KILL 22,000 ANIMALS IN ONE YEAR
Thousands of innocent animals are dying every year, and the shelters need to be made accountable.
See article following the contact information.
The update/article were contributed by
Karryn Hart.
7929 North Michigan Road
Indianapolis, IN 46268
Phone: 317-872-5650
Administration Fax: 317-876-2428
Second Fax: 317-876-2417
Website: http://www.indyhumane.com
Executive Director
[email protected]
Carla Cox
Community Relations, Marketing
[email protected]
317.876.2422
Mike Goss
Shelter Manager
[email protected]
Mike Weaver
Assistant Executive Director
[email protected]
317.872.5650 ext. 115
2600 South Harding Street
Indianapolis, IN 46221
Phone: 317-327-4622
Fax: 317-327-1390
Sorry-they would not give out email addresses.
Lisa Redd
Administrator
2501 City-County Building
200 East Washington Street
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Phone: 317-327-3601
Fax: 317-327-3980
http://www.indygov.org/mayor/feedback.htm
Advisory panel sets goals for improving shelter animals' lives
By Bill Theobald
Indianapolis Star
November 08, 2001
But some of the citizens who crowded the small meeting room at the city's Southside shelter had a simpler request for city officials:
How about at least returning our phone calls when we offer to help?
Deanne Acker of Danville said she left three messages in the past two weeks at the shelter "wanting so much to do something." No one called back.
"What good is it to list people . . . in the newspaper if they're not responding to the public? What good is it?" Acker said.
The meeting and offers to help were prompted by The Indianapolis Star series "Destined to Die," published in October. The investigation found the city doesn't follow its own ordinance governing care at the shelter.
Licensed regular veterinary care is not provided; animals are not separated properly to reduce the spread of disease and to ease stress; and fresh bedding is not placed in the cages daily. All these things are required by law.
Also, the dogs are seldom walked even though national humane standards say they need to be exercised at least twice a day. The shelter has virtually no education program, a small volunteer program and a very low adoption rate.
In response, the Animal Care and Control advisory board decided to focus its efforts next year on:
� Creating a full-time staff position to coordinate volunteers, public relations and public education.
� Hiring at least a part-time veterinarian for the city shelter, which last year took in more than 17,000 animals.
� Completing a fencing project that has been discussed for months so that the dogs have a place to get exercise.
Absent from the meeting was anyone from the Humane Society of Indianapolis, which contracts to operate the city shelter.
Board chairwoman Lucy Meyer said Marsha Spring, executive director of the Humane Society, called her and said she had another commitment and couldn't make the meeting. Her assistant, Mike Weaver, couldn't attend, either.
Several of the about 50 people at the meeting -- about 10 times the normal attendance -- noticed the absence.
"To me it's kind of shocking," said Elaine Peck of Indianapolis. "I guess it says they're afraid or not wanting to be part of the solution."
Meyer cautioned those attending the meeting that the board is only an advisory group and that some of the proposed improvements will cost money -- and require the approval of the City-County Council.
Still, she was hopeful that major advances can be made that will reduce the killing of unwanted animals at the city shelter.
Last year, the death toll at the facility was 12,110 -- 70 percent of the animals entering the shelter.
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Contact Bill Theobald at 1-317-444-6602 or via e-mail at [email protected]
City shelters kill 22,000 in one year
County ranks high in rate of euthanasia
By Bonnie Harris and Bill Theobald
Indianapolis Star
October 14, 2001
Last year, about 22,000 cats and dogs -- or more than one animal for every 40 residents -- were killed at the Humane Society of Indianapolis and the city's Animal Care and Control shelter. That's more per capita than in many other communities.
As the number of unwanted animals euthanized has declined across the country, the death toll has climbed here, up 12.5 percent from 1994.
In the entire state of New Hampshire last year, fewer than 3,000 dogs and cats were euthanized at shelters. For every animal that was euthanized in San Francisco, 10 were killed in Indianapolis.
Animal welfare advocates there and elsewhere have reduced the numbers by aggressively attacking the underlying cause -- irresponsible pet owners who dump their animals at shelters or allow them to run loose and breed.
In Indianapolis, the two main agencies with the power and mission to reduce the killing are the city and the Humane Society. Together they spend more than $4million per year, but that goes mostly to catch, house and euthanize animals.
They do little to chop away at the root of the problem. An investigation of the city's shelter and the Humane Society by The Indianapolis Star has found:
� They refused to invest in high-volume, low-cost spay-neuter programs that have reduced animal populations in places such as San Francisco, Seattle and New Hampshire.
� They rely mainly on traditional programs to educate the public about the consequences of animal overpopulation, while other communities are innovative. For example, Fort Wayne, a much smaller city, built a television studio at its shelter to reach more schoolchildren.
� Neither the Humane Society nor the city has done research that would allow it to tailor solutions for Indianapolis. Neither knows exactly why so many animals enter shelters here or where those animals come from.
Assessing blame
In recent years, disputes between the Humane Society and advocates of inexpensive sterilization clinics have brought attention to the issue.
But animal welfare advocates believe most Indianapolis residents have no idea of the scope of the problem -- 31,000 animals flooded local shelters last year.
"Most people don't even know we have a city pound," said Lucy Meyer, chairwoman of the city's Animal Care and Control board. "Most people don't even know that animals are killed at the Humane Society or at Animal Control."
Indeed, 9,772 were euthanized at the Humane Society shelter last year, a contrast to more positive trends elsewhere.
The Humane Society isn't responsible for the killing rates, said its executive director, Marsha Spring.
She shifts the blame to irresponsible pet owners.
"I lay it right back on the community," Spring said. "That's the only reason we are here. It's the only reason we're still here. It's the only reason we'll always be here."
Scott Robinson, a critic of the Humane Society who opened a low-cost spay-neuter clinic here, acknowledges the problem is created by people.
"But you have to take it one step further," he said. "Is there a solution? If there is a solution, who should be doing it? And that's where the buck stops. And it stops at the Humane Society and stops at the city."
In other communities, animal welfare groups have embraced high-volume, low-cost spay-neuter programs as essential to slowing the killing. Leaders across the country have used aggressive sterilization to stop wanton breeding. In part, they measure their success by a significant drop in the number of puppies and kittens they take in and kill.
"We do think the numbers of animals going into shelters are going down," said Betsy McFarland, shelter outreach coordinator for the Humane Society of the United States. "A lot of that, I think, is due to spay-neuter, to the success of spay-neuter."
That drop leads to another -- a decline in the number of animals that have to be euthanized, said Linda Reider, program coordinator for the regional office of the national group.
In Indianapolis, neither the city nor the Humane Society has thrown support behind community-wide spay-neuter programs.
And neither has done the research that would show how many puppies and kittens flow into the city's two shelters.
Mayor Bart Peterson isn't convinced Indianapolis has a problem with puppies and kittens.
"We do just sort of anecdotally believe that it's not a huge percentage and that an awful lot of them are adults," he said.
He said he based his perceptions on conversations with Phil Borst, a veterinarian and key member of the City-County Council on animal issues.
The little hard evidence available, along with simple observation, suggests that kittens and puppies abound.
From June 1 through Aug. 20, the Humane Society took in about 4,300 unwanted pets. Only 774, or 18 percent, had been sterilized. And about 1,000, or 23 percent, were puppies and kittens.
The Star compiled handwritten city records for the first two weeks of April. During that period, the city shelter recorded the ages of 518 animals. About a third were puppies and kittens, and of those, three-fourths ended up dead.
Particularly during early summer and winter, when dogs and cats reproduce, puppies and kittens arrive by the litter and die by the litter in this city's shelters. One day, it's 15 plump mixed-breed puppies at the Humane Society. On another day, it's five stray Rottweiler-mix puppies at the city shelter.
On another five gray tiger kittens. Three black kittens. Two white and a calico. They all died, and so have hundreds of others.
Less killing
No one really knows exactly how many puppies and kittens die here each year.
The city doesn't tabulate those numbers, and only this summer did the Humane Society get the computer power to do that.
Other cities have a better handle on their animal populations.
In places like San Francisco, the local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals opened its own public low-cost spay-neuter clinic -- 25 years ago.
The payoff: Last year, the number of animals entering the city's two shelters was less than half the total 15 years ago. Just 2,009 were euthanized in a community of more than 770,000; Marion County is home to about 860,000 people, but it killed almost 11 times as many animals.
In 1992, Scott Robinson, a physician, began shopping the idea of high-volume spay-neuter for Indianapolis.
He wanted the Humane Society to do it. Officials there turned him down. Having just completed a $2.5 million capital fund-raising campaign to build a new shelter, the board didn't want to go back to the community for more money, said Executive Director Spring.
The Humane Society could have tapped into reserves to build a spay-neuter clinic.
But it chose not to.
Spring said the Humane Society cannot touch the principal of one of its reserve funds, the Mary Powell Crume Trust.
That's not true.
A 1962 ruling in Marion Superior Court, Probate Division, says that with a judge's permission, the society can use the trust's principal for "buildings, equipment, salaries or any expenses" that help animals.
Humane Society officials also said that a few years ago, the probate court, which supervises the trust, warned their attorneys that the society was close to dipping into the principal.
But Charles Dieter, the probate court judge who supervises the trust, said: "I never cautioned anybody not to invade principal."
In fact, court records show the Humane Society tapped the trust's principal eight times in the 1960s and '70s. The society used the money to buy its current property and, among other things, an animal incinerator and a freezer.
In January, about $4 million sat in the Crume Trust, which was brought under court oversight after Crume's heirs won a lawsuit over the use of the trust.
Overall, the Humane Society controlled about $10 million in investments at the start of this year. That made it one of the wealthiest charities in the country for its size, according to an analysis by a division of the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan group based in Washington.
Besides concerns about money, society officials said they already had a spay-neuter coupon program for low-income families.
"With that program intact, we felt like we had a handle on things," Spring said. "If Dr. Robinson wanted to build a spay-neuter clinic, that was great . . . but we didn't feel like that was our job."
The Humane Society, Spring said, has to run a shelter and its other programs. Single-focus programs like Robinson's don't, she said.
"Why should everything fall on the responsibility of the Humane Society?" she asked.
Society's responsibility
Responsibility falls on the society because its name attracts the majority of donations for animal welfare, said Kathy Able, with Spay Neuter Services of Indiana. Her group provides discount spay-neuter coupons to poor people.
"It's where the money goes," Able said of the Humane Society, which took in more than $1 million last year through donations, fund-raising events and memberships. "It doesn't go to the little groups out there because (people) think the Humane Society takes care of all those tasks."
After being turned down by the Humane Society, Robinson struck out with the city, too.
Years later, after raising about $600,000 in mostly private funds, Robinson and his wife, Ellen, opened a clinic in March 1999. It's called FACE -- Foundation Against Companion Animal Euthanasia.
As of Oct. 11, FACE veterinarians had sterilized a total of 24,867 cats and dogs, charging $25 for a small dog and $15 to $20 for a cat. That's about a fourth of standard veterinarian fees.
Several years after rejecting Robinson's plea for a clinic, the Humane Society invested $1.3million in a Wellness Center addition to its shelter. The goal, Spring said, was to make more animals adoptable by treating them on-site.
Some find the logic strange: Spend $1.3 million to build a clinic to fix up hundreds of animals at the Humane Society shelter while thousands of others are euthanized because the number of unwanted animals is out of control.
"I thought it was bizarre," said Marilyn Moores, an animal activist and former Republican City-County Council member. She didn't understand why the society would build a wellness clinic but not invest in more animal sterilizations for the public.
Even with the Wellness Center, which opened in April 2000 the Humane Society didn't begin sterilizing almost all of the pets it adopts out until last month.
At the city shelter, adopters receive a Humane Society coupon and sign a contract promising to have their new pet spayed or neutered within 60 days. But that's no guarantee the procedure will be done.
As of mid-September, the owners of more than half the animals adopted from the city facility this year had missed the deadline for having the surgery.
At the Humane Society, the compliance rates have varied in recent years. In 1994, 93 percent of adopters had their pets sterilized; in 2000, 76 percent.
To slow the killing of unwanted animals, people in Indianapolis need to realize there is a problem, then believe they can do something about it. A new education strategy could help.
The city does almost no education. And the Humane Society's efforts primarily consist of traditional first-come, first-served classroom programs for elementary students -- mostly outside the inner city.
Nationally, experts say, poorer neighborhoods are a greater source of animals that end up euthanized at shelters.
Humane Society education coordinator Alberta Greene said she wanted to target inner-city schools but hasn't had much success. Last year, society staff visited only seven of the 79 schools in the IPS district. Those programs reached 649 of the 40,000 Indianapolis Public Schools students.
This summer, the society teamed with the city's parks department, offering programs in two dozen parks. Last year, it reached 427 adults through its dog obedience classes. As of late summer, 52 people have attended its animal behavior classes.
Some communities have moved well beyond those kinds of offerings.
For example, Denver's Dumb Friends League has a six-member animal behavior department that, among other things, runs a telephone hotline to help people solve problems that might cause them to give up on animals.
To develop strategies for lowering euthanasia rates, some communities have studied the people they serve and the animals coming into their shelters.
Honolulu did a community survey and discovered people didn't approve of killing wild cats. So, the Hawaiian Humane Society decided to help people trap wild cats, get them spayed and neutered, then set them free.
In Indianapolis, the Humane Society and the city haven't done the research. They tally gross numbers, but they don't know what parts of town produce the most unwanted animals. They haven't tracked the breeds that come in or why the animals end up at their shelters.
As a result, they can't accurately target spay-neuter or educational efforts.
This lack of hard data also means neither agency knows whether its money is being spent well. Last year, that was $1.5 million by the city and $2.6 million by the Humane Society.
While the spending and the killing are measurable costs, there's a moral price, too.
"To me, the tragedy of this is we profess as a society to love animals . . . and yet the dirty little secret is that we murder millions of them in the shelters," said Janet Scarlett, a professor in Cornell University's veterinary college.
We gloss over the harsh consequences, she said.
"We don't see it. We use a word like 'euthanize' instead of 'kill.' We don't see them -- bodies are not apparent."
If Caught, Strays Often Face Death
By Bonnie Harris and Bill Theobald
Indianapolis Star
October 14, 2001
Neither does Indianapolis Animal Control Officer Rick Anderson as he scoops up the young dog and places it in his white city van.
In fact, Anderson figures the unneutered dog has a good chance of being adopted.
The young dog obviously has been someone's pet. A pink-and-red flowered collar and a white-and-blue flea collar encircle his neck. He is friendly. He is healthy. And he is wandering a prime dumping ground -- a rural neighborhood in the far-southwest corner of Marion County.
Eighteen days after Anderson picked him up, the dog was dead, euthanized at the city shelter.
Just another dog in the daily litany of despair faced by the city's animal control officers.
Day after day, call after call, the officers who patrol the streets for the city's Animal Care and Control Division see the stray and abused dogs, sick and wild cats -- and most will die inside the city's shelter.
Two days on the road with veteran Officers Anderson and David Powers provide a glimpse of life on the streets for this community's unwanted animals.
Wild cat
Nora Wright got fed up with wild cats roaming her Far-Southside neighborhood.
So after 14 years in her small, white one-story house, she called the city and had a trap brought out.
About 6 a.m. on a Tuesday, a smoky-gray short-haired cat made the fatal mistake of getting caught.
About four hours later, Anderson rolls up.
"They are all over the place. I'm sick and tired of it," Wright says as the officer walks to the side of the house, where the cat sits quietly in the small, rectangular metal cage.
Anderson carries the cage over to his truck and sets it on end. The cat, placid until now, frantically tries to climb up the side of the cage. Anderson reaches in with a control stick -- a long pole with a loop of cord on the end -- slips the loop over the cat's head, tightens the noose and pulls the cat out. The cat flails wildly as he places it in a cage.
Later that day, Anderson again uses his control stick to carry the cat into the shelter. It twists and hisses on its way to a cage.
Then the paperwork: Adult, female, DSH (domestic short hair), not spayed, in good condition.
But the kennel staff doesn't bother with screening or vaccinating the cat. It is killed two days later.
"Nobody will take feral cats," one worker says, using the common term for wild felines.
In some progressive communities, such as Honolulu and San Francisco, animal welfare agencies fund programs to help wild cats. People who feed wild cat colonies capture the animals, have them sterilized and release them.
But not here.
Friendly stray
Nabbing the cat takes only a few minutes; then Anderson is headed to the Far Eastside on a call about a bird.
Officers begin each day with a list of routine calls like this. But at any moment they may be called away because someone has been bitten or the police need help handling guard dogs at a drug house.
Even on routine calls, they never know what they'll find.
When Anderson arrives, he discovers that the homeowners have a bird stuck in their attic.
"We don't do attics," Anderson says. With almost 30,000 calls last year, they don't have time.
When he turns around, however, a young black-and-brown German shepherd mix comes ambling down the middle of the quiet street.
No collar, no owner in sight.
Anderson crouches down and calls the dog. She hesitates, then strolls over to the man who will take her to her death.
Anderson tucks the young dog under his arm like a football and takes her to his truck.
At the shelter, the young, unspayed dog, like all the animals that are brought in, gets a number: 008414. She's the 8,414th animal to come in just over halfway through the year.
A week later, the dog is up for adoption in Kennel 1, the puppy kennel. The kennel is pretty clean, but stark -- concrete walls and floors -- and it's loud. The pup looks fine, although a little matter is crusting her eyes.
Nine days after arriving at the shelter, the dog is killed. The reason: an upper respiratory infection. She was sneezing.
"There are times I wish I could take the owner, not the dog," Anderson says.
Left behind
Another day, a different officer, a different part of town, but the same routine.
This morning, Officer Powers is in his van, chasing a loose dog.
A citizen waves him down with a question, and the well-fed or pregnant dog gets away. Another dog, big and blonde, cooling itself in a gutter, sees Powers' van coming and quickly weaves between cars and houses and disappears.
Powers gives up and heads to a rental house on the Northeastside.
The property manager, Tony Barker, is waiting. The people who lived there have moved; he doesn't know when. They left a dog, a Rottweiler mix, in an old station wagon in the garage.
Powers brings it out on a control stick, and the big brown dog struggles and yelps as Powers lifts him into his van.
The unneutered male dog is deemed to be in good condition.
On its card, Powers writes the date the animal will be available for adoption.
The dog dies seven days after Powers picks him up. His impound card states: "Health-URI (upper respiratory infection)." A cold.
Injured dog
At the Hair Illusions beauty shop on East 38th Street, employees are stranded outside.
A large male pit bull, blood dribbling from his mouth, is lying on the step and blocking the door.
Powers thinks the dog may have been hit by a car and may have been used in dog fighting.
The dog, which has no tags, is in obvious distress. Blood oozes from a gash above his right eye. His eyes roll back in his head as Powers uses his control stick to capture him.
At the shelter, a staff member checks again to see if the dog, which hasn't been neutered, might have an implanted microchip for identification. Nothing. Another owner who won't be found.
They place the pit bull on a blanket, give him some food and wait.
No one claims him. After seven days, he dies.
And no one is held responsible.
Humane Society controls $14 million
By Bill Theobald
Indianapolis Star
October 14, 2001
The combination of greater wealth at a time of greater suffering has focused criticism on the sheer size of the financial pot controlled by the society -- assets of about $14 million, including about $10 million in investments.
Critics charge the society is sitting on too much money.
Those claims are right, according to the standard of a leading national charity watchdog.
An analysis of the society's finances also reveals its investment portfolio ranks the society among the wealthiest charities of its size in the country.
Humane Society officials respond that they have simply been cautious stewards of the society's finances. They say recent increases in spending -- particularly for a new medical clinic at the society's shelter -- combined with declining donations and a dropping stock market have forced them to tap into the reserve. Any excess, they say, is quickly evaporating.
As of the end of 2000, the Humane Society had assets of more than $10.3 million. In addition, the society controls the Mary Powell Crume Trust, which ended the year with assets of nearly $4million.
When combined, those assets -- not counting funds that are permanently restricted and the value of the society's property and buildings -- create an excessive reserve, according to a standard established by the American Institute of Philanthropy.
The institute believes that a nonprofit should have at most three years worth of its annual expenses under the mattress. The Humane Society's reserve at the start of the year, using this calculation, was about 3.3 years. In 1999, it was about 4.4 years.
The standard, by showing which organizations need donations the most, helps contributors decide where to give their money, said Daniel Borochoff, president of the institute.
In addition to exceeding this standard, the Humane Society ranks among the wealthiest charities in the country when the ratio of its investments to expenses is compared with those of other charities.
Researchers at the National Center for Charitable Statistics found the society ranked in the top 5 percent nationwide and the top 10 percent among animal charities. The center is part of the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan policy research organization based in Washington.
The Humane Society's investments are held largely in three funds. The Crume Trust, the oldest of these, was established in 1940.
The second fund -- the Indianapolis Humane Society Charitable Trust -- was set up in 1981 to handle large bequests and donations.
The third piece of the society's financial portfolio is an endowment established with a $1.3 million gift made in 1991 by the executor of the estate of Julia Jean Nelson Stokes of Indianapolis.
Humane Society officials say they use about 5 percent of the total value of the three funds (based on a three-year average) for operating expenses each year. That's a standard percentage for use of endowments, national experts say.
Recently, officials have taken more out of the society's reserve.
Extra money was needed to cover the cost of the Animal Wellness Center addition that opened in April 2000; and as of mid-August, the society had made three unplanned withdrawals from the charitable trust to meet expenses.
Humane Society Board Treasurer Monty Korte said the society tries to strike a balance between paying expenses and having enough tucked away to provide for the future.
Contact Bill Theobald at 1-317-444-6602 or via e-mail at [email protected]
