The animal cops call it Dogpatch.
This is not said with malevolence, nor to demean the humans who
reside in this stretch of unincorporated Pima County for a variety of
reasons, ranging from poverty to streaks of ramshackle independence.
Rather, it is said simply because Dogpatch is filled with free-roaming
canines.
The corrective ways of government hold little sway in Dogpatch, a
place where property lines are a mishmash of desperate intentions and
midnight deal-making, where dwellings are as likely to be two
stitched-together mobile homes as a traditional house.
There’s a spot in Dogpatch, I’m told, where feral dogs feast on the
corpses of other dead animals in a routine, grisly orgy.
You can look down your nose at Dogpatch—but you might not want
to look too far down, because in enough ways to make you squirm, the
folks of Dogpatch are just like the rest of us. They just don’t have
the money to hide it.
There are few formal roadways in Dogpatch—officially called
the Old Nogales Highway Colonia—and those that do exist are
subject to obliteration when monsoon floods rip down the huge wash
trailing Old Vail Connection Road. This means that cops and ambulances
are habitually slow to arrive, if they arrive at all.
Not surprisingly, the most common enforcement presence out here is
the dogcatcher—or in modern parlance, the animal-control officer.
And there is very little that is not modern about Officer Ray Velez of
the Pima Animal Care Center, or PACC: Velez bounces along these
kidney-busting roads with a laptop mounted on his dash, and a cell
phone pressed to his ear.
Dogpatch is part of his beat, which sprawls from mid-Tucson south to
the Pima County line. Today, someone in Dogpatch has suffered a dog
bite. In response, we’ve traveled down nameless lanes, each with its
own rangy crop of dogs, until we reach a brown manufactured home where
a teenager and his kid brother are waiting by the door.
Upon request, 15-year-old Yardley Coronado bares a leg dotted with
wicked little puncture marks, compliments of a neighbor’s dog that
harasses the boys whenever they pass by.
“Three, four, five, six … there are at least nine punctures,”
Velez says. “Were you running or anything when the dog bit you? Or did
it just jump on you?”
Yardley explains how the dog wormed out through a hole in the fence
and then went nuts. Velez hands him a quarter to hold next to the bites
for scale. The officer starts snapping photos.
Back in the truck, Velez tries tapping the details into his
computer, to be read in real-time back at headquarters—but we’re
in a dead zone, with no signal. It’s October and still hot, so he
cranks up the air conditioning, and we go looking for the dog-perp. On
the way, three tawny pit bulls and a chow trot along the makeshift
fence. Velez, a compact, 48-year-old man with friendly but precise
manners, clicks his tongue and shakes his head. “That’s why we call it
Dogpatch,” he says.
He’s retired from the Air Force, where he guided missiles by
computer. “But when I retired, I said, ‘Now I’m going to do what
I want to do,'” he tells me.
He loves animals. It appalls him to see them hurt. He’d rather see
them put down than left with a cruel owner.
And every day, Velez comes back with stories of creatures being
beaten or sodomized or abandoned or burned with cigarettes. A
particularly common theme involves dogs on tie-outs either dying in the
sun, or jumping over fences and strangling in the wind.
“Tie-outs are illegal in Pima County,” he says. “But they still sell
them at PetSmart.” (A PetSmart spokeswoman responds that dogs
can be temporarily tied out when someone moves into a home that
lacks secure fencing. That’s why the Tucson stores stock 15 varieties
of the metal stakes.)
Then come the hoarders. A few days earlier, an old woman on South
Grande Avenue was found with 45 cats in her filthy home. The sickly
cats were all euthanized; the woman was cited for unsanitary conditions
and for failing to take them to the vet.
“My wife at times doesn’t believe me,” Velez says. “I’ll show her a
house with somebody who has 80 cats. The house is just completely
trashed. There’s crap knee-deep everywhere. She’ll go, ‘No way. That’s
abandoned, right?’ And I say, ‘No, people live there.'”
Animals live there, too.
In fact, we all live here together, in a modern jungle where the
word “animal” is relative, where Dogpatch is perhaps its worst but
hardly singular representative. In turn, this chaos is overseen by
PACC, a remarkably underfunded stepchild of the Pima County Health
Department, hunkered in its 40-year-old headquarters on a dreary scrap
of land off Silverbell Road.
Each year, up to 22,000 animals arrive at the facility. In fiscal
year 2007-2008 alone, more than 13,000 animals died there.
To PACC’s credit, the number of euthanizations are decreasing
slightly, down 6 percent from 2005-2006. But neither PACC nor the
citizens of Pima County can consider the deaths of thousands of
animals, however reduced, to be any kind of success.
Behind those numbers lurks a complicated miasma of societal failure
mixed with an evolving view of our fellow creatures. And while Pima
Animal Care itself may or may not be dysfunctional, it’s no more so
than the community it serves, a place where ignorance and apathy block
effective animal-sterilization programs, and where rescue groups are
often at loggerheads with PACC or one another.
You could say that PACC animals are just proxies for our own
personal failures. They mark the failure of families, in which a
brother will sometimes take the pet of a sister to the pound out of
spite. It is a failure of neighborly accommodation, in which one
neighbor traps a cat of another, taking it to PACC where it is killed
before the owner can claim it.
Meanwhile, even in good times, PACC copes with all of this on a
miserly annual budget of just more than $5 million. Consider that our
county is slated to spend six times that amount just on currently
planned road projects.
At the same time, there are serious questions about how PACC carries
out its grim task. One former animal-enforcement officer describes a
gruesome regimen in which animals suffer while dying at the hands of
inadequately trained staffers, and in which fatally ill or injured
animals are left to suffer.
Until this fall, animals killed at PACC were trucked to a county
landfill and bulldozed into the earth with all of the other trash.
It is an October morning, and PACC spokeswoman Jayne Cundy is leading
me through the bowels of the bustling shelter, back into the kennels
where row after row of dogs gaze out at people passing by. Some display
a newcomer’s enthusiasm, while others are long past trying.
In the best of circumstances, this is not a cheery place—but
there have been improvements. Cundy explains that the shelter recently
installed a state-of-the-art HVAC system, which six times each hour
replaces the air throughout the building with fresh, outside air. This
is expected to greatly cut down on infectious diseases such as kennel
cough, which raise clinical costs and euthanization rates while
reducing adoptions.
The system is part of more than $3 million in ongoing upgrades at
PACC. Other projects include 30 new indoor-outdoor kennels, and a
remodeling of the adoption room. The shelter will soon have new
quarters for cats. The intake area is also slated for renovation.
But even with all of those new accouterments, animals fill space as
soon as it opens. That has led to bitter speculation about the factors
that lead PACC to euthanize animals. Cundy tries to neutralize those
suspicions. “No,” she says, “we don’t euthanize just because we’re
overcrowded. We just manage.”
However, a former PACC enforcement officer has a different
story.
“If Jayne Cundy tells you that they don’t kill for space, that’s a
lie,” says Trissy Coppens, who left her job about a year ago. “They do
(kill) because they have too many animals.”
According to Coppens, there are also numerous discrepancies in how
PACC handles animals. Take cats: “If the person doing the evaluation
doesn’t like cats, they’ll just kill them,” she says. “Or when the cats
come in, if staff can’t lift up the cage and pet the cat, that’s how
they decide (to euthanize it). But with cats, they’re already freaked
out from being in a little cage. And maybe they’ve been trapped before
they came in, so (staffers) are not able to pet them. Some of these
cats, you could tell they were pets just by looking at them. But they
kill them anyway, because people bring them in and say they’re
strays.”
Such an incident occurred last year, when a neighbor trapped
semi-feral cats belonging to downtown-area resident Nadine Rund. Both
animals were apparently euthanized by PACC before Rund had a chance to
claim them. (See “Trap Trip,” May 8, 2008.)
According to the Coppens, staffers who euthanize the animals “become
desensitized to killing, because they kill so many animals every
day.”
Meanwhile, she says, other animals that may be sick or injured are
often are left to suffer, instead of being immediately euthanized. “One
officer brought in a puppy that had distemper. It was already dying.
But they left it sitting underneath the table for hours.
“I saw one dog brought in that had no face. His face had been cut
off. He had no jaw. They just let him sit back there for hours. They
didn’t give him water. Animals are supposed to have water at all times.
When we’re out in public, that’s the law. But when we’re in the
shelter, there are times when the dogs have no water at all.”
Coppens says that cats especially suffered in the euthanasia room,
at the hands of staff who were not well-trained in euthanasia.
Typically, she says, staffers would poke the animals through the cage
with a hypodermic needle, with no sedative, and it could take up to 20
minutes for an animal to die a painful death. For a mortality check,
they’d then jab a needle into the heart; there was no more heartbeat
when the needle stopped ticking back and forth.
A phone call seeking comment from Dr. Bonnie Lilley, the
veterinarian who oversees PACC’s clinic and euthanizations, was not
returned.
As far as the public is concerned, what goes on in PACC’s euthanasia
room remains secret. In fact, the ferocity with which county officials
keep this process from outside scrutiny is disturbing.
I made numerous requests to view euthanizations. Several times,
those requests were denied by Health Department director Sherry
Daniels. When I asked why, Daniels replied, through a spokeswoman,
“Because I said so.” Daniels also refused repeated requests to be
interviewed for this story.
At one point, Pima County Supervisor Ray Carroll intervened on my
behalf, making arrangements with PACC manager Kim Janes to accompany me
on a viewing. But when I called Janes to confirm, he informed me that
Carroll’s request had been nixed by higher-ups.
Given that it’s unusual for county staff to refuse such requests by
a supervisor, I hoped to clear things up with Health Department
spokeswoman Patti Woodcock. “We don’t dictate to elected officials what
they can or cannot do,” Woodcock told me. “We have expressed our
concern to the deputy county administrator, who has carried forward the
‘whys’ of declining the request. So it really comes down to Mr.
Carroll’s decision.”
Of course, it wasn’t Carroll’s decision at all, since his request
had been denied. But who denied it? Next, I called Dennis Douglas, the
deputy administrator Woodcock had referred to. Since he oversees the
Health Department, I hoped he could clear things up.
No such luck. “I actually haven’t seen a request from Mr. Carroll to
allow you to view a euthanasia,” Douglas told me. “From my perspective,
no one has countermanded Mr. Carroll’s request.”
Except for the fact that someone had indeed “countermanded” Mr.
Carroll’s request, although no one—including Mr.
Douglas—dared admit it.
So we’ll have to rely on the official version of what goes on behind
those closed doors, where some 13,000 animals perish each year.
It should be noted that Douglas and others said my presence during
the euthanizations would cause stress to the condemned animals and the
staff. But former officer Coppens calls that baloney, saying the
animals can’t be much more stressed than they already are.
By most accounts, Justin Gallick is a bright light at PACC. A
longtime staffer at the Humane Society of Southern Arizona, he moved
over to the county about a year ago and now manages the shelter. He’s
seen as a reformer, one of the folks who can help turn this battered
institution around. (“I’d trust Justin with my life,” one animal
rescuer told me.)
Gallick says that he, along with Dr. Lilley, “are making the final
decisions” about which animals live or die. “But it’s not always that
an animal is vicious. It’s an overall (assessment) based on the health
and the temperament and what we’re seeing—basically, the past
history. If we get it in there, and it’s a completely friendly dog,
except for a situational bite … maybe it’s a dog that we’d be able to
put out for a special-needs adoption.
“But there are some dogs that come in here for a bite case, and you
walk up the kennel, and you can’t vaccinate or do anything to it,”
Gallick says. “My assumption is that would not be a dog you’d want
living next door to your toddler.”
He also says the grim picture of the euthanasia process painted by
Coppens and others isn’t the case today, if it ever was. “Of course,
I’m always looking for ways to improve it,” he says. “It’s a nonstop
conversation to make things better. There’s always room for improvement
in any shelter that I’ve been to.”
But outside groups believe the best way to avoid euthanizations is
to simply stop killing animals. That includes tightening the standards
for how intakes are evaluated, says Nikia Fico, of Citizens for a
No-Kill Tucson. She believes far too many dogs are deemed vicious and
euthanized without adequate oversight from trained animal
behaviorists.
“Right now, it doesn’t have to be a certified veterinarian who makes
the decision that an animal is vicious,” she says. “We want to have a
legal standard of what it means to be vicious, and it has to be decided
by a court of law—not just a vet, but a court of law.
“If (an animal is not deemed vicious), they need to work to try to
place that animal” with a home, Fico believes.
Others suggest that there’s no reason that PACC can’t outright
become a no-kill shelter. They include Nathan Winograd, a nationally
known advocate for no-kill programs such as the one he helped establish
at San Francisco’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
He’s also author of Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and
the No-Kill Revolution in America.
Winograd says that Pima County lags far behind other counties when
it comes to working toward no-kill. For comparison, he points to Washoe
County, Nev., which includes the city of Reno. He says Washoe County’s
shelter takes in nearly 40,000 animals, and is able to save 90 percent
of its dogs and 86 percent of the cats. “Given that (Washoe) is taking
in nearly twice the number of animals per capita as Pima County,
there’s really no reason that Pima County can’t be doing better than it
is.”
When he brought that message to Tucson last year, he says the PACC
gave him “a whole host of excuses as to why it couldn’t be done. Then
when I started going through the different programs that help
(alleviate) the perceived ‘need to kill,’ they were either not being
done, or only being done on a token level.”
Those steps include creating an extensive foster-care program for
animals awaiting adoption, and developing a closer working relationship
with rescue groups.
“I’m not talking about doing that on a token level,” he says. “I’m
talking about putting in a program so that it replaces the killing of
those animals entirely. You can do those kinds of things by tapping
into the compassion of the community. But it seemed to me, when I was
talking to rescue groups in Pima County, that it wasn’t a “partnership”
with the PACC. “It was an adversarial relationship, which is incredibly
unfortunate.”
In his book, Winograd argues that statistics from a number of
sources—including the American Veterinary Medical
Association—reveal that there are more than enough homes in this
country to accommodate every shelter animal. The problem is that
shelters aren’t doing a good enough job of finding those homes.
While officials at PACC say their outreach efforts are hobbled by
funding shortfalls, Winograd calls that a red herring. “A lot of these
programs are incredibly cost-effective,” he says. “I would argue that
they are even more cost-effective than killing animals, because every
time you kill an animal, that costs money. It costs taxpayers money to
hold the animal; it costs money to kill the animal; it costs money to
dispose of the animal’s body.
“By contrast, adoption brings in revenue,” he says. “Or transferring
an animal to a rescue group might not bring in revenue, but it
transfers the cost of caring for that animal from taxpayers to private
philanthropy, and it saves money from the need to kill and dispose of
the animal’s body.”
Not surprisingly, Winograd has no shortage of detractors. Among them
is Pat Hubbard, operations director at the Humane Society of Southern
Arizona. “People say that PACC needs to be no-kill,” Hubbard says. “But
nobody provides them with the resources to make this happen. Then we
have a book by this man who says that there are enough homes out there.
Well, where are they? We want them. We work very hard to find these
homes.”
Back at PACC, Gallick calls no-kill a fluid concept. “Even within
Tucson,” he says, “there are different definitions of no-kill and when
it’s acceptable to euthanize an animal, almost going from rescue group
to rescue group. There are some that say that absolutely nothing is to
be euthanized. There are groups that say that only the treatable,
manageable ones would not be euthanized.”
And sometimes, sheer capacity narrows the margins. Gallick points to
a time last summer when he says that no animals posted on the rescue
list were euthanized. Then the rescuers seemed to hit a wall. “For some
groups, it was financial. For some groups, it was (a shortage of)
foster homes. Some groups had too many animals, so they put a stop on
intake.”
But Susan Scherl, founder of midtown’s HOPE Animal Shelter, believes
the only way to make Tucson a no-kill town is by jolting the status
quo. “First and foremost, you have to get the people out of power who
don’t think it can happen,” she says. “If you have the Pat Hubbards of
the world, and Kim Janes, and even Justin Gallick, who don’t think it
can ever happen, they’re not going to move in that direction.”
According to Janes, however, saving every animal goes beyond PACC’s
mission.
“Our goal is to move absolutely in (the no-kill) direction, balanced
with our charter, which is public health and safety,” he says. That
includes “taking severely damaged animals out of poor owners’ hands and
getting them out of harm’s way. They’re past the point of
rehabilitation, and so we have to take (the euthanization) step. I
don’t know if that will ever go away as long as you have people who
aren’t going to take care of their pets.”
Still, the shelter is increasingly focused on the adoption and
redemption of animals, he says. That includes the recent addition of a
coordinator to work with rescue groups, and sharply reduced fees.
“In our heart of hearts, we’re going to do everything we can to save
every animal that comes here, regardless of how it gets to us,” Janes
says. “But we’ve also got to do the enforcement side, and we take that
very seriously. And the rabies control and protection side, we take
that very seriously as well.”
Another hurdle, even more daunting, is the routine fickleness of
people.
“Just last week, one family adopted a 3-month-old puppy,” Gallick
says. “Then they brought the dog back because it bonded with the kids
but not the husband. They gave the dog five days. I said, ‘Wow, OK, not
a lot of commitment there.’ I’ve even had people return a dog because
it didn’t bark.”
Carroll has long been PACC’s champion, promoting adoptions,
suggesting new strategies such as a mobile spay and neuter clinic, and
bringing a homeless dog or cat to each Board of Supervisors meeting.
Recently, he toured Maricopa County’s state-of-the-art shelter, where
he got a glimpse of the possible. Under Ed Boks, who later had stints
heading up animal control in both New York City and Los Angeles,
Maricopa became the nation’s first county to officially adopt the
no-kill concept. “When animal care and control anywhere embraces ‘no
kill,’ it’s a reversal, like ‘man bites dog,'” Boks told the Arizona
Republic.
That contrast leaves Carroll shaking his head.
“Other communities are so invested,” he says. “This pet
overpopulation is because of low-cost spay and neutering that we don’t
provide. And we have to convince a large part of our community that’s
the right thing to do.
“Corporate and community groups should also be doing more to assist
in this Sisyphean labor,” he says. “We had an opportunity to do
something when I first was on the board. We had Rodrigo Silva, and then
he went to Phoenix and did incredible things.” A former PACC manager,
Silva left to replace Boks at Maricopa County Animal Care and
Control.
Carroll, a Republican, blames the Democratic-majority board for
failing to properly fund PACC year after year. “I’ve been everywhere
looking for ideas,” he says. “But when it comes to implementing
something, I’m the minority vote.”
For example, Carroll says it took nearly a decade to convince other
supervisors that euthanized animals should be cremated rather than just
dumped in the county landfill. “I told them, ‘This is disgusting and
unprofessional, and you’re going to do something more respectful than
putting these animals in a dump truck.’ That was in 1999, so it took
about eight years for the rest of the board to finally agree to it. It
costs about $25,000 a year.”
Back in Dogpatch, a roaming pit bull has attacked somebody’s
Chihuahua. On the way to that call, we pass the home of the dog that
bit Yardley Coronado. “There he is,” says Velez. “He’s wagging his
tail.”
The officer gets out of his truck and walks up to the fence. In
response, the dog shrinks back toward the house. So Velez stalks over
to his truck, jumps in and honks the horn. Despite a car in the drive,
there are no fluttering curtains or opening doors at the residence.
Of course, that doesn’t mean there aren’t humans on the premises.
Velez says it’s common for people to haul their kids inside and lay low
when they see the dog catcher. “Hell, they won’t come out for cops, let
alone for us. They don’t have to (talk to me) by law, unless I get a
warrant.”
With three dogs watching, we pull away and head for the pit bull
problem. There, we find Jose Rojas. When Velez spots the brindled pit
bull, he straps on a brace that runs from elbow to forearm. He says
another pit bull nearly ripped his arm off when it yanked on the snare.
“I can lift a cup of coffee now with that arm—after two months.
It still hurts.”
Then we jump out and meet Rojas, an air-conditioning installer who
shares his house with his wife and two kids. Velez tosses Rojas a leash
and asks him to lasso the pit bull, which is acting more scared than
mean. “Believe it or not,” Velez tells me, “the dogs freak out when
they see my uniform.”
Rojas turns the dog over to Velez, and rubs his chin in thought. “I
don’t know who that dog belongs to,” Rojas says. “There are all kinds
of dogs everywhere out here.”
Velez snares the dog, which starts to whine as he pushes it into a
cage on the truck. Then we’re headed back to PACC. As the dirt of
Dogpatch gives way to pavement, Velez ponders the nature of his work.
As a whole, he thinks people are starting to take animals a little more
seriously.
“I still remember when I was a kid,” he says. “I think society is a
whole lot better now, or at least more aware.”
But that’s still a far cry from perfect. Velez turns onto Old
Nogales Highway and falls silent for a moment. Then he clears his
throat. “There is stuff out there that will rip at you,” he says. “But
I think I’ve gotten to the point, fortunately, or maybe unfortunately,
that I can get detached from it. It affects me, hell yes, it affects
me. But I have to detach, or I wouldn’t be able to do my job.”
He also defends PACC’s role in a tough corner of Arizona.
“Hey, we’re killing ourselves trying to work with rescue groups, to
work with the public and make the public more aware,” he says.
“Are there things we can do better? Probably. I’m sure AIG and
Lehman Brothers had things they could have done better, too.”
This article appears in Nov 26 – Dec 2, 2009.
I know Trissy Coppens, She has a big heart, but she just didn’t know how to direct her passion. She found a tick on a dog and wanted the vet to examine the dog instead of just applying the tick treatment. This took the vets time away from the animals that urgently needed her attention. I believe in her heart Trissy believes what she said about the animals at PACC is true, but in reality, Ending an animals suffering is a priority. No one that works at PACC is heartless enough to allow an animal to sit and suffer for long periods of time. Every one of us would report that kind of treatment if it was being done. Lord knows were not working there for the bragging rights. Were overworked and understaffed. It’s long hours in the heat of summer, under mobile homes, in the mud and monsoons. We meet the worst of the worst of the human kind. Were working there because we do love the animals and we want to do right by them.
PACC does need help. It’s all political, everything that happens there is for one political reason or another. We need more shelter staff, four on a shift is not nearly enough. The National Animal Control Association evaluated the shelter and suggested that 17 staff members were needed per shift in the shelter to be efficient, and that was many years ago when our animal population was half of what it is now. More administration is hired instead. Too many chiefs and not enough Indians. It’s sad, no money for equipment and supplies but lets hire someone to push more papers. And we definitely need more than one veterinarian to keep up with the cases the officers are working, as well as the sick and injured the public bring in. Were not perfect, and we never will be. There is no possible way to please all the people all the time. But the treatment Trissy Coppens is describing is simply not an accurate assessment of what goes on at PACC. Maybe that is how she interpret a particular situation, I don’t know. I do know that if I ever see something like what she described, I would be reporting not only to my supervisor, but to theirs and up and up until something was done. Were not popular by any means, were doing our jobs. Doing what we love, helping, saving and rescuing the animals and holding the owners, and abusers responsible.
I agree with most of what was said by the person commenting. I too know Trissy. She is correct about some animals not being treated right away. Those of us that work at PACC have all seen it. A dog or cat hit by a car or attacked by another animal lying in a cage bleeding and sufferring with know one paying any atttention to it. It’s not common place at the Center but it does happen. Usually because we are so understaffed that there is no one to treat the animal. The shelter staff are so over worked, because there aren’t enough of them, that they have to call in sick just to get a day off. That only adds to the problem because someone has to fufill the duties of that person that didn’t show up for work and now everyone is overworked again. It’s a vicious cycle that will continue until Sherry Daniels and Kim Janes start showing some backbone and telling those they answer to that we just can’t run an animal shelter with less than half the staff that’s needed. I have heard that when the problem has been brought to Mr. Janes his answer is, we are aware of the problems facing the different departments within the Pima Animal Care Center, but the productivity of each department is at an acceptable level and there is no need to hire more staff at this time. When will it be the right time? Pima County’s population is over one million people. Along with the people come their pets. The Center hasn’t grown and neither has the amount of staff in over fifteen years. Wake up Tucson and Pima County residents. You need to contact your elected officials and demand some changes for the animals. All Pima County officailas need to be replaced. They do a lousy job, not only with PACC but with the county as a whole. Lets start with Huckleberry and work our way down to Kim Janes. Maybe after replacing those who are worthless we can get some action.
As a liberal Democrat, I support big government. However, I can not agree with the critics who believe that Pima County should operate a no-kill animal shelter and adoption service. The PACC, after all, is in the Health Dept. and its mission should be to protect the public health, not provide pet services.
The solution to the problem seems obvious. The no-kill advocates maintain that it would be an easy task for Pima County to place all healthy, happy cats and dogs with new owners. Then, let the private shelters take all animals from PACC and place them in homes in the community.
If the former animal care officer is not describing “an accurate assessment of what goes on at PACC”, than why didn’t they let the reporter and Supervisor Carroll view the euthanasia process? Somebody is not being honest. Personally, I believe former officer Triss Coppens demonstrates tremendous integrity by speaking out–unlike her former colleagues.
Give me a break. Ms. Coppin’s depiction of what she personally witnessed is inaccurate? She must have a very active imagination to make all that up! Even if a small percentage of what she shared is true you both should lose your jobs!! You sit there and preach animal advocacy and point the finger at your superiors while all the time you use inhumane methods to euthanize animals. I hope this article brings you a lot of attention.
Who are the real animals here?
Ummm excuse me….this article isn’t about Ms. Coppens nor her personal history, so quit trying to villanize her. If you want to know more about how this article was generated, why don’t you ask the author? Maybe she felt she could make a difference by being rehired? And why are bringing up personal information about her in the first place? All you are doing is proving the point that you are a bunch of arrogant bullies. Way to go Ms. Coppens!! Don’t let these jerks push you around, you’re not the problem.
The problem of unwanted animals is so big that I once joked that for competition there should be an all-kill animal shelter consisting of a butcher table, a woodchipper, and a dirt lot full of scavenging birds. Either all the animal shelters in town would suddenly become better-funded, or the depravity of people would be fully exposed.
My tasteless joke is seeming more and more like a good idea.
I’ve been in this business long enough to have developed a pretty hefty BS detector, and I believe the situations described by Trissy Coppens are 100 percent accurate. Had I not felt that way, I wouldn’t have quoted her extensively. I’ll add that she had nothing to gain from participating in my article, but stood only to endure the sadly predictable personal attacks such as those already posted in this comment section.
My story was not about Trissy Coppens–though perhaps it should have been, because I greatly admire her courage in speaking out. But instead, this story was about problems at PACC. When I see anonymous attacks against the messenger by those who are obviously still PACC employees, that signals an institution with some very deeply rooted cultural problems, and certainly one that calls for more scrutiny.
Tim Vanderpool
The problem isn’t going to go away if we keep the focus on the dysfunctional animal organizations (and that’s all of them). They are too interested in self-promotion, power games, and lying to the public. Forget them. If you want an animal, rescue one off the street. At least you’ll know where it came from – and it won’t have been sprayed with toxic chemicals every morning, or spent the day languishing in a cage or a lonely room. But Tucson’s ignorant, uneducated, violent, and shiftless population – where backyard breeding, throwaway cats, and keeping neglected, poorly-socialized dogs “fer pertekshun” are normal – has got to change. I am not pointing any racial fingers here. “Trash” comes in all colors. Compassionate animal care needs to be taught all the way through school as part of health classes. Oh, wait. Those of you with the guard dogs are too busy voting against “eddycayshun” if you vote at all, and the politicians are too busy catering to the least-educated, most violent element of society to allocate any money to the schools.
Tucson. Dumb, ignorant, violent…and proud of it.
Thanks to both Tim Vanderpool and Trissy Coppens. May your efforts to bring light to this serve us all well. I lost a pet last Spring and made several trips a week to PACC and the Humane Society hoping to see my lost one. After two months, I adopted one cat from PACC that was identical to the one that I’d lost. He was terrified, hissing and spatting at the staff, who tried everything to convince me that I did not want that animal and it had to be euthanized because it was “a dangerous animal”. It was large, well-fed, well-groomed, obvoiusly an abandoned pet that had been mis-treated at the hands of the staff. I insisted on that cat, and the staff showed me the heavy-duty leather mits that they had to use to remove the cat to clean the cage – there were slash marks through the gloves. I still insisted. I brought a carrier and Justin thankfully assisted me in getting the cat into a carrier and vaccinating him. I brought him home and was able to pet him within 5 hours, able to hold him within 2 days. He was very nearly euthanized just for being scared and reacting like any of us would if we were put through the experience that he’d just had. There’s no telling how many family members he had become displaced from in the previous days. Because he couldn’t be “handled” he wasn’t even going to be put into the adoption room, but was scheduled to be euthanized directly from the back holding room. Someone had obviously loved him, he is an enormous cat. I’ll never know if that person died, lost their home, or if the cat was taken from them by a malicious family member. But I am very thankful to have him. It’s worth noting that someone abandoned three small black kittens outside PACC that day, in a box in 100-degree heat, with their eyes crusted closed. They would have been euthanized so others wouldn’t get sick from them. PACC doesn’t waste time or money helping animals that are scared or sick – just euthanize them so they don’t take up room and resources, and especially so that they don’t get the other animals sick that can be sold for profit. I took the babies home with me too. They have grown into wonderful “teenagers”. The big guy loved them from the moment he saw them, gently batting them with his paws, then grooming them, and now racing them from room to room and up the stairs. But don’t think that this is normal, that sick and abused animals get adopted out of there by people like me every day, because they don’t. Don’t let your pets go to PACC. If the animals are in decent shape, they will be held as long as PACC thinks they can get someone to pay $100 for them. Ask yourself if someone is going to pay $100 for your pet? Then take care of it and care for it, like it does for you. It’s part of your family. It deserves to be with you.
Nobody wants to kill but the bottom line is taking care of animals is like taking care of all the people in the world, there is a bottom dollar and it sucks. Especially when your taking care of your family as well, somethings can be a burden, who will bear them? Not me at least I can’t, just wish there wasn’t one.
I’d help, if I knew how.
I now work heavily with animal rescue; I used to work at PACC.
I was forced to leave because I didn’t participate in the BS that was/is so prevalent at that time. Things have improved at PACC since I was there, the pace of the improvements are much to slow. I know that many of the staff person’s still care deeply for the animals; many have taken animals home from the shelter. The conflict for many at PACC is the having to squash personal feeling and thoughts to perform a task outlined by outdated mission and goals of Pima Animal Care. If one reads the mission and goals, the center exists solely for public safety pertaining to rabies. Control the animals’ population to save the public from rabies. To begin the reform we must first demand the mission statement be expanded from solely protecting the public from rabies. (This is why the center falls under the health department by the way). With the increase of interspecies transference of diseases this may be possible. NO kill is a wonderful concept, which as a society we must dedicate ourselves to. This will mean changing opinions on sterilization and the ‘oh my child should observe the birth process’. Then by all means introduce the same child to the death process. Both are part of the life cycle. The other change needs to come with the ‘my dog is so perfect there should be more just like him/her so I will let him/her have/father a litter’. I would like to see the ‘mobile vet van’ in the poorer areas of our county daily. NOT the every now and again as is the case now. By controlling the pet population then the county could save millions by paying a small staff for the van to be somewhere daily to do FREE spay and neuters in places like Dogpatch. Then again being proactive and doing something that makes sense may not be the bureaucratic way of doing things.
The euthanizsasia process is accurate as described at the time I worked at PACC. Cats were poked through the cage because of staff safety issues. AKA the risk of being bitten by handling a wild cat were too much. The same needle was used multiple times to save on costs. The dulled needles were used to determine if the heart had stopped. And yes, that meant finding the heart with the needle until the syringe stopped moving. The dogs were no better off. Safety meant we had to muzzle each dog. One person holds the dog to ensure the safety of the person with the needle. Ever see a room laid out with over 50 dead dogs you have just help kill? NOT a good feeling.
When you feel to much you can’t do the job as dictated by the bosses, as a defense you become somewhat immune to the death. To live with yourself you have to come up with reasons what you did was necessary. When I worked at PACC Mr. Silva was in charge so my opinion is not the highest of him. Dr. Lilly still cared back then, she even still had her own practice, but she seems to have hardened to the job over the years too. I would still work at PACC as I think they need as many caring people as they can get that don’t play the internal BS games. I would still work at PACC as I think they need, as many caring people as they can get that don’t play the internal BS games. I would love to be able to institute changes in the animal care that takes place there. No more hosing down kennels with animals still in them. Larger staff numbers to adequately ensure each dog that comes in is treated with perhaps the first human kindness it may have ever known. To make sure nursing and pregnant moms are not stuck in the general population to become sick and malnourished; that dog in isolation cages are given the opportunity to see daylight. Too many more changes to list here also need to be done.
On the bright side ARF provides adoption services on a volunteer basis, yeah for the volunteers! Dog walkers take dogs outside for a reprieve- all volunteers! To those going into the dismal place and volunteering their time for the animals bless you! You do make a difference too! For all the rescues taking any animal they can off the rescue only list Yeah! Make a difference offer to foster for a rescue group so they can continue to pull the un-adaptable out before they are euthanized.
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Some corrections. Ed Boks did not make any shelter “No-Kill.” He was all talk. Boks said he made Marciopa the first “No-Kill” shelter in the US. That is untrue. Euthanasia was over 60% at the time. When questions Boks finally admitted that they had two shelters and one adoption only shelter. He claimed he made that center “No-Kill.” It turns out the center wasn’t “No-Kill.” Any animals not adopted would end up back in the shelters and killed.
For the record, Boks was fired from Maricopa, New York and Los Angeles because of poor performance. He would make it seem like he improved things by releasing totally misleading press releases. He also juggled the animals and the books.
A few of his tricks: He would warehouse animals during the slow months and not kill them. Then he’d proclaim the shelter “No Kill.” Then the shelter filled up and he had to kill the animals or they died from cage fights and illness. He just wouldn’t release news during the kill months.
Here’s another. He refused the animals most likely to be euthanized, i.e. feral cats, neonates, big old dogs. His euthanasia numbers would then drop by the drop in intake. The next year of course intake went up as the refused animals made a ton of babies. He actually ended up going backwards. Los Angeles is back to 2004/05 levels of intake and euthanasia.
I foster for one of the small rescue groups that take animals out of PACC and save them from euthanasia. I have been at PACC waiting to pick up a foster animal and have seen a seriously sick dog in a cage, so ill it was barely breathing (when I asked I was told they presumed it had distemper), and it just lay there in a cage in the receiving area. Other animals are coming and going in this area and could (and did) walk over to this severely sick dog and sniff it through the bars of the cage. This means that that dog could also get sick from doing that. No one seemed to have any concern over that or bothered to move the cage with the dog in it to a place out of the way of daily traffic in the receiving area. I wonder how long that dog laid there before it was put down and I wonder how many more dogs it potentially infected? I believe everything Ms. Coppens said because I’ve seen these things for myself. It is not her imagination.
You know you can point fingers all you want, but until PACC has the resources to make changes, it’s not going to happen or if it does, it’s not going to be quickly. Until Pima County’s population decides that it wants to treat it’s animals better and be responsible pet owners which includes providing an animal with Vet care, spay/neuter and providing a loving home, it’s not going to happen. I donate by sending a little extra when I renew my dogs license in June and it’s tax deductible, so why don’t some of you put your money where your mouth is, actions speak louder than words.
I work with a rescue organization. One way to truly help is to volunteer. On Monday, Wednesday and Fridays Dog Walkers are so needed. Become a foster parent, foster a dog or cat thru one of the rescue organizations in Tucson. There is a list on Pima Animal Care Shelters website. We are ALWAYS LOOKING FOR COMMITTED FOSTER HOMES! Spay and Neuter your pets. Help a rescue organization or PACC by making your Tax deductible donations to them, donate food or supplies. Most importantly quit thinking of a family pet as disposible. Start thinking of them as part of the family. Quit relying on someone else to take over your responsibilities in life and become a responsible loving human being and be compassionate. It starts with all of us helping. With out all of us working as a team nothing will ever be accomplished and the only ones that really suffer are the Animals in Pima County
Kudos to neighboring Oro Valley for including in their budget this year a no-kill feasibility study. Hoping that the study will result in the implementation of a no-kill program that would allow OV to no longer be dependent on PACC for animal control.
It’s a sad plight, there will always be people out there who think of their animals as pets and care about animals and their well being in general and there will be those who think of themselves and their conveniences first and who don’t care. Then there are those in the middle who have extenuating circumstances (in a crisis situation) and those on the other end of the spectrum who are just plain barbaric (people who would engage in pit bull fighting).
We will never be able to solve it totally but it is up to those of us who do care to try and make a difference and every little bit does help.
I help run a rescue and it is a rewarding though stressful, ever problem solving job and honestly in the 5 years I’ve done it I have become grumpier about the general population. There are some wonderful people as well that has helped to renew my faith like the good people who adopt our dogs and give them true homes and all of our volunteers who do their part as fostering a dog is not necessarily easy and going to events and volunteering at the shelter is time consuming and exhausting.
At this point I think that breeding should be strictly controlled and owning an animal should be a privilege like driving a car. Of course that would be undemocratic and worsely uncapitalistic so it will never happen and then who would determine the criteria for being a good pet owner?
Things have to change on all ends to make the situation better. The people in charge at PACC need to be on the same page to strive towards no kill. It can never happen as there will always be some dogs that are too damaged or sick to be placed into the general population. But we need to STRIVE towards it anyway. Especially since I’ve discovered many people are ignorant about dog behavior and what things mean and their willingness to deal with it. Heck if a family brings a puppy back just because it didn’t bond with the dad after 5 days even though it bonded with the kids, what does that tell you?
I’ve also discovered that people like to whine about their “problem” dogs and supposedly ask for solutions so that they can feel justified when they can no longer deal with them.
So back to my point. There has to be a better compromise between PACC’s mission statement to protect the public and a job of protecting and saving the animals. Then they do need more funding and kennel personnel. I personally take care of 12 to 15 dogs in my home and it is alot of work so 4 staff people taking care of 300 even if they are all in kennels is ridiculous plus having to take care of more coming in.
Then there ABSOLUTELY has to be more public support. That is just the way it is. People NEED to adopt the shelter animals. People need to stop buying animals (my feeling is if you buy one you better damn well make a life committment but even that is not good enough when so many GOOD DOGS and CATS die due to lack of good homes).Volunteers need to run adoption events and get shelter animals out to the public for viewing. Volunteers need to go into the shelters and make a difference by walking the dogs, letting the cats out of their cages,helping with adoptions (a BIG thank you to ARF staffers and Bob and Terry Taylor) helping to feed (so that staffers can take care of more important issues (like suffering animals), taking pictures to get more exposure for adoptions, making donations, educating the public, etc. It would be great to have a volunteer board of dog behaviorists to give adopters a mini course on a saturday morning where people can ask questions and get an education.
Because another consideration is how does PACC determine (such as in the case of the good cat someone adopted (in the comments) who was freaked out who to adopt what to? It seems like the prospective owner is the one who should be assessed, not the animal.Just about every animal is redeemable, it’s knowing what to do and implementing it. That’s a whole other ball of wax. And my rescue group has had the experience of a perfectly good dog being fostered with no problems go into their new home and growl at the dad or start peeing in the house. That has to do with some message the new people were sending, not the dog. All of our tags say “for Martha” on them because a family who adopted one of our dogs, who I personally fostered,as well as 2 other people and we all loved her and had no problems, took her to the pound up there and had her euthanized due to aggression.
My point is the solution lies in many people’s hands. Things have improved in the last few years with PACC implementing changes with rescues and taking on volunteers and the volunteers have made a big difference too as it takes a strong heart to do it but putting one’s head in the sand and just complaining does nothing. Those of us who do care ALL need to do something, even if it’s talking to neighbors and offering to take their dog out for a walk or talking to soemone in the supermarket about adopting and spaying and neutering. Thanks for listening, Signe Razzi, Tucson Cold Wet Noses
As long as people are allowed to be ignorant how to care for an animal, where disease comes from and how it is spread, as well as spay and neutering…pacc will have its hands full.
Instead of getting on PACC’s seriously flawed case, the origin of the problem needs to be addressed — guess what it is — poverty and ignorance, lets have the County have a go at that….
My husband and I read Mr. Vanderpool’s article this morning. It was an excellent, well researched article. Animal cruelty is a crime, yet it allegedly seems to be a regular occurance at PACC. PACC operates as a shelter, a safe haven for many abused or abandoned dogs, cats and other animals who have no other place to go.
If more help is needed to care for them, there are already many volunteers willing to pitch in at no cost to the county. Dedicated veterinarians and vet techs would rally to volunteer their professional services if asked. Treatment for sick and injured animals should be a top priority. And only as a last resort, a painless and merciful death.
Pima county has a large population of people who profess to be religious. Yet I am not aware of any religion that condones inhumane treatment for the animals that we have stewardship over. I wlll not be able to celebrate the holidays knowing that these alleged barbaric practices are being performed in my home county with my tax dollars.
Marlene, your comments are some of the most valid I’ve read so far.
Thank you. The compassion that many of the rescue groups in Tucson demonstrate
are very admirable indeed. However, outside of those, there are too many people who see animals as disposable and much “lower” on the mammal scale.
I, as a taxpayer, believe I should know what happens at PACC in the euthanasia room.
After reading the article and other comments posted here, I am feel less than confident that
any death there is peaceful or humane.
Perhaps this is a larger discussion for society in general. After all, most of us would like to
leave this earth peacefully and without tremendous pain.
In the meantime, I suggest we contact Ray Carroll, Pima County Supervisor. He appears to be a very supportive advocate for increased scrutiny of PACC, as well as a positive voice for a No-Kill direction in our community.
Bravo to all of the rescue groups in Tucson! They deserve tremendous thanks and support for all they do!
I saw the article on dog patch and i wanted to say i have a friend who lives ther. I drive down the back roads and see so many dead dogs and horses.. about 2 weeks ago i saw something that appeared to b a dog laying on some carpet and padding that someone one had dumped there it had moved and thats what caught my eye. i loked around and a few feet away was another dog . It was dead… The first dog still layed there not trying to get away from me..I started talking to her out my window she did nothing. I got out of my truck and went over to her to see up close she was pretty bad off. She was so skinny nothing but skin and bone…She has a pretty bad injury on her front leg .. I covered her up cause she was shivering. I then called home for my daughter to come to me and bring me some water and food. when she got there she said we have to take her home…we did even though i knew i didnt have the money to take her to the vet…we have been giveing her a warm place to sleep in our home. and feeding her she is starting to gail a liitle weight…shes a good dog i dont understand why she was treated this way…she still need vetanary care for her leg….THEN 2 days ago i was going back to my friends house and found another dog in very poor condition as well… i took her home…I need help to care for these dogs…or someone who can take at least one of them for me…..i have to move in 2 weeks and dont know what to do…..can someone help me please…. my email address is rachafelie@yahoo.com if anyone can help me …thank you.. rachel
I wish there were harsher punishments for animal abuse & neglect! Owners should be held accountable for their actions or lack there of. If you agree to care for a life you should be held accountable for its care. I get sick of seeing & hearing of people committing horrible acts against animals & nothing is done to them. And there they are next week with another animal and the same abusive behaviors.
Our nation’s so called “shelters” for animals are nothing more than torture chambers, and a death sentence for homeless, helpless dogs and cats. What kind of monsters have we left in charge of the most vulnerable among us….innocent animals, abandoned by human beings. City and county officials need to get off their butts and pocket books and provide true refuge and shelter for deserving animals,who through no fault of their own find themselves with no where to go. Tuscon needs to step up and take care of these animals.
I have two comments..the first is to Mr “Compassion:…that is Bruce. Bruce…you sound more like a total jerk that a liberal anything. There should be room for helping both humans and animals.
Second…if a private individual allowed an animal to suffer as it is alledged the shelter did..they would be charged with animal cruelty. If this is so…then the workers should be fired and prosecuted. There is no excuse for allowing this type of suffering.
There should be a realistic component to responses here. In a world, where there are less humans, dogs could run wild. Running wild makes dogs sane. They learn from other dogs how to behave. They end up lying in yards where there are water sources. Now, we have dogs trapped in houses, trained to attack…they’re just dogs. They are not the extension of your male parts, they are not your children. Come to PACC. Find a good dog (99 percent chance you will) and stop bellyaching about mistreatment.
Disclaimer: I am an independent dog walker, not employed by PACC, but very concerned about Sarge, Django, and Bear (among 165 others).
Interesting discussion . I was enlightened by the information , Does anyone know if my business could possibly obtain a blank a form form to type on ?