cost or free dog or cat sterilization surgery.

The incentive works,  the anesthesia machines make high-volume sterilization surgery faster and safer,  and Crawford says the biggest problem with the program is that it could easily deploy twice as many of the $4,000 machines than the 10 it already has,  if it could afford to buy more.

Vicente succeeded Valverde at the Veterinary Licensing Board in February 2000, after Valverde took a teach ing post at the University of Guelph in Ontario,  Canada. Vicente gave the McKee Project added status by creating the McKee Commission within the Licensing Board to help run it.

There are many other “No-kill,  no shelter” projects in Costa Rica.  Some,  like the outreach clinics hosted by the Asociacion Nacional Protectora de Animales,  are much older. The significance of McKee,  Vicente explained, is that it arrived at the right time to form a coordinating umbrella for all the projects,  with no pre-existing political alignment and the opportunity–since McKee is incorporated with nonprofit status in the U.S.–to reach beyond Costa Rica.

 

¡Pura vida!”

 

The concept of Costa Rica as bridge between the developed and underdeveloped worlds and the expression “¡Pura vida!” were prominent in Vicente’s introduction of ANIMAL PEOPLE to the nation on October 23,  on the short drive from the national airport at Alejuela to the San Jose hotel that was to host the biennial conference of the National College of Veterinarians.  The conference included,  as a subsection,  the first animal welfare conference held anywhere in Central America.

Costa Rica is in fact a geological and cultural bridge,  everywhere green and in motion with the wildlife and cultures of both North and South America.  Manuel San Antonio National Park on the Pacific Coast marks the point where the land bridge between the Americas first closed, separating the sea life of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans,  but enabling armadillos and opossums to come into the habitat now occupied by the U.S.,  while coyotes,  bears,  and pumas followed the volcanic mountain chain that forms the backbone of Central America down into the Andes.

Costa Rica is among the smallest nations of the western hemisphere,  about the size of New Hampshire and Vermont combined,  yet few species native to either North or South America lack Costa Rican cousins.  Nowhere else in the Americas is visited by more kinds of bird–which has made birdwatching a mainstay of the national economy.

Biodiversity and ethnic diversity perhaps have inspired Costa Ricans to celebrate being different.  Ticos pride themselves in having a long history of turning conventional thinking inside out,  finding gentler ways to succeed where others struggle,  often failing,  with a more aggressive approach.

As the first republic to grow bananas for export,  Costa Rica could be called the first banana republic.  Yet Costa Rica has avoided stereotypical banana republic instability.  There was no initial conquest and repression of the native peoples by the Spaniards because most of Costa Rica was uninhabited when they came.  The current indigenous population of about 5,000 is believed to be about as large as it ever was.  In 1819,  when Simon Bolivar fought a bloody war to free the territory now occupied by Colombia, Ecuador,  Venezuela,  and Panama from Spain, Costa Rica only watched,  and stayed out of the aftermath,  too,  as 11 years of ensuing civil war split the newly independent nation into four.

The Ticos won independence by diplomatic means in 1821,  and cut loose from adjacent northern territories,  freed at the same time,  when their governors showed signs of dictatorial ambition.

During the next 128 years Costa Rica was occasionally drawn into regional skirmishes,  but banana republic insurrections broke out just twice in the 20th century,  in 1917-1919 and in 1948.  After the 1948  coup attempt,  Social

Democratic Party president Jose Ferrer convinced fellow Ticos to constitutionally abolish the Costa Rican armed forces.  That way,  the army could neither orchestrate a coup nor be used to crush dissent.

Costa Rica has thrived without a military since 1949,  achieving the highest standard of living of any Latin American nation,  and a literacy rate equal to that of the U.S.

A mutual aid pact with the U.S. has apparently prevented full-scale armed invasions by jealous or acquisitive neighbors,  while the crocodiles of Lake Nicaragua and the Rio San Juan may have given Sandanista guerillas second thoughts about possibly entering Costa Rica to hide out during the Nicaraguan civil war of 1978-1989.

Vicente outlined all of this in a rush, as a necessary prelude, he said,  to what ANIMAL PEOPLE was about to observe.  The conference would be heavily attended by veterinarians and veterinary students.  Vicente would be just one of several Costa Rican veterinary speakers with unusual perspectives.

Co-hosted by the McKee Project,  the conference brought together representatives from most of the animal protection groups active in Costa Rica,  one group from Panama,  and five groups from the U.S.,  including Spay/USA and ANIMAL PEOPLE.  The final day of the conference featured a sterilization field clinic led by visiting Florida veterinarian Elton Gissendammer and volunteer Theresa Ink.  It was prelude to an even bigger sterilization outreach effort a week later,  orchestrated by the ANPA.

“We did 94 surgeries in three locations,” Gisela Vico Pesch of ANPA reported.

 

Counting animals

 

ANIMAL PEOPLE visited Costa Rica largely to find out what such numbers mean.  As Vicente moved from the history and geography of Costa Rica to the sociology and economics, we counted dogs and cats,  as we did throughout a week of exploring the major Costa Rican bio-regions.  We counted animals both from vehicles and on foot, by both day and night,  in habitats including the frontier with Nicaragua,  the Monteverde cloud forest,  and the Manuel San Antonio National Park region,  as well as in the densely populated San Jose/Heredia corridor.

Altogether,  we counted 510 dogs,  of whom 298 (58%) were free-roaming,  but only 65 (13%) appeared to be without homes,  and only five (1%) appeared to be fully feral.  We saw 42 puppies (8%),  but no roadkilled dogs or cats of any age.

A much cited 1980 report on toxoplasmosis and several follow-up papers by University of Costa Rica researcher Armando Ruiz and J.K. Frenkel of the University of Kansas School of Medicine asserted that Costa Rica had an excessively large free-roaming cat population. The original study was published in the prestigious American Journal of Epidemiology, but the peer review apparently did not include people who dealt with the dogs and cats of Costa Rica on a daily basis.

“Based on our surveys and counts of cats identified by their color patterns,  we calculated that there were from 1.3 cats per house in Quesada to 3.8 cats per house in Limon, and from 13 cats per square kilometer in San Ignacio to 3,330 in Limon,”  Frenkel posted to the International Society for Infectious Diseases online bulletin board ProMED-mail on November 6, 2001.

Extrapolating to Hawaii the Ruiz-and-Frenkel conclusion that cats were the major vector for transmission of toxoplasmosis to humans in Costa Rica,  J.K. Ikeda of the Hawaii Department of Health in an October 2000 report attributed to Ruiz and Frenkel the further claim that,  “The culture of Costa Ricans was tolerant to cats primarily out of fear of bad luck from killing cats.  Despite their dislike of cats, people would often feed them food scraps such as raw chicken entrails and heads,  thereby perpetuating infections of toxoplasmosis.”

Ikeda claimed that Ruiz and Frenkel found even greater numbers of cats in rural districts than in cities.

The assertions of Ruiz and Frenkel are not supported by the much more recent findings of Carlos Drews,  DVM,  who recently directed a survey by direct personal interview of 1,021 representative Costa Rican households.  Drews found that 53% of Costa Rican households keep dogs,  but only 15% keep cats.  His study results appeared in a 2001 edition of the journal Society & Animals.

Katherine Gibson of the Zancudo Asociacion Para Proteger Animales (see sidebar) called the cat population density postulated by Ruiz and Frenkel,  “Quite funny.  While it is true that in cities and larger towns there are feral cats,”  Gibson said,  “I seriously doubt that in the country as a whole we could have more than a fraction of the amount of cats per square kilometer that they claim.  In most parts of Costa Rica it’s damned hard to keep a cat outdoors,  as the snakes eat them.”

Having fed five sterilized feral cats who were too wild to bring indoors,  Gibson admitted losing four of them to snakes.

“I still have one outdoor cat,”  Gibson added,  “but she has already been retrieved from the mouth of a boa once,  and I expect has snake smarts by now.”

We counted just 21 cats,  whose main habitat appeared to be hotel grounds –among the few viable habitats not already occupied by dogs. This may be because hotels poison dogs,  and kill or remove snakes,  and/or because hotels are more careful about refuse disposal and rat control than residential and rural neighborhoods.

Either way,  as seen elsewhere throughout the world,  cats lose in habitat competition with dogs.  Being bigger and more aggressive,  dogs monopolize any food sources available to both species,  and are able to find and kill kittens.

Confined to mousing on rooftops,  cat populations remain limited,  especially when most of the buildings are much farther than jumping distance apart,  as they are throughout Costa Rica.

Only when most free-roaming dogs are removed from the streets,  as was achieved in most U.S. cities between approximately 1960 and 1980,  can a feral cat population explode.  Thus the ratio of feral cats to stray dogs received by those U.S. animal control departments which always tried to capture both cats and dogs went from about one cat per nine dogs in 1960 to three cats for each dog today.

Allan Templeton,  an American living in Costa Rica since 1978,  operating the Hotel Costa Verde and several surrounding commercial developments near Manuel San Antonio National Park since 1985,  told us that all the hotel and restaurant owners of that region routinely poison cats,  to keep the cats out of their open-air kitchens.

Templeton admitted that he poisons feral cats “because there isn’t anything else to do.” Otherwise,  he said,  they open kitchen cabinets to steal cupcakes and sugar.

We were skeptical.  The motto of the Hotel Costa Verde is,  “Still more monkeys than people.”   Squirrel monkeys are abundant on the grounds.  Capuchins live at Manuel San Antonio. Monkeys might open kitchen cabinets to steal food,  or coatimundis might,  but few cats could or would.

We did,  however,  see two feral cat mothers with one kitten each at the Hotel Costa Verde.  Templeton said he would provide rooms for a McKee Project team if it would come to sterilize the cats,  and other local cats and dogs,  but when Crawford called him to make arrangements,  he claimed the cats had disappeared.

California artist Charlene Broudy, owner/creator of the Xandari Plantation Inn above Alejuela,  took a different attitude when we notified her that staff were apparently trying to chase away an orange tomcat with an injured eye. Broudy has adopted three shelter animals, fostered two others,  participates in benefits for the homeless animals of Costa Rica,  and immediately ordered the staff to treat the cat as an honored guest.  Within a few days she flew down to Costa Rica,  where she saw to it that the cat got all necessary medical care and became the Xandari hotel cat.

 

Contrast

 

We could tell within moments of entering each community whether the McKee Project or other “no-kill,  no shelter” dog and cat sterilization projects had been active there.  In many villages,  and in the city of Alejuela,  where a program directed by Blas Rivas,  DVM,  is acclaimed by Vicente as a model,  there were almost no free-roaming dogs,  and all of the dogs looked prosperous.  In other villages,  every dog was loose,  skinny,  with drooping nipples or prominent testicles,  puppies played dangerously close to the road,  and there were markedly more dogs per house.

Occasionally we passed through villages where the dogs were not prosperous,  yet were few.  Those tended to look like company towns for coffee or pineapple growers,  and in these villages any perceived dog surplus might have been poisoned or shot.

The numbers,  overall,  paralleled our findings from a 1998 survey of the dog and cat population of Puerto Rico–a land mass of only a sixth the size of Costa Rica,  but somewhat more people,  and similar topography,  culture,  and climate.

In Puerto Rico,  44% of the dogs were free-roaming,  11% appeared to be without homes, and 9% were puppies.  Cats,  also concentrated in the relatively dog-free zones around hotels, were two-and-a-half times more abundant than in

Costa Rica.

However,  Puerto Rico has been attempting U.S.-style animal control via sheltering since the 1958 opening of the Humane Society of Puerto Rico in Guaynabo.  At least six U.S.-style shelters operated by humane societies with animal control contracts or by municipal animal control departments provide approximately as much cage space relative to human population as the U.S. norm.  Their work is supplemented by that of more than two dozen incorporated nonprofit spay/neuter and rescue groups.  Five of these organizations export dogs and cats to the U.S. for adoption.

No one collects or publishes shelter data in Puerto Rico,  so there is no way to know or even guess the number of dogs and cats killed in the Puerto Rican shelters.  We did,  however, see plastic bags full of bodies at two of the

three largest,  and were told at the very largest that about nine out of ten animals received would be killed.  We also counted a roadkilled dog or cat for each five live ones.

Overall,  we found,  the status of dog and cat population control in Puerto Rico is about the same as it was in the U.S. under 20 years ago:  bad,  but improving now that the shelterless rescue groups have begun to emphasize low-cost and free sterilization of owned pets, neuter/return of feral dogs and cats who have suitable habitat to go back to,  and adoption strategies that put the adoptable animals where adoptors will see them.

There is reason for long-term optimism despite a 40-year legacy in Puerto Rico of repeating U.S. mistakes,  often with grant funding and advisors from major U.S. animal protection charities.

Costa Rica,  however,  is already a long way ahead.  At worst,  the Costa Rican dog and cat population is already in approximately the same balance,  without the leveling effect of high-volume roadkills and without an extensive shelter network doing high-volume population control killing.

 

Sheltering was tried

 

The one conventional U.S.-style shelter in Costa Rica kills under 400 dogs and cats per year,  says Asociacion Humanitaria Para la Proteccion Animal de Costa Rica president Lilian Schnog.  The AHPPA shelter was built in the mid-1980s under the supervision of World Society for the Protection of Animals field representative Gerardo Huertas.  Billed in mailings to U.S. donors as an intended example for shelters throughout Latin America,  it was situated in Heredia,  as close as possible to the geographical center of Costa Rica. Old photos show a conventional rectangular cinder block kennel with a tin roof,  straight indoor/outdoor runs,  and a chain link fence–still a standard design,  but now increasingly recognized as much less than optimum for facilitating adoptions and maintaining the psychological health of the animals.

WSPA moved Huertas to Colombia in 1992. Schnog,  originally the shelter manager,  formed the AHPPA and took over the shelter with heavy backing from the Humane Society International division of the Humane Society of the United

States.  The AHPPA is now listed as an HSUS regional affiliate.

“It was just a rudimentary shelter when we started,”  Schnog told ANIMAL PEOPLE in August 2000,  “and was in need of significant repair. We established a veterinary clinic.  Our two veterinarians sterilize 20 to 25 animals per day. Some are street animals and some are done for people who cannot afford a private vet.  We help about 15 small animal protection groups,  and we travel around the country to do low-cost or no-cost sterilization for those who cannot visit. Of the 1,500 animals we take in annually as strays or surrendered by the owners,  we euthanize 20% to 25%,  and adopt out the rest.”

The AHPPA has a loyal constituency of volunteers and supporters,  but received a mixed review in June 2000 from Maryland Animal Advocates treasurer Herb Morrison,  who had recently volunteered there for a day,  as well as putting in days with several other Costa Rican organizations.  Morrison then reported on his observations in an ANIMAL PEOPLE guest column, but omitted mention of the AHPPA because he felt it was not accomplishing as much as the McKee

Project and the Asociacion Nacional Protectora de Animales,  founded in San Jose as a no-kill shelter by Irma Vico Pesch but now concentrating on sterilization outreach coordinated by her daughter,  attorney Gisela Vico Pesch.

Schnog claimed there were more than 100 animals at the AHPPA shelter the day Morrison visited;  Morrison counted 29.  Either way,  the facility is not big enough to take many animals off the streets without doing high-volume killing.

Schnog in subsequent e-mails to ANIMAL PEOPLE accused Morrison,  the McKee Project,  and the Veterinary Licensing Board of trying to sabotage her program.

Morrison and the heads of other organizations around Costa Rica praised McKee and the Licensing Board,  however,  for providing empowering logistic and moral support,  and contrasted their approach to that of the AHPPA, which was from the beginning supposed to be a model of a centralized program,  inherently contrasting and conflicting with the localized and decentralized approach of the rest.

Whether or not the AHPPA is deemed successful at what it does,  it is not as prominent or influential as might be expected of the only shelter and best-funded nonprofit animal protection charity in a very small nation.  It sent no representatives to the National College of Veterinarians’ animal welfare conference. None of the people who did attend the conference ever mentioned it, without being asked,  and only a few of them had more to say about it than a shrug of the shoulders.

A search of the electronic archives of the Tico Times,  the major English-language newspaper in Costa Rica,  suggested that the staff finds the initiatives of the “no-kill,  no shelter” groups much more often newsworthy.

Vicente believes the basic issue is that, “We in Costa Rica do not believe in sending dogs who have committed no crime to jail.  We barely even believe in sending human criminals to jail, so why should we jail our dogs and give them the death penalty?  A shelter may be all right for a lost-and-found service,  but Ticos will never accept U.S.-style animal control.”

 

Challenges ahead

 

As is common among animal rescue groups everywhere,  the “no-kill,  no shelter” organizations are scarcely a united front. Vicente has conflicted with most of them at times over veterinary standards and record-keeping. Vicente told ANIMAL PEOPLE that debating Gisela Vico Pesch,  who often speaks for the smaller groups,  is his biggest headache.  But Vicente also extolled her as “the great voice for Costa Rican animals of the coming generation.”

Just 28,  “She will be here long after the rest of us,”  Vicente said,  “and it is important that by the time we leave,  we hope many years from now,  she represents standards that are high but attainable for all the world, especially Latin America.  Everything will spread from here,”  Vicente predicted.

Fluently multilingual,  Gisela Vico Pesch has not yet been a prominent conference speaker, but has informally represented the “no-kill,  no shelter” approach at the 1999 and 2001 International Companion Animal Welfare

Conferences in Sofia,  Bulgaria,  and Istanbul, Turkey,  as well as at the 2000 Spay/USA conference in New Orleans.

There are many challenges ahead before Costa Rica can convincingly claim success in controlling the dog and cat population without shelters or high-volume killing.

One challenge will be extending the present approach to sterilization to include rabies vaccination.  Costa Rica had not had a human rabies case since 1970 until a nine-year-old boy and his 69-year-old nanny died from rabies in October 2001.  From Golfito,  near the Panamanian border,  they lived in a house which had become infested with vampire bats.

Costa Rica has more than 130 native bat species in all,  but only vampires are known to carry rabies,  and they normally feed only on the blood of cattle.  Even the transmission of rabies from vampires to cattle is rare.  The last known rabies outbreak among livestock in Costa Rica occurred in 1987.

The recent victims’ family,  however, had encouraged a cat to hunt the vampires in their home,  and were apparently infected when the cat scratched them.

Costa Rica was pronounced totally free of canine rabies by the World Health Organization in 1980.  Since then,  the Costa Rican rate of dog and cat vaccination fell to as little as 3%, according to Vicente.  ANIMAL PEOPLE met

dog-and-cat veterinary specialists who had never administered an anti-rabies vaccine.  ZAPPA, whose founder Katherine Gibson was familiar with rabies from her previous work in the U.S.,  may have been the only sterilization program in Costa Rica to routinely vaccinate all animals against rabies exposure.  Valverde,  Gibson,  and others familiar with anti-rabies vaccination spent some of their coffee breaks at the College of Veterinarians explaining to other attendees the details of how to set up a local anti-rabies program.

Crawford tried to make vaccination a part of the McKee Project when it started,  she said, but “almost lost the project over trying to bring donated vaccines into Costa Rica and give them for free.”  Perceived as an unnecessary extra, offered in competition with private practice veterinarians,  her anti-rabies project brought so much more opposition than the sterilization program that she was forced to drop it.

Carlos Alfaro,  DVM,  meanwhile vaccinated the animals of 730 households in the Golfito area,  trying to quell a panic which reportedly produced several stonings of free-roaming dogs and massacres of bat colonies. Earlier,  on the eve of the conference,  Vicente spent two days in the vicinity dissuading public health officials from trying to prevent further rabies outbreaks by poisoning all free-roaming dogs and cats,  plus any bat colonies they could find.

Another challenge for “No-kill,  no shelter” proponents will be developing an alternative to shelter statistics to document their progress.  In absence of dog and cat licensing data and shelter entry and exit numbers,  Costa Rican sterilization programs have no way to measure their accomplishments.  They need to know when they have reached the 70% sterilization threshhold that prevents dog and cat population growth,  and they need to be able to demonstrate their success to the rest of the world,  if the “No-kill,  no shelter” approach is to spread as Vicente envisions that it will.

Gisela Vico Pesch told ANIMAL PEOPLE shortly after our return to the U.S. that she has begun to try to organize local surveys to produce the needed data.

Relative to the sterilization work already underway,  anti-rabies vaccination and statistical quantification are low-budget items. They are the parts of a dog and cat control program that most nations begin with,  while building shelter infrastructure and wondering if the funds can ever be raised to do the volume of low-cost and free sterilization that it takes to preclude population control killing.

ZAPPA ¡Pura vida!

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  December 2001:

ZAPPA ¡Pura vida!

by Katherine Gibson

I arrived in Costa Rica by sailboat about 11 years ago and first lived on an island in the jungle.  I had previously worked for humane societies in the U.S. and the U.S. Virgin Islands.  We had begun doing low cost spay/neuter clinics,  but at each stop I also had the unfortunate job of having to kill animals we had no room for.  We tried to adopt out all we could, but there still seemed to be no lasting solution to pet overpopulation.

Here in Costa Rica there were no shelters,  and there was a chance to try another way.  On the jungle island I started vaccinating local dogs and treating them for mange,  as well as neutering some,  but back then I couldn’t find a vet who was really qualified to operate on small animals.

About three years ago,  after moving to Playa Zancudo where there were a lot of homeless strays,  I found Dr. Andre Tellos,  who was dedicated and talented,  working on dogs and cats,  and has been active in all we have done so far.

I read an article about the McKee Project at about the same time I was forming the Zancudo Asociacion Para Proteger Animales,  ZAPPA for short. Having learned that you must reach at least a 70% sterilization level to achieve a controlled population,  I was planning a larger clinic.  I contacted Gerardo Vicente,  DVM,  and Christine Crawford of the McKee Project,  who were eager to help.  Debbie Walsh of the Zancudo Beach Club provided rooms and meals for the visiting veterinarians and helpers they sent to us.

Setting up the first clinic was the most work.   Playa Zancudo is a small community.  Each family has a few dogs,  with an average monthly income of about $300. Paying to sterilize their pets is beyond their means.  I asked my neighbors for help.  A local person went with me to each home,  offering to fix all the pets of the community.  We explained the advantages of a neutered pet, reassured them about the safety of the procedure,  and set up clinic appointments.

Finally the big day arrived with three wonderful vets from McKee,  who drove eight hours to participate.  The vets from the nearest town drove “only” two hours on bad roads to assist us. We had several long operating tables set up on my deck,  overlooking the beach,  with each table sporting an anesthesia machine and makeshift lights.   We had all kinds of help from community members,  some with vehicles,  who helped to take the dogs back to their homes as they came out of the anesthesia.

Groups of neighbors chatted outside in the yard,  their dogs leashed or sitting,  and others watched the surgery from the deck railings.  This made the clinic a successful social event,  as people looked at each other’s pets,  with the animals already seeming to matter more to the owners.  The vets were kept busy from early morning until a bit after dark Saturday, and right up until they loaded their cars to return to San Jose on Sunday.

Since that first clinic,  the doors have been opened,  and we have really noticed a rise in consciousness about pets in the community. The villagers see the pleasure of having a clean, healthy animal who plays with and protects their family.  They see how together we can manage veterinary care for everyone, and how it benefits all of us living here on this small beach.

Now it is unusual  to see a neglected animal or litter,  whereas before it was common and mostly ignored.   Locals see the need for vaccinations now,  too.

Lately, we have been doing clinics in surrounding small towns.  My hope is to become able to do more clinics in the larger towns, where the numbers of dogs and cats are more intimidating.

As we have learned,  working in a less developed nation,  among low income families, providing free sterilization is a necessity. Families desire to keep their pets healthy,  but they cannot afford even half-price surgery.  We depend upon donations from wealthier community members,  and from outside the region.

I can’t express how grateful I am to finally see my dream of nearly 30 years become a reality,  and see what a difference one can make by just asking for some volunteers and picturing a world where we will not need shelters,  or kill

innocent dogs and cats.  When I first read about Dr. Vicente’s “No-kill,  no shelter” concept,  I did not believe it could become viable,  as I did not really believe people would care enough to be responsible for their pets,  but I now believe that this really can happen and benefit us all.

If anyone wants tips on forming clinics in their area,  or would like to donate to our work,  please send me an e-mail at <Islakat@aol.com>.

 

 

Editor’s note:

 

I first met Katherine Gibson in 1973. She was introduced to me by a mutual friend employed by a California animal shelter which that year killed 35,000 dogs and cats:  57.3 per 1,000 humans in the county.

This would today be one of the highest killing ratios in the U.S.,  but then it was among the lowest.  In 1971 that shelter killed 45,000 dogs and cats: 73.7 per 1,000 residents. Then the shelter opened one of the first low-cost sterilization clinics in the U.S.

Several name changes later,  to reflect covering a larger territory,  the shelter now kills about 6,250 dogs and cats per year:  8.9 per 1,000 residents. This is better than the current national average of 16.8,  but is considered mediocre for the region,  since San Francisco killed only 2.6 dogs and cats per 1,000 human residents during fiscal 2001.

I did not know Gibson well then,  but I worked closely with the person who introduced us in publishing the writing of recently returned Vietnam veterans and helping them through episodes of what is now known as “post-traumatic stress disorder.”  Back then it was just called “going berserk,”  “freaking out,”  or “attempting suicide.”

In time,  I saw that while our mutual friend and other shelter workers did not go berserk or freak out,  and were quick to assist anyone else in a crisis,  they were as hurt by their work and as vulnerable to post-traumatic stress as any of the Namvets.  Few people would listen to the Namvets rave and cry,  but no one heard the veterans of the shelter front.

I often wondered what became of the shelter veterans,  as they burned out,  dropped out,  and drifted away.   Unexpect-edly meeting Gibson in Costa Rica,  discovering what she has been doing,  and seeing how much happier she is now affirmed our belief here at ANIMAL PEOPLE that getting away from killing animals is also about getting away from killing ourselves.

 

BOOKS: Ophelia’s Winter

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2001:

 

Ophelia’s Winter, by Sarah Ann Hill
1st Books Library (2511 West 3rd Street, Suite #1, Bloomington, IN 47404), 2000.

[May be downloaded free of charge at <www.1stbooks.com>.]

Sarah Ann Hill, the last page of Ophelia’s Winter explains,
was actually the name of author Marilyn Sansom’s great grandmother,
“a storyteller back in the 1800s,” who was wife of the first forest
ranger in West Virginia.

Read more

Miracle cats and great dogs on the job at 9/11 crash sites

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2001:

NEW YORK CITY; ALLENTOWN, Pa.–Woodie, a seven-year-old
ex-stray whose human says he looks like a groundhog, turned up in
the remnants of her heavily damaged home in Stoneycreek Township,
Pennsylvania, on September 24.
Precious, a tiny Persian even before enduring 18 days
without food, was found on September 29 by a North Carolina State
Animal Response Team search dog on the debris-strewn roof of an
apartment house across Liberty Street from the site of the collapsed
World Trade Center in New York City. Emergency workers took the dog
to the roof after receiving a report that someone had heard a cat
crying in the vicinity. Precious suffered from eye injuries, burnt
paws, and smoke and dust inhalation, but apparently found enough
rainwater to drink to avoid fatal dehydration.

Read more

Man lives–but snakes, backyard big cats kill kids

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2001:

 

MIAMI, Fla.–An air ambulance rushing Taipan antivenin to
aid of exotic snake fancier Lawrence Van Sertima, 62, of South
Dade, Florida, made the first authorized civilian flight over U.S.
air space after the September 11 terrorist hijackings and crashes.
Bitten on the afternoon of September 11, Van Serima had by
three a.m. the next morning received all seven vials of Taipan
antivenin that the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Venom Response Team could
locate within Florida–which has the most extensive snakebite
response network in the nation–and was close to death.
“Of the 455 medically significant snakes in the world, the
Taipan is at the top of the list,” Venom Response Team captain Al
Cruz told Tere Figueras of the Miami Herald.
“It was like we were treating him with water,” agreed fellow
team member Ernie Jillson.

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