Tag: Save Our Shelter

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News The Fly-By

Memphis Animal Services Begins Adopting Out Dogs From Stray Area

CREDIT: Bianca Phillips

Last Friday afternoon, most of the 27 kennels in Memphis Animal Services’ (MAS) stray area were full. There were lots of pit bulls with wiggly butts and wagging tails, and there was a solemn Rottweiler and a well-groomed, fluffy, white dog. And there were a few energetic mutts of questionable heritage.

Before April 1st, most of these dogs wouldn’t have stood a chance since animals in the stray area of the shelter were not available for adoption. But MAS has finally ended its long-standing policy banning the public from adopting dogs from the stray area.

“We’re getting in some really good animals. [Before we opened the stray area], the animals in stray would sometimes be moved to Healthy Hold. But sometimes, they wouldn’t get that opportunity,” said MAS Administrator James Rogers.

Bianca Phillips

A dog in the shelter’s stray area last week

Healthy Hold is a sort of intermediate area, where dogs go as they await their move to the adoption area. There are 57 cages in Healthy Hold. The adoption area, which features animals that shelter staff has deemed “adoptable” based on temperament and health, has 72 cages. Before this month, the public was only allowed to adopt animals from the adoption area. In fact, unless one was looking for a lost pet, members of the public were banned from even entering the stray area.

The stray area was closed to the public in 2010 by former MAS Administrator Matt Pepper. At that time, MAS was located in an aging facilty on Tchulahoma, and Pepper told the Memphis Animal Services Advisory Board meeting back then that separating “adoptable” dogs from stray dogs would help prevent the spread of diseases, since some animals in the stray area were unhealthy. That policy carried over into the new facility on Appling City Cove under Rogers’ leadership.

But rescue groups and animal shelter reform advocates have been pushing MAS to reopen the stray area for adoptions since it closed. They say that many of the dogs in the stray area are adoptable and need to be given a chance.

“We are pleased that voices of animal welfare advocates in the local community are being heard and that quality pets being held in the stray area are being rescued/adopted from this area to become beloved family pets,” said Memphis Pets Alive Executive Director Linda Baxter. “If animals cannot be seen, they cannot be adopted.”

Members of the nonprofit Memphis Pets Alive go into the shelter each Tuesday, photograph every animal, and post those pictures on memphispetsalive.org and their Facebook page in an effort to better market the animals. They’ve recently been allowed to begin photographing the animals in the stray area.

Because some animals in the stray area could have serious health problems or show signs of aggression, Rogers said that not all of the animals in that area may be adopted. Once a person selects a dog from the stray area, shelter staff will assess the dog to ensure it’s safe to adopt.

“We make sure before we allow a pet to be adopted that we have vetted and temperament-tested the pet,” Rogers said.

By opening the stray area, Rogers says he’s hoping the shelter can improve its adoption rates.

Cindy Sanders of Community Action for Animals has been pushing for the stray area to be opened for years.

“This will definitely drive up adoption rates. It will save the lives of animals,” Sanders said. “But my question is, why did it take MAS years to get these changes made? Thousands of animals died before they were ever allowed to be seen. I’m thankful this is happening now, but it should have happened years ago.”

Sanders suggested that the fact that it’s an election year could have been a factor in the city’s decision to open the stray area.

“While we’re thankful for this, we hope that this is a true attitude of progressive change and not just [Mayor A C Wharton’s] way of stumping for votes,” Sanders said.

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News The Fly-By

New Animal Shelter Hours Are Controversial

Last week, Memphis Animal Services (MAS) began opening its doors seven days a week, a move shelter director James Rogers believes will lead to more adoptions. But shelter reform advocates say the hours will lead to more animals being put down.

Previously, MAS was open Tuesday through Saturday, and now the shelter is open every day of the week. Although the shelter will now be open for a few hours on Sunday and Monday, adoption services will be limited. Visitors may select an animal to adopt on those days, but the animal cannot leave the shelter until Tuesday.

“If they’d like to rescue a pet, and they see a pet they would like, they can acknowledge that on Sunday or Monday. They can come back and pick up the pet on Tuesday. We won’t have any veterinary services [on Sunday or Monday],” Rogers said.

Rogers said the hours were changed to make the shelter more accessible to people — either potential adopters or people looking for lost pets — who cannot get there on weekdays.

But even though the shelter is open more days per week than it previously was, the shelter actually reduced hours on other days and, on Saturday mornings, a couple of hours are reserved for owner-surrenders only. In the end, public access for all services is actually reduced from 34 hours per week to 32 hours per week.

“That change is probably considered minimal by a lot of people,” said Sylvia Cox of Save Our Shelter (SOS), a shelter reform advocacy group. But Cox points out that the new seven-days-a-week hours have caused a new problem for strays that may lead to more animals being euthanized.

Stray animals are held for three business days, the state minimum, before they are euthanized. Cox said, previously, when the shelter was closed on Sundays and Mondays, those days didn’t count toward the three business days.

So if a loose animal was picked up by animal control on a Friday, and it’s owner wasn’t able to get to the shelter until Wednesday, the animal would still be alive at the shelter. With the new hours, that animal picked up on a Friday would be put to sleep before the shelter opens on Tuesday.

“They are only open for three hours on Sunday and Monday, but now those days will count as business days for the stray’s holding period,” Cox said.

Rogers contends that, despite the short hours on Sunday and Monday, people still have ample time to locate their lost pets.

“People will have had the opportunity to look at [pictures of strays] posted on Facebook, to look at [national animal shelter photo website] Pet Harbor, to come to the facility, or to call us,” Rogers said, touting the fact that euthanasia numbers have dropped to their lowest point in years (from around 13,200 animals in 2009 to 7,600 animals in 2013) and adoption numbers have increased.

SOS monitored the shelter’s first weekend with the new hours.

“People were told that they could not adopt any animals. That means that they could not complete the adoption paperwork and pay the adoption fee,” Cox wrote in an email. “There were no clerks working that would process adoptions or reclaims, so even if an owner of a lost pet had found their pet there on Sunday or [Monday], they could not ‘reclaim’ that pet because they could not pay the fees. They would have to wait until Tuesday to actually get their pet, if it’s not killed by then.”

Rogers admitted there were some kinks: “As with all changes in organizations, there were glitches this weekend. We are just like any other company, and we had our share this weekend. It was the first weekend, and all wrinkles will be ironed out.”

Cox said SOS will continue to monitor the shelter’s euthanasia and adoption statistics to see what effect the new hours may have.

New hours for Memphis Animal Services

Sunday     12:00 pm – 3:00 pm   all access

( no owner surrender )

Monday     12:00 pm – 3:00 pm   all access

( no owner surrender )

Tuesday     1:00 pm – 7:00 pm   all access

Wednesday  12:00 pm – 5:00 pm   all access

Thursday    1:00 pm – 7:00 pm   all access

Friday     12:00 pm – 5:00 pm   all access

Saturday    9:00 am – 12:00 pm  

( owner surrender only )

Saturday   12:00 pm – 4:00 pm   all access

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Memphis Animal Services Enforces Policy Banning Photographs of Certain Animals

These puppies were photographed by Memphis Pets Alive last Tuesday.

  • These puppies were photographed by Memphis Pets Alive last Tuesday. They have since been euthanized.

For more than a year, volunteers with Memphis Pets Alive have photographed every animal in the public viewing areas at Memphis Animal Services (MAS) each Tuesday evening. But last week, volunteer Dani Rutherford was asked to skip over the dogs in the shelter’s “healthy hold” area.

The healthy hold area is where potentially adoptable animals that have been at MAS for less than 72 hours are held. When a stray or owner-surrendered animal comes into the shelter, it is put under a 72-hour review. After 72 hours, if the animal isn’t claimed by an owner, MAS’ staff decides whether or not it will have a chance at adoption or be euthanized.

Since Memphis Pets Alive, a volunteer-run group that tries to market animals at MAS by posting pictures of the animals on Facebook, was formed last year, the technician who escorted the group around the shelter let them photograph those animals under the 72-hour hold.

But now MAS administrator James Rogers claims the group has been violating a policy that bans photographs of animals in the healthy hold area. Rogers was not available for interviews, but he posted a statement about the policy on the city website.

“Sharing photos of animals housed at MAS prematurely may create an unintentional reality of misleading a potential adopter into thinking that an animal is available when the pet may belong to another pet owner,” reads the statement. “MAS views the emotional trauma of such an unfortunate misunderstanding too great a risk and therefore asks rescuers and MAS partners, such as Memphis Pets Alive, to allow the 72-hour holding period to expire before taking and sharing photos of those animals.”

But Linda Baxter, president of Memphis Pets Alive, said they weren’t marketing the pets from the healthy hold area as being up for adoption but rather letting people know the animals are there. In fact, she said there have been cases when people who had lost their pets found them at the shelter through photos posted to the Memphis Pets Alive Facebook page.

“Our Facebook page clearly states that these animals are located at Memphis Animal Services. We do not say they are up for adoption,” Baxter said. “This is just a method of getting these photos out there in the community for people to see them so that, at the end of 72 hours, if the owner hasn’t claimed them, rescue networking can already be done.”

For the animals that may be euthanized at the end of the 72 hours, those few extra days of networking can be crucial.

And according to statistics from Save Our Shelter, a group aiming to reform MAS, the instances of owners reclaiming their pets from the 72-hour hold aren’t very high anyway. In March 2014, MAS took in 879 animals, and only 47 were reclaimed by their owners.

Baxter said, unless the policy is changed, her group will honor it, but rather than photographing animals once a week, they will try to send a volunteer every day to take pictures of animals as they’re released from the 72-hour hold. If those animals are to be euthanized, however, there won’t be much time to market them to adopters before it’s too late.

“This [policy] is going to directly lead to the death of animals,” said Cindy Sanders, co-founder of Community Action for Animals, another shelter reform group. “Mr. Rogers is always saying he is going to make MAS a world-class shelter. This is so counter-productive to being a world-class anything.”

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Undercover Findings

The same Memphis Police Department (MPD) undercover report that netted former Memphis Animal Services (MAS) employees Frank Lightfoot, Billy Stewart, and Archie Elliot on animal cruelty charges for stomping on cats, strangling dogs, and delivering fatal euthanasia injections straight into animals’ hearts in late 2011 and early 2012 names a fourth MAS employee who still works at the facility.

That employee, Glenn Andrews, at that time an interim kennel supervisor, has since been promoted to the role of field supervisor, meaning he oversees the animal control officers. Andrews wasn’t involved in the euthanasia room abuses that Lightfoot, Elliot, and Stewart were charged and convicted of. But the undercover MPD officer working as an animal technician at that time, noted in his report that, on January 4, 2012, Andrews kicked a terrier in the MAS break room, and as the report notes, “the dog wept” as it scurried out of the break room.

“[The undercover officer] observed a foster dog by the name of Penelope, which was in the care of MAS shelter supervisor Glenn Andrews, walking around in the MAS break room,” reads the report. “Glenn Andrews tells the dog named Penelope to come with him. As the dog continued to play and roam around freely, Glenn Andrews appeared to become irritated with the dog’s disregard in his command. Glenn Andrews then walked over to the dog, kicked the dog in the butt with his foot, and stated, ‘Bring your ass on here bitch.'”

MAS Administrator James Rogers, who was hired in February 2012, had not yet begun working at the shelter at the time of the undercover investigation. But Rogers said Andrews has been disciplined for the incident and “that is behind us.” When asked how MAS handles employees who harm the animals in their care, Rogers didn’t give specifics.

“We deal with these things very severely. I can tolerate an employee being late or failing to do part of his job,” Rogers said. “But what will not be tolerated is the abuse of a defenseless animal. That will not happen.”

“I am shocked at this report,” said Jan Courtney, a member of Save Our Shelter, a group dedicated to reforming MAS. Although the report was made in 2011 and 2012, it has only recently come to light. “I’ve met Glenn a few times and never dreamed he was the same Glenn Andrews that I read about in the undercover agent’s report.”

Andrews is also named in the undercover officer’s report for not following protocol with regard to allowing MAS employees to foster animals. On numerous occasions in the report, Andrews is observed allowing employees to take animals home without documenting the terms of fostering or the conditions of their return. MAS has strict policies in place about who can foster, only fostering one animal at a time, and when the animal must be returned.

“Glenn was letting employees take dogs home, and over and over again in the report, it says that there is no follow-up as to what happened to these dogs. These dogs could have been sold as non-aggressive bait dogs in dog-fighting rings. There’s no follow-up,” Courtney said. These incidents occurred around the same time the Memphis Rotary Club released a report stating that some MAS employees had ties to dog-fighting.

On one occasion, the undercover officer watched Andrews load two pit bull puppies into his car and drive away. Another time, an employee named Mario who had taken home a pit bull, told the undercover officer “I just talked to Glenn about it, and he let me get it.”

Rogers said he couldn’t comment on the status of animals that were held at MAS before his time as administrator. But he admitted, from reading the undercover report, that it looked as though foster polices were not followed.

“From reading the report, I think it’s tragic and unfortunate and horrific about what happened then,” Rogers said. “I think people just weren’t aware of policies and procedures. I have held trainings to make sure employees are aware of these policies and procedures to make sure these types of mistakes don’t happen again. And if they do, they will be held accountable.”

Courtney and other members of the animal advocacy community have said they’d like to see Andrews fired. But Rogers, who promoted Andrews to field supervisor a few months ago, said he hasn’t had any problems with Andrews during his time as shelter administrator.

“The kicking event happened before I got here. His behavior, his work ethic has shown that he does love the animals,” Rogers said. “He cares about the animals, and that’s all I want to say about that.”