Kern's throwaway animals
| Friday, Mar 07 2008 01:21 PM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 12:56 PM
This story was originally published in August 2004.
Metropolitan Bakersfield has too many stray dogs and cats. They run wild. They multiply. They die. Most often it is our tax dollars that kill them.
A dog or cat slumps softly into death at the end of a needle 68 times on an average day in Kern County.
Each year, Kern County Animal Control delivers lethal injections to around 25,000 animals -- disposing of the bodies through a Los Angeles company that uses the carcasses in a process that makes fertilizer.
The city of Bakersfield will spend $738,000 this fiscal year to collect, hold, adopt and kill its share of those animals. Kern County will spend $2 million on the same task.
The money pays for everything from dog food to euthanization drugs.
It's a lot of money to spend on a problem that will only grow as Kern's human population increases.
And the problem can be alleviated. Solutions, however, depend on two factors -- cooperation and the ability to withstand some political heat, both of which appear to be in short supply in Kern County.
Dramatic decreases in animal overpopulation have been achieved in other counties.
The solutions aren't unknown, but have been rejected locally as too difficult, too expensive or too much trouble.
What's worked elsewhere:
* Mandatory spay and neuter laws that limit breeding.
* Low-cost spay and neuter programs that help people fix their pets for a minimal cost.
* Foster care programs that help sick, injured or aggressive animals become adoptable pets.
* Animal rescue programs that take animals out of the county animal shelter and foster them.
If they were used in Kern County, these solutions could save thousands of animals, as they already have in other counties.
ROADSIDE HOUND
The orange dog knows the man's minivan and comes bounding down the embankment of Alfred Harrell Highway as the driver pulls onto the shoulder, stirring a small cloud of dust.
We'll call him Richard.
We'll call her Roadie.
Neither name is real.
She doesn't have a name and he doesn't want to draw attention to his identity or what he's doing. Richard said he's worried about animal control officers and what they will do if they catch Roadie.
He's worried they will put her to sleep.
He's right to worry.
Three out of every four animals picked up by animal control are dead within a week.
"Come on baby, let's get your dinner," he says as the morning sun starts its climb up the sky. "You're a good dog, not a bad dog."
Someone dumped Roadie here at the edge of Bakersfield.
Or maybe she ran away. Since then, Richard thinks, Roadie has birthed a litter of puppies in her hideout on Alfred Harrell.
There are tens of thousands of animals like her scattered across Kern County -- lost, alone and suffering.
Roadie was rail thin and starving by the time bicyclists and runners noticed her and started putting out dry kibble and water.
Richard came later, noticing Roadie as he took his own dogs out to Hart Park for a walk.
She was skittish at first.
But he tamed her with food, kind words and daily brushing. He killed her fleas and dewormed her.
Roadie came to him each morning, tail wagging, head down, bounding and playful.
Since then he's found a home for her with a family in a big home where she will be spayed and loved. Roadie has her safe haven.
But countless other strays are still loose and breeding.
The problem is growing.
HARSH MEASURES
Steve McCalley and Matt Constantine are used to being blamed as the bad guys of Bakersfield animal control.
Most of the animal lovers in Kern County treat the pair, who run the Kern County Animal Control Services Division, with suspicion. Often they're met with thinly veiled hatred.
The pair are, admittedly, in charge of killing around 28,000 animals a year.
But they don't see themselves as villains. They see themselves as the guys being honest about a big problem nobody wants to look at.
Ask them how many animals they've killed in the past 10 years and they'll tell you bluntly. They'll give you charts.
Maybe, they said, if we make a big enough deal out of this, people will do something about it.
So far it isn't working.
For years, McCalley said, county officials and some community members have talked about creating new laws, foster care programs, rescue relationships and a way to do large numbers of low-cost spay and neuter operations.
None of those programs have seen the light of day.
Those programs cost money that the county doesn't have and, in the current tough financial times, isn't likely to get, McCalley said.
Only a massive commitment of volunteer help will solve the problem, he said.
But the county has yet to organize that community army, doing little, if any, outreach. Animal lovers around Bakersfield aren't taking it upon themselves to team up, either.
ENTRENCHED POSITIONS
Right now, most of the thousands of committed animal volunteers in Kern County are focused on their own causes -- feral cats, thrift stores, smaller no-kill shelters or rescuing specific breeds.
And large segments of that animal-friendly community are not at all friendly with each other.
Most groups grumble about other groups, grouse about the city and the county, or take potshots at individuals within their own group.
Marilyn Stewart, who runs the no-kill ALPHA Canine Sanctuary, said she made enemies by routinely pointing out how many animals Kern County and the SPCA were euthanizing.
"When it's been shoved under the rug for a long time, the person who points it out gets their butts kicked," she said. "I can sit on cactus now."
Such bickering is not unique to Bakersfield and it can be extremely destructive to the cause of animal rescue.
"One of the biggest enemies of decreasing animal overpopulation is 'I love them more than you do,'" said John Snyder, director of companion animals for The Humane Society of the United States.
Rick Blackwell, animal services manager for the county of Merced, said political infighting had fractured efforts to help animals in his territory.
So the county pulled together a citizens' group to try and rebuild good relationships.
"What we have done is we keep it open. We have nothing to hide. We do not bash groups. We don't respond to attacks," Blackwell said. "The volunteer group is concentrating on networking, trust."
Despite Kern's history of infighting, Stewart said she is starting to see signs of hope in Bakersfield.
People who used to be archenemies are talking to each other and teaming up on programs.
"You don't forget about (the past), but you put it aside," Stewart said.
REACTIVE EFFORT
McCalley said Kern County created the Animal Control Care Education and Support Services committee several years ago to create change within government.
The committee has talked about mandatory spay/neuter ordinances, foster programs, rescue systems and government subsidized spay/neuter operations.
Some ideas were taken to the Board of Supervisors where they were rejected, said Stewart, a member of the group.
"All our tax money is being spent on reactive things -- which means collecting and killing animals," Stewart said.
County money should help pay for education programs and low-cost spay and neuter efforts rather than lethal injections, she said.
McCalley said the county has been bogged down in rules and regulations and hampered by the bad relationships among groups. But he doesn't believe throwing money at animal overpopulation is the solution.
For real change, he said, there needs to be popular support from the community.
"The problem that we have is how do we engage the community in this when the community doesn't want to engage itself?" McCalley said.
SUCCESS STORIES — ELSEWHERE
Coastal Santa Cruz County is decades ahead of Bakersfield in animal control efforts.
In 2003, the Santa Cruz County Animal Services Authority collected 3,634 animals around the county. Of those, 1,449 were adopted and only 1,245 were euthanized.
That's a euthanization rate of around 34 percent -- less than half the kill rate in Kern County.
And, since 1997, Santa Cruz County has been able to cut the number of animals impounded by 57 percent, maintain adoption rates and decrease euthanizations.
Santa Cruz's Animal Services' annual budget is $1.9 million, around $800,000 less than what larger, more populous Kern County pays to maintain a euthanization rate of more than 70 percent.
The biggest factor in changing the situation in Santa Cruz, said animal services coordinator Tricia Geisreiter, is a local law passed in 1994 that requires animals to be spayed or neutered.
"I think that our mandatory spay/neuter law has given us a tremendous tool in reducing the number of animals that come into the shelter," Geisreiter said.
Santa Cruz volunteers go into the county shelter to pet and play with animals -- teaching them to get along with people and other animals.
Geisreiter also has access to a small army of animal foster parents she has trained to take sick, infant or troubled animals out of the shelter before they are euthanized.
"One day we had 170 kittens out in foster care," she said.
The animals are raised, tended and taught manners until they are safe to go back to the shelter and be put up for adoption.
SPAY AND NEUTER
Kern County has done little to reduce overpopulation other than encouraging owners by reducing license fees if an animal is spayed or neutered. There is no law in Kern requiring owners to alter their animals. And there is no program to help low-income owners with costs.
A few nonprofit groups -- the Cat People and the Kern County Humane Society -- fund small programs that reduce the cost of spaying and neutering a dog or cat.
But early each month the Humane Society runs out of money for its $20 vouchers -- paid for through its downtown thrift shop. The Cat People offer $25 vouchers when they have the cash to do so.
But vouchers can only make a dent in the surgery costs, which run between $40 and $200 depending on the sex of the animal and how big it is.
The Bakersfield Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals bought a new mobile spay and neuter van several years ago. The hope was that veterinarians would donate their time to the cause of curbing overpopulation.
The van has sat idle.
Foster care and in-shelter petting programs like those in Santa Cruz do exist in Bakersfield.
But they aren't as active -- boasting only a handful of volunteers at most.
In many places, even valley communities like Merced County, rescue organizations come into the animal shelter and pull animals out, signing on to spay and neuter them and adopt them out.
Here in Kern County, that doesn't take place often.
FEINTING AT CHANGE
New faces constantly rotate into Bakersfield's pro-animal community.
But, frustrated by the lack of coordination and cooperation, they often give up or wage Richard's war -- saving one animal at a time.
Some, however, try to find a way to create change as best they can.
Patty Hock became the dispatcher and point person for the city of Bakersfield's animal control department after a dispute with the Bakersfield SPCA ended the nonprofit's capture-and-kill contract with the city in July 2003.
For the first year, the city department, smaller than the SPCA's and operating with cobbled-together trucks and a simple office structure, worked almost exclusively just to pick up animals.
But Hock has taken the first step to making the city department more than just a dog-catching agency.
She has created the HERO -- Humane Education for Responsible Ownership -- program to go out into schools and teach children to care for, spay, neuter and respect animals.
It's not a new idea.
The county of Kern does educational outreach programs at schools and for community groups on occasion.
Hock thinks her HERO program can help change the culture of animal abandonment and neglect in the county.
But she needs help. Right now she's spending her own money on supplies for the program.
"I need presenters. I need someone to be willing to go and teach. I need people to make copies," Hock said.
At first her attempts to get people from animal nonprofits to chip in their time met with only minimal success.
"They're all involved in their own things -- but why can't we all be involved in the same thing?" Hock said.
Since then the Kern Humane Society, the SPCA and The Cat People have teamed up on the program.
Helen Acosta has a different, more ambitious, goal.
Acosta teaches public speaking and communication classes at Bakersfield College.
She's seen Bakersfield's animal troubles. She's seen Santa Cruz's successes.
And now she wants to create a mandatory spay/neuter ordinance in Bakersfield with her Kern Pet Project.
"We don't have to kill all these animals. There's a solution," she said. "The problem is that our animal control services cannot effectively do their jobs because they aren't adequately funded and we don't give them adequate authority."
But she has come up against the same indifference and territorialism that has hampered Hock, the city and county animal control.
The people who love animals most in Bakersfield won't work with one another to create a big-picture solution.
"What I've been trying to do is talk with people who are trying to make animals' lives better," Acosta said. "The problem is negotiating all the entrenched positions."
Acosta and McCalley agree -- real change won't happen without those people breaking down the walls and working together.
"If community groups who already do the work aren't included in the process, whatever the city and the county put in place will be questioned," Acosta said.
WHAT'S TO BE DONE
Right now, a trip to the Kern County animal shelter is a death sentence for around three-quarters of the animals who take that ride.
Animal care groups and individuals with kind hearts are doing what they believe is right.
But the big picture shows that the effort is still unfocused and the problem persists.
