Rescue groups gain edge in picking prime pups
| Monday, May 24 2010 06:00 PM
Last Updated Monday, May 24 2010 06:00 PM
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With an abundance of animals available for adoption at the Kern County Animal Control adoption center, animals are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Sheila Sosebee and her son Dylan check out a pup they plan to adopt from the adoption center at the Kern County Animal Control shelter in Bakersfield. Sosebee wanted the dog last week but someone else was on the waiting list to adopt it. She was called when the dog was not adopted. According to Kern County Animal Control, animals are adopted on a first- come, first-served basis.
A new county policy that seeks to reduce the number of dogs being euthanized at Kern County animal control shelters is giving rescue groups a better shot at cream-of-the-crop animals.
Ramped-up rescue activity and transfers of animals to private groups is largely credited with cutting by 1,849 the number of county-killed canines from 2008 to 2009.
Hoping to build on that success, the agency is changing some of the rules of who gets first dibs on stray or abandoned pets. Animal Control Director Guy Shaw wants to see the number of dogs the county kills drop well below the 7,699 euthanized last year.
Technically, the new policy puts rescues on equal footing with local people looking to adopt a pet.
It says the first person to claim a stray has the first chance to adopt it if an owner doesn't come forward. Previously, local pet lovers could bump a rescue group that had claimed a stray.
Some animals never get adoption interest, moving from the stray kennels to the adoption building where they wait for a friendly human to find them.
But competition for the best animals -- usually those who appear to be purebred -- can be energetic and develops within hours of the animal entering a county shelter.
The practical result of the new policy is that animal rescues have an advantage in that competition.
Here's why: All strays housed at Kern County shelters are photographed and uploaded to an online clearinghouse of unwanted pets within four hours of entering the shelter, according to Animal Control volunteer coordinator Maggie Kalar.
The system, called Pet Harbor, automatically sends out alerts about specific breeds to users who sign up for e-mail alerts, Kalar wrote in a report on the program.
And Shaw said most animal rescues have members who troll the Internet daily, searching for animals they may be interested in and then putting a hold on them.
There is often a financial reason animal rescues aggressively seek shelter animals.
Pure-bred animals are in high demand by rescue groups, many of whom rescue specific breeds of dog or cat, Shaw said.
"The true rescue is the one that is going to look at the sick dog -- the dog that is never going to be adopted," Shaw said. "Some are breed-specific and they make quite a lot of money selling these dogs."
Shaw said those rescues complained most about the old policy, which allowed their interest in a dog or cat to be trumped by local citizens looking for a pet.
"The ones that everybody fights over are the ones that look like a pure-bred," Shaw said.
Shaw doesn't care about rescues making a profit as much as reducing the number of animals his staff lethally injects because of Kern County's ongoing animal overpopulation problems.
Typically a rescuer -- unlike a local family adopting a pet -- will take more than one animal out of the shelter at a time.
"A lot of these rescues come here for one dog and leave with four," Shaw said.
And, he said, it costs the county less money to release an unaltered animal to a rescue group because the county has to spay or neuter all animals released to the general public.
"The net cost to the division is less when we rescue. But we would like to see the dogs go out into our community," Shaw said.
But should the county be giving priority to people who are trying to make money on a rescued animal?
Supervisor Don Maben, who has fought for new animal-control rules for much of his eight years on the Kern County Board of Supervisors, said he wasn't fond of the policy he hadn't yet heard of.
He understands the situation Animal Control is in, trying to fight to reduce the number of deaths. The county department is perpetually caught between competing interests.
But Maben said the ultimate goal is to put animals with a family.
"We want to give them to homes, not rescue," Maben said.
