Rescue Road

by Peter Zheutlin

  The next morning, Kathy and I bring Tadpole and Bonnie and Lonnie, two puppies with scabies—“scabies babies” she calls them—a contagious skin ailment spread by mites, to the vet. Kathy gives the vet carte blanche with Tadpole; she wants a thorough exam, the appropriate vaccines, and to begin treatment of his mange and whatever other ailments they may find. Then we drive a half hour to north Houston to yet another vet to pick up three puppies that have been spayed and neutered and who will be traveling with Greg next week to foster homes in Connecticut. Kathy uses this vet for most of the spaying and neutering because he’s less expensive than some of the other vets closer to downtown where she lives.

  By 11:00 a.m., we’ve been to three different veterinarian’s offices. Few people adopting dogs up north realize how much has been invested by rescue organizations to save their dog and ensure its health. Adoption fees tend to be in the $400–500 range, but the medical bills are often far higher.

  Like Keri Toth in Louisiana, Kathy’s life seems to be one long, endless errand. She’s constantly picking up and dropping off dogs at vets, day cares, foster homes, and with Greg in Baytown. At any given time, Kathy has dozens of dogs somewhere along the path to adoption. Some are being treated at veterinary clinics, some are in boarding, some with special medical needs are with special medical fosters, and others are in private homes. Only when a dog is deemed fully healthy and able to travel by a veterinarian will she send a dog north with Greg. With all the handling and driving of dogs she spends a lot of time cleaning.

  “I do laundry three to four times a day,” she tells me. And she has a car and crates to clean every day too. Most people, myself included, couldn’t live this way, but it’s the way many people committed to rescue tend to live. They’re all in.

  While Kathy takes a small number of dogs from the Forgotten Dogs of the Fifth Ward Project, like Tadpole, she mainly pulls from shelters such as the one in Harris County which serves the county outside Houston’s city limits, and Houston’s BARC.

  In 2009, Nathan Winograd, a California attorney, founder of the No Kill Advocacy Center and a leader of the national no-kill movement, was retained by the city of Houston to assess BARC. In his 196-page report, he found BARC deficient in almost every imaginable respect: poor infection control, lax enforcement of health protocols, unmotivated, poorly trained staff, animals living in their own waste, an inadequate adoption program and little regard for customer relations that might help raise the adoption rate and lower the kill rate, poor record keeping, and even confusing, inconsistent signage to alert the public to the hours of operation. Not surprisingly, BARC’s reputation as a high-kill, low-compassion facility was widespread both locally and in rescue circles nationally.

  The morning after my foray with Kelle and Alicia into the Fifth Ward, Kathy has arranged for us to tour BARC with Mauricio Zepeda, BARC’s adoption and volunteer coordinator.

  “Mauricio is fabulous,” Kathy tells me, “and BARC is doing a much better job at raising the adoption rate and with infection control. There’s been almost an entire staff turnover in recent years; they’re younger and they seem to care much more.”

  I have no expertise in shelter management, but as Mauricio leads us through the large facility—there are approximately 540 kennels for dogs and cats—it seems clean and well organized. Staff members appear busy cleaning kennels, managing the intake of new animals, and working with volunteers to get dogs out for exercise in newly constructed runs. Ground has been broken for a new and, importantly, separate adoption center on the property. Today, people coming to look at the animals available for adoption have to share the same busy waiting area as people surrendering animals or dropping off strays they’ve picked up, an environment that can be unpleasant, chaotic, and noisy. A separate, welcoming, customer-oriented adoption center should lift the adoption rate.

  While the criticisms of BARC over the years have been many, much of it has focused on the euthanasia rate. In 2005, it was 80 percent. Over the past decade, the kill rate for dogs and cats has dropped. By 2010, it had dropped to 58 percent, to 56 percent in 2011, and 57 percent in 2012. In 2013, the rate was about 50 percent—still high, to be sure, but markedly better than a decade ago.

  Judging a shelter’s performance by its euthanasia rate alone isn’t entirely fair, especially since there are animals euthanized for what most would consider legitimate health and safety reasons. Intakes, average lengths of stay, infection control protocols, and many other factors have to be considered. Of primary concern to animal welfare advocates is the euthanasia of healthy or treatable, adoptable animals. To address this, BARC has implemented the Asilomar Accords, developed at a conference of animal welfare leaders in 2004, to provide “a uniform system for collecting and reporting shelter data,” according to the National Federation of Humane Societies. The goal was to lower the euthanasia rate of healthy, treatable animals in shelters. Those accords emphasize the so-called “live release rate,” which is calculated by taking all live outcomes and dividing it by all outcomes minus owner requested euthanasia for unhealthy or untreatable animals. But it’s up to the judgment of individual shelters as to what constitutes unhealthy and untreatable. If the number of animals surrendered by owners and designated unhealthy/untreatable is inflated, the live release rate may be deceptively encouraging. Also not counted in determining the live release rate is the number of animals that died or were lost in shelter care. In 2013, there were 426 animals in that category at BARC.

  Some groups, such as No Kill Houston, remain fierce critics, noting BARC killed 12,596 animals in 2013. While no one disputes there’s always more that can be done to lower that rate—the new adoption center is such a step—the fact is Houston has an extraordinarily severe dog and cat overpopulation problem. As Alicia McCarty of Forgotten Dogs of the Fifth Ward Project said, it’s a problem the city can’t adopt its way out of.

  “We have a great staff here now,” Mauricio tells me. “A few years ago it was awful. BARC was a dumping ground not just for dogs and cats, but also for bad city employees.”

  Other improvements have been programmatic, such as the Healthy Pets, Healthy Streets Initiative, begun in 2012, which includes a mobile clinic where people can bring their pets and have them spayed or neutered for free and receive free vaccines, free dog and cat licenses, and free micro-chipping.

  Kathy tells me Mauricio is very dedicated; she often gets email pleas he sends to various rescue groups at ten or eleven o’clock at night about animals who are down to their final hours.

  As an “open intake” shelter, BARC has to take any animal for any reason, and it takes in about twenty-five thousand a year. The day before our visit BARC took in 150 animals.

  “We’re always over capacity,” Mauricio tells me. Not only are hundreds of animals brought into BARC every week, but many are also left tied to the perimeter fences at night, and some are even dropped at employees’ homes. “If people know you work at BARC,” Mauricio says, “they’ll just dump dogs or cats at your house.”

  To help with overcrowding, Mauricio has about 150 people who foster for BARC and can bring the animals there for basic veterinary care from one of the four staff veterinarians, and he has an outreach team that works with rescue groups to facilitate rescues and adoptions.

  Mauricio seems to have a genuine love of animals; he has several dogs himself. But he’s also part of the team making decisions about which animals will be euthanized, a team that comprises the chief veterinarian, the shelter manager, and himself. With so many animals coming in each week and finite space, “There’s no choice,” he says. “We can’t become hoarders ourselves.”

  As Kathy and I leave BARC, I tell her my impressions: that it seems to have come a long way since Nathan Winograd’s scathing 2009 report.

  “BARC was a house of horrors eight years ago,” Kathy says as she waves to the guard who opens the rear gate so we can drive out. “Almost no dogs got out. The staff is much better and they have a ton of volunteers who keep an ey
e on the staff.”

  The picture at the Harris County Shelter, where Kathy also pulls many dogs, is quite different.

  The euthanasia rate there is about 80 percent, according to Kathy. “There’s no volunteer base. They don’t vaccinate on entry because they know they’re going to kill so many and don’t want to make the investment. It’s an older, long-time staff up there and they have about 150 to 180 dogs at a time, two to three per cage. They clean the cages and feed them once a day. I’ve never seen a dog exercised there.

  “The staff knows me, and they are nice to me, but the shelter is under the control of the county commissioners, a bunch of good ol’ boys who just don’t care,” she tells me. “They’re politicians. They only care when people complain about nuisances, but there’s no concern for the dogs.

  “People need to spend a day in a shelter in order to understand the problem and the suffering,” she says as she parks her Land Rover near the restaurant where we’ll have lunch. “Education about how to care for animals is key.”

  • • •

  Kathy’s iPhone is always lighting up with incoming messages, and over lunch she gets an email Mauricio has sent to dozens of rescue groups he works with regularly. It’s a list, with pictures, of all the dogs to be euthanized at BARC later that day if they aren’t adopted or rescued in the next few hours. On the list are many we saw just an hour ago, healthy, happy, adorable dogs who’ve reached the end of the line because there simply isn’t any more room; scores of new dogs are arriving daily. Kathy gets at least one message like this, often more, from BARC daily.

  Kathy emails another group, Rescue Pets Movement, which works with rescue organizations in Colorado to try and move dogs from Houston up there for adoption. She offers to pay the boarding costs for two dogs on the list, Billy, a black Lab mix and Lori, a yellow Lab mix, if Rescue Pets Movement will assume responsibility for them. It’s shortly after noon. Mauricio will need a commitment by four o’clock if Billy and Lori are to be spared. Later in the afternoon, with the hours winding down, Rescue Pets Movement emails Kathy and says “yes.”

  Then another email comes in from Mauricio. While walking the kennels at BARC that morning, we saw a sweet yellow Lab mix lying quietly and sadly under a blanket in a kennel. She had arrived shortly before and was being treated for a serious injury, cause unknown. She was unable to bear weight on one of her front legs and had possible radial nerve damage and lameness in a rear leg. Healthy dogs have to be held at BARC for seventy-two hours by law, time to give owners a chance to reclaim their dogs. But an earlier medical release to a foster or rescue organization is possible when a dog is sick or injured.

  “Friendly dog, stable condition for now, available for foster or rescue on early medical release,” says the email.

  “Sometimes everyone is waiting for someone else to step up because we are all so overwhelmed,” Kathy says. “And often it goes down to the last moment. Because she’s injured, she can’t be put up for adoption. If no one steps up to rescue or foster, she’ll be put down.” This poor dog also found a guardian angel: Red Collar Rescue of Houston.

  • • •

  After lunch we head to the offices of a veterinary ophthalmologist with Sunset, a two-year-old female Cairn terrier Kathy pulled from BARC two weeks earlier. Like nearly every dog Kathy pulls, Sunset came first to Kathy’s home.

  “It’s rare [when] a dog can go immediately to foster,” she tells me. “Almost every dog I pull comes home with me so I can evaluate their needs.”

  Sunset is heartworm positive, so before sending her to a foster, Kathy wants to see how extensive the treatment will be. But now we are attending to another problem; one of Sunset’s eyes is clouded over.

  “I get tired,” Kathy tells me as we sit in traffic. “Most people doing rescue burn out after ten years. There are days when I think I can’t do it anymore and then you see a dog in need and you can’t say no. The dogs have no one to speak for them. It’s not their fault.”

  For every ten adoption applications she receives at Houston Shaggy Dog Rescue, Kathy turns down about eight for various reasons. She thoroughly screens every potential adopter and has high standards. Her dogs have had enough hardship; she wants to be as sure as she can be about every match. If she learns from your veterinarian you were lax about some aspect of a previous pet’s care, she’s going to turn you down. If you’re planning to leave the dog outdoors all the time, you aren’t going to get one of Kathy’s dogs. She catches a lot of flak from some she turns down, but it doesn’t faze her. She’s not interested in making every applicant happy; it’s all about the dog being happy. “I’m the toughest rescue in the city to get a dog from,” Kathy tells me. “People lie on applications all the time.”

  There’s an ongoing debate in rescue circles about just how thorough the screening of potential adopters should be. Some argue that it’s better to take a chance moving a dog to a new home, even one that’s only been cursorily evaluated, or perhaps not evaluated at all, than to see it euthanized; others, like Kathy, are extremely rigorous. There are reasonable arguments on each side, but when it comes to a dog in which you have invested enormous time, energy, and money, it’s perfectly understandable for Kathy to be as tough as she is. And no legitimate rescue wants to send a dog knowingly into a bad situation.

  Growing up on a farm on the Isle of Wight, Kathy “rescued everything and anything that needed rescue,” she tells me. “My first rescue was a baby owl with a crossed beak that had been kicked out of its nest. I took care of it until it was big enough to catch its own food, and that owl lived on our farm for many years. I was taught to have compassion for animals. All of my sisters feel the same way, and I have rescued animals all of my life. But what drives my passion in Houston is the plight of all of the dogs that are dumped on our streets and so many that are abused.”

  Kathy “fell into” canine rescue in Houston without intending to. “Someone I met at a Starbucks saw me with my dog and we got to talking. She asked if I’d be interested in fostering a dog that was in bad shape and I agreed. I spent $2,000 getting it better and finding an adoptive home. I thought I’d try a couple of more dogs and found that I liked it, but it was getting expensive. That’s when I decided to start a rescue and incorporate it as a nonprofit. My coworkers at the real estate office thought I was crazy.

  “The first dog I rescued was Windsor, a shaggy black mutt,” Kathy continues. “I went looking for a dog for a friend and saw Windsor who was absolutely terrified. I thought no one else would take him, so I did. I don’t like to fail, but Windsor wrecked my house—the curtains, the furniture, everything. I had just redecorated. He even injured my ankle pulling me into a ditch. I sat on the floor and wondered, What have I done? But I wasn’t going to take him back to the shelter. I found a trainer and a day care and he got better. People give up too early on dogs. They aren’t willing to work with them. I see it in applications I get for my dogs all the time. People want hypoallergenic, non-shedding, no barking, good-with-kids dogs. They want perfect dogs. What they need is a stuffed animal. Windsor is fourteen now, and when I look for dogs, I think of Windsor and see dogs that seem unadoptable but who, with a little TLC, can be great, happy dogs.”

  The eye vet, Dr. J. F. Swanson, examines Sunset and notes she has no reflex response to light in her right eye. He thinks the eye suffered a traumatic injury, but it’s not inflamed and there are no other symptoms. “The left eye is completely normal,” he tells Kathy, “but she’s completely blind in her right. It appears she’s been this way for a while.”

  Importantly for Kathy, she now knows exactly what she’s dealing with. Sunset will still be a completely adoptable dog once her heartworm is successfully treated; Kathy will just have to tell potential adopters she’s blind in one eye and it requires no treatment.

  Toward the end of the day, more emails start to pour in from BARC: final appeals for dogs about to be put down. This is the time of day when the animal control officers who have been picking up dogs p
ull into the intake bay and room needs to be made for the new arrivals.

  “I hope I have a few more years left in rescue,” Kathy says to me as she drives me back to my hotel. “It’s really a younger person’s endeavor with all the physical work. Just once I’d like to sleep in until six o’clock. It’s like having kids who rely on you for everything. You can’t let them down. They’ve been let down before and you can’t do it again.”

  • • •

  A few days after I returned home from Houston, I checked in with Kathy about Tadpole.

  “He is doing great,” she emailed me. “His coat is coming back. Hope I can get him out of isolation soon. He should be ready in September to be put up for adoption if all goes well.”

  I’m relieved and happy for him. The poor guy had received two ivermectin shots for his scabies, two dewormings, and all of his vaccines—for bordetella, lepto, distemper, parvo, and canine influenza—and two medicated baths. So there was hope after all.

  But ten days later, Kathy wrote again. “I have some sad news,” she began. “Tadpole passed away today. He got sick this weekend and would not eat and had very watery diarrhea. I took him to the vet and they said he was full of infection…his white blood cell count was practically zero and he had high positive parvo.” Apparently, the parvo had been incubating since before his vaccine, so though Kathy did everything she could to try to save him, it was, sadly, a lost cause.22

  She continued: “With no white blood cells, he could not fight the infection so we started plasma transfusions and IVs…but tonight when they were giving him his evening meds, he had a heart attack and died. It’s so sad and we see this so much with the street dogs; [they] have no immune system built up…it’s just hard to save them. He was such a sweet dog and loved his toys I bought him and to see [him] go that way and so fast is heartbreaking. Thank you for caring about him; hope he is in a better place than he came from.