Like most bad ideas, this one sprang straight from the loins of good intent. It was, in short, our softhearted decision to rescue two lost, massive but apparently sweet-natured pit bulls, wandering the streets on a viciously hot August afternoon.
We tried loading them for a van ride to the Humane Society of Southern Arizona, where the kill rate for strays is ostensibly lower than at the county pound. But gentle as they seemed, one pit got funky when we slipped on the leash. That raised the deal-breaking specter of unfamiliar dogs with gargantuan jaws going nuts while riding down Grant Road.
Desperation forced us next to call the Pima Animal Care Center, which is a gussied-up name for the county’s shamefully under-funded shelter. At that point, we had no place to hold the dogs except for our enclosed porch with its scant shade. This we explained to the dispatcher, who politely replied that we were in for a long wait to have these poor pooches picked up.
Why was I surprised? When I found a pit bull pup loose on a busy roadway a couple of years earlier, a PACC dispatcher likewise noted a daunting delay—and then suggested we turn the pup back onto the streets.
This time, that suggestion was only implied. The thought of releasing these big dogs so they could be hit by a car or even bite a kid was appalling. But if not, they would wait and wait on our roasting porch.
“I know you guys are doing the right thing,” the dispatcher told me, “but the most honest answer I can give you is that it’s probably going to be several days. It could be today or tomorrow … or it could be a week from now.”
Welcome to animal management, Tucson style.
According to Pima Animal Care’s website, one of its primary missions is “picking up stray dogs to increase safety for the animals and your neighborhood, while providing an opportunity for lost pets to be reunited with their owners.”
But how many people are willing to help when it means hosting strays for days on end? That’s just not an option for many—like us—already boasting a houseful of pets and no extra room.
The take-home message? If you try to help, you’re the sucker.
Consider that, at any given time, less than a dozen PACC enforcement officers are working more than 9,000 square miles, handling hundreds of calls from nearly 1 million residents. Or that Pima County’s best-kept secret is how thousands of adoptable animals are euthanized each year because the shelter doesn’t have room to keep them.
But don’t blame the pound for this mess, say critics. Instead, they point to lousy funding by the Pima County Board of Supervisors, and a public too ignorant or apathetic to get their animals sterilized. Often leading those critics is Ray Carroll, who happens to be a board member himself, representing District 4. For years, Carroll has battled to beef up Animal Care Center funding.
He has not gotten far.
Just how important are animals to the Board of Supervisors? Consider that it took Carroll nearly a decade to persuade his colleagues to stop dumping euthanized animals in the county landfill like trash. “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,'” Carroll recalled in an earlier interview.
To emphasize just how low a priority we place on our animal care facility, he points for comparison to Albuquerque, N.M.
Let’s do the numbers: This year, the county has budgeted $5.9 million for the Pima Animal Care Center and its 79 full-time employees. According to manager Kim Janes, in the past fiscal year, the center took in nearly 24,000 animals and euthanized 36 percent of them, or roughly 8,600. (Others dispute the death toll; a UA student studying the center’s intake in 2011 pegged euthanization rates at more than 60 percent.)
Compare that to the Albuquerque Animal Welfare Department, which serves about 675,000 residents spread over an area nearly the same size as Pima County, but with a budget of $10 million. It has 139 employees, and a free spay and neuter clinic. In 2012, the department took in about 24,000 animals. Of those, only 4,226 were euthanized.
According to Jim Ludwick, a program analyst for the Albuquerque shelter, his department owes its success to the steady, strong culture of support from city leaders. “The program has been built up over time,” he says. “And over the years, there have been many people who have been very helpful to the animal programs here.”
Back in Pima County, Carroll says he’d push to boost Animal Care’s funding with a transfer from the county’s general fund.
In the meantime, though, people can’t even expect assistance with rescued strays. “Pima Animal Care gets something like 35,000 calls a year from people who want our help,” Carroll says, “and probably 5,000 of them just go away through complete frustration.”
According to Pima County Deputy Administrator Jan Lesher, it’s too soon to tell whether next year’s budget will see a bump for Animal Care. But she says the center did get a $1 million increase last year, and that the next county bond election will likely include $22 million for a new, bigger shelter.
Still, the priorities seem clear; the same bond package will likely include $90 million for a new road mostly benefiting our hometown bomb maker, Raytheon Co.
Meanwhile, the city of Tucson currently pays the county $3.5 million for PACC services, with $1.1 million coming back from licensing fees. Ward 6 City Councilman Steve Kozachik has floated the idea of returning some of those licensing funds to Animal Care, adding them to the county’s $220,000 spay and neuter program allocation. But under Kozachik’s proposal, the money would be administered directly by the nonprofit Animal Welfare Alliance of Southern Arizona, rather than through the Pima shelter.
“In as much as they are euthanizing 6,000 or 7,000 animals a year out there, my sense is that we could put $150,000 a year into AWASA, and AWASA has contracts with seven or eight veterinarians scattered all over town,” says Kozachik. “This money would go to help pay for the vets’ cost.”
But it will take time for any benefits to reach our streets, which are still filled with wandering strays. As for the pit bulls taken in by my wife and me, we finally found the owners through Craigslist. Had we instead set them free, they’d likely be roadkill by now.
Or just another number in Pima County.
This article appears in Sep 5-11, 2013.
We adopted our sweet hound a few years ago from PACC. The conditions when we were there were very sad — many, many gorgeous dogs and a thread-bare crew of staff that were obviously stretched and unhappy. It took us a long time to go through the adoption process due to the lack of staff and the volume of people that were coming in the door with new strays.
It’s easy to slam Pima County, but at the end of the day Arizonans have decided that we’d rather pay attention to low-tax slogans than maintaining a better standard of public services like animal shelters or schools. You know, ‘big government’ stuff. “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”
I would like to thank Mr Vanderpool for this article. However, There are many underlying conditions about response times from Animal Care Officers. I am an employee of PACC and can tell you that usually there are only 4 or five officers in the field during an 8 hour shift. Sometimes as little as two. Due to the poor management of the shelter, morale is practically non existent. Employees call in sick regularly. Equipment is shoddy at best. Tools such as tranquilizing equipment has been taken away from the officers. This leads to the inability to capture sick/injured or biter animals. The focus of PACC is mainly on the shelter while the public’s needs are placed on the back burner. If you could see some of the things that employees witness at the shelter regarding mistreatment of sick and injured animals, you would be disgusted. The county board of supervisors could care less.
Mr. Vanderpool, thank you very much for your thoughts and outside view on how some of the public does look at PACC. Unfortunately, “Perturbed at PACC” is correct. There are very little officers to cover the whole county. PACC does try to get to every call as fast as we can, but it just gets overwhelming for the officers, emergency calls are rolling in, and because they keep coming, calls that have been holding for days keep getting pushed back which are the strays and other lower priority calls, and like “Perturbed at PACC” has said there are as little as 4 officers on an 8 hour shift and that is if no one calls in sick. Each one covering an area of Pima County. Sometimes if an officer gets an aggressive dog, they have to request assistance from another officer which pulls them away and will only leave 2 to cover calls in all of Pima County. It is so hard and almost impossible to pick up a stray dog the same day that the call is placed and we DO understand that it is hot, I mean we live here in Tucson as well and if anyone knows about the heat it is your first responders. Not only are we taking care of the strays, and aggressives, and the sicks, and the injured but we are also responding to irresponsible pet owners who do not know how to take care of there animals (feeding, watering, shelter, tie-outs, abuse, and misstreatment).
Thank you Mr Vanderpool. If you go directly to the data you learn in calendar year 2012, there were 23,514 dogs and cats that arrived at PACC alive and 11,338 were destroyed. That’s 48%. Another city we might look to for comparison is Austin, Texas which has had similar intake numbers but saves over 90% of the dogs and cats that come to the shelter, as do over 150 other communities. That would indicate we could have saved 9,000 of the animals who were destroyed in 2012.
What these other communities have in common is a proven model, the No Kill Equation, which includes 11 essential components: a committed leadership, medical and behavioral intervention for those who are not incurably suffering or truly vicious, high volume/low cost spay and neuter services, comprehensive adoption programs, trap/neuter/return for feral cats, proactive return to owner services, helping owners who would rather keep their pets than drop them off, foster care, rescue, volunteers and public engagement. Please note what not is not included in the list: managing to change the ways of an irresponsible public, as that’s never happened in these communities and that’s WHY we have protective services for the vulnerable in all our communities.
No Kill Pima County supports additional funding for staffing (in the shelter and in the field) and appropriate space for sheltering the homeless and treating the ill and increased spay neuter services for pets and feral cats. The death rate will not dramatically change, however, unless the county leadership makes a commitment to implement proven life saving policies, procedures and services, many of which are not at all reliant on budget and in fact make economic sense for the shelter and the community. It is imperative that dollars are attached to mandates for evidence based best practice and procedures.
Thank you again, for helping to increase awareness as only an informed community can speak up and let their city and county representatives know we expect better, we KNOW what is possible and it is in the County’s hands to make it happen. And, as also proven in over 150 communities, the public will whole-heartedly support these efforts by fostering, adopting, volunteering and donating like they never have before.
It is crazy how little the public knows about PACC and the true story of the shelter. You guys are comparing PACC to other larger cities, much larger than Pima County with higher population. And you have to also think about it, because we are a smaller city there is less people who want to adopt animals so they are brought into this tiny shelter that has limited spaces, the rescues are full because of this as well, and because the public is getting mad at PACC for euthanizing animals who are risk factors or sick they are now over crowded. People really dont understand anything about PACC unless you work there or get the true story that can not be told to the public. the community is angry because PACC cant clean up other peoples messes such as strays who people dumped because they dont want to drive the extra mile to drop them off in a safe place, or irresponisble pet owners who can not keep there dogs in the yard. If you cant take a stray dog in your home but you pick it up and wait for us and you are going to get mad at PACC for not doing anything about it that same day then that is sad on your part. you can always bring it down to the shelter for no fee at all. the community wants us to do something? then help PACC and bring in animals that you can, you guys see us suffering so why make it even harder and give them a hard time about it?
Sad story, but typical for this state. We spend more on prisons than any other state but nothing else is much of a priority. This is the brand of government the people here have elected.
Until the public changes their attitude and takes responsibility for taking care of their own animals(it’s really not that hard to do), it doesn’t matter how much funding PACC has.
Duh People for Common Sense, please note that Austin Texas is used as a comparable city because it is similar in size and demographics to Pima County, and their intake rate was slightly higher than ours. But IF size/population factually supported the statement there aren’t enough people to adopt, how do we explain Washoe County (Reno, Nevada) whose population is only 45% of Pima’s, while the shelter intake number was 65% of Pima’s and they have succeeded in saving over 90% with one of the worst economies in the country. There are so many resources and examples to learn how we can do better. There’s nothing to oppose, really, its all about learning what works and doing what we can too.
These comments are moving away from the actual problem. I used to be a dog catcher for Pima County. xyz123: You are incorrect. Funding is a huge matter with the Pima Animal Care Center. If you worked there you would understand. Try catching 4 legged animal (with a home made snare pole) that doesn’t want to be caught. They can run much faster and are much more agile than you. It’s impossible to capture a dog that doesn’t want to be captured. With proper funding, tools can be purchased that will aid in the capture of animals. When I worked there the few dog traps that we had were falling apart and officers would patch them up with rope and wire because there was no funding to buy new ones. Tranquilizing equipment (dart guns) used to be used by the officers at PACC but that tool was also taken away and now many animals escape that could have been captured with the use of a dart gun. Disease control is practically non-existent at PACC. There have been times when the entire population of the cats in one room were put to sleep because of sickness brought in by one stray. Funding could help build an area where new arrivals could be quarantined until they are determined to be healthy instead of placing them in the general population to infect other animals. Proper funding could provide a mobile spay neuter/vaccine clinic and public education like other shelters have. I could go on and on.
The truth is, there is a huge management problem at PACC. I have talked with my friends that are still there and nothing has changed since I left. There is hundreds if not a thousand calls waiting for a response from the field and management will not allow overtime for the officers to clean up the calls. The shelter is so overwhelmed with animals and short staffed that they sometimes work mandatory overtime to care for the animals which cuts into the budget. Things could change for the better but all that seems to get any attention is the shelter. PACC is much more than just a shelter. It’s a team of dedicated officers that place themselves in harms way to protect the animals and to serve the public. It is a thankless job for the officers. I quit, not because I didn’t like the job, but because management, and immediate supervisors, treat the officers as if they are the least important group at PACC. Never praised for a job well done, and only approached with criticism and or unjustified discipline when they find a mistake that you may have made.
Most of the public hates the dog catcher. But they are the ones that have scrape your pet off the road because you, the irresponsible dog owner, allow it to roam free. They are the ones that approach and apprehend aggressive dogs that terrorize your neighborhood and bite you or your children and they sometimes are bitten in the process. They issue citations to those who mistreat their pets and then testify in court to make sure they are punished for their crimes. They are the voice for mistreated and abused animals.
And for the record; there is no such thing as a “No Kill” shelter! Many shelters try their best to find homes for animals and keep them in the shelter as long as they can and I give two big thumbs up to those shelters. But because of irresponsible owners and the refusal to spay or neuter your pet, there will always be a need for shelters and dog catchers and there will always be unloved, sick and injured animals that must be put to sleep. I would like to say “THANK YOU” to the men and women, including the volunteers, who keep the Pima Animal Care Center going with what little they have to work with and such poor management.
Thank you for not blaming the hardworking people at PACC, but for, instead, pointing your finger directly at the wallet of the county. I’ve been a volunteer there for a few years, but less than many. It is overwhelming, dumbfounding, exasperating. The staff is stretched beyond capacity. Do you know how many pregnant cats and dogs come through the door? A puppy is snapped up, and comes back 8 months later after it’s old enough to run around. Animals languish with chips and tags as owners are contacted, and, finally, the disclaimer: “Owner relinquishes…..may be euthanized…” It is rote text, and followed as rarely as possible, but it’s always a shock to read it.
Dogs need to get out, so a dedicated group of volunteers walk them daily. A dog cannot stay cooped up too long without going nuts. What is the staff to do when one dog finally attacks its kennel-mate, ripping off an ear or nose?
Volunteers to walk dogs at PACC are always needed. Every dog needs its half hour.
Tim, PLEASE, PLEASE keep following up on this story. Someone has to help push for change! Without some very dedicated volunteers, you can’t image how bad it would be! The horrible LACK of management to even basics services like food, water, blankets, to the animals is appalling and has to change and NOW. So many volunteers want to quit because of the mismanagement and the only thing that keeps them coming back is their love of the animals. Their need your help!
There are are some hardworking staff there, but there is no management, PACC could absolutely use more money, a bigger, state of the art shelter. Hopefully the county will use some bond money to get that to happen, It could be the nicest shelter in the state BUT someone has to manage it.
The morale there is very low, its hard to find a happy welcoming face. Its now effecting volunteers. Sadly they are the ones that make life better for the pets.
The clinic vet has always been a huge problem, some pets cant even get basic care for simple issues.
Things that need to be fixed or the things that were going to be and still havent been, well that list is long. Feeling hopeless about any change though.
Thanks again to your article and to the staff and volunteers you do all they can despite the circumstances!
I feel that the name should be changed back to “Pima Animal Control Center”, verses “Pima Animal Care Center”. The name is misleading, there is no care at PACC. There are many animals in need of minor vet care, possibly a tooth that is hurting that needs to be pulled or maybe simple antibiotics to address an infection or a wound, or in some cases they can barely walk because their nails are too long. Some of the animals are way too thin and need extra meals, but instead they waste away to nothing because they do not get the extra food needed. These issues do not get addressed and the animals sit in their kennels/cages for weeks or maybe months suffering waiting to be rescued or possibly euthanized in the end. In my opinion, the existing vet needs to move on so that a true vet who is willing to practice medicine can be brought in. There are always excuses for everything, the nail trims for example don’t cost a thing! Not only would this make the animals more comfortable it would be a great way to show their concern for the volunteers who currently get scratched and cut up from the long nails. With all this being said, I do agree that PACC is understaffed and that much more funding is needed. But until this happens why can’t a few more ADC guys come in to ensure that skinny dogs are getting fed properly and to make sure that all of the animals have water and to make sure that all the animals are comfortable and have bedding. Just the simple things that would make a huge difference to the animals in their care. Thank god for the volunteers who try to fill these roles, but sadly they are all busy as well and don’t always have the time available to ensure that proper care is being provided. As far as the enforcement staff goes, hats off to them for having to deal with the public and the horrific things they see out in the field. I can’t even imagine how emotionally draining and overwhelming this job must be. And come on Tucson, lets help them out, load them up in the car and bring them to PACC when possible, find a friend to help you, do what you can to keep our animals safe and off of the streets. Tucson is huge and there are many irresponsible people out there, no matter how many officers PACC has, it will never be enough!!