The following article was written in December 2002 by a New York based maganine writer concerned about the animal shelter crisis. This text of this exclusive posting is available for publication. If interested, kindly contact the author.
Gimme Shelter (2002)
by Sarah Stebbins
sarahstebbins@hotmail.com
"Everybody's staring at me like I've got it in my face; like I did this," says a tough looking woman standing in the lobby of the Center for Animal Care and Control (CACC) on east 110th Street. At her feet rests a large Tupperware box with holes punched in the top. The smell coming from within-a mix of feces and wet fur-is horrendous. She opens the lid to reveal a family of trembling cats huddled together and squinting at the daylight. "I feel so bad for them," she says, holding a handkerchief over her nose. "I can't take them because of my asthma." The woman explains to an attendant that she found the yellow male, gray female and three dappled kittens in a cardboard box on the roof of her building. She let them alone for two days but eventually the cries emanating from the soggy receptacle (it rained hard on the second night) became too much to bear. Shockingly, this is not the first time that animals have been abandoned on this woman's roof. "It happened a couple of times before," she says.
Other customers lined up at the CACC on this particular Saturday include a young couple and their dog, a Schnauzer-poodle mix. They tell the attendant they cannot properly care for the animal because they are gone most of the day. The neighbors have also complained about the barking. As the woman answers a series of questions (he is housebroken, he rides well in taxis, he prefers men), the frightened dog clings nervously to the man, who is holding him. The odds of his making it out of the shelter alive are good. He is young, well trained and friendly. But unfortunately, when it comes to New York's municipal shelter system, there are no guarantees.
Animal control in New York City is a mess. The job, which involves taking in unwanted animals, keeping the homeless and abandoned off the streets, and generally controlling the population, is handled by the CACC. Their role is part responsive: whether surrendered by his owner or seized from a drug bust, the agency is obligated to accept every animal that shows up on its' doorstep. But they are also expected to be proactive: the agency maintains several vans, equipped for performing spay-neuter surgeries, which they send out into the community to collect strays. To limit future reproduction, all animals given up for adoption are "fixed" first. But in the seven years since it accepted a contract with the city to provide animal control, the CACC's primary method of coping with the surplus of unwanted animals, has been to euthanize, by lethal injection, those they cannot house or adopt out. Last year, the agency killed nearly 40,000 animals-68 percent of those taken in.
Not surprisingly, morale at the CACC is at an all-time low. The organization has endured years of bad press and backlash from animal activist groups who are enraged by the high euthanasia numbers and accuse the CACC of doing little to promote adoptions or raise private funds. The Controller's office recently released a scathing audit which found the Center was plagued with mismanagement (a charge the CACC and the Health Department denies). There is currently no executive director-Giuliani appointee Marilyn Haggerty-Blohm was fired in early October before a replacement was found-and the newly formed board of directors includes members who work for rival groups, leading some to question their commitment to fundraising efforts.
Reduced government spending has made a bad situation worse. The city will spend $7.2 million on the agency this year, compared with $9.1 million last year, a move that forced 24-hour facilities in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island to close their doors at night. Many now worry about the fate of dogs and cats found after hours-and about the people who happen upon an angry or frightened animal.
Getting the shelters up and running through the night is generally believed to be the biggest priority at the moment. But most in the animal community-a motley crew of activists, shelter owners, humane society officials and rescuers-concede that the CACC's woes go beyond recent budget cuts. With animals dying at a rate of 100 per day, it's clear that something drastic has got to be done. And fast. Thousands of lives are depending on it.
In colonial days, when New York was not yet a city, but a series of small towns, livestock accounted for the majority of owned animals. When a hog or horse or cow ran astray, town officials would corral them in a designated grassy area called an impoundment, says Stephen Zawistowski, head of education at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). The animals remained "impounded" until someone came to fetch them; those that went unclaimed were simply given away.
During this time, dogs and cats were not commonly kept as pets, but rather served a specific societal purpose. Dogs were used to guard peoples' homes, to hunt, even to pull small carts. Cats earned their keep by killing rats and mice. The animals were usually allowed to run free and were often expected to find their own food. Dogs who harassed livestock or were infected with rabies, were shot to death (dog licenses were invented, in part, to ensure that owned dogs would not be killed, as it was against the law to shoot a dog wearing tags).
As the population of strays began to increase, dogcatchers were enlisted to round them up and bring them to "pounds"--usually barns or warehouses with cages inside. When there was no more room, the animals were crowded into cages, 25 at a time, and lowered into the East River, where they drowned, says Zawistowski. In the Brooklyn pounds, dogcatchers would bludgeon excess animals to death with a club.
Dogcatchers were not paid by the city. They supported themselves by collecting bounties from owners who came to reclaim lost animals. Citizens who wished to take home a stray were also charged. Problems arose when greedy dogcatchers, knowing they would later collect a fee, began stealing animals out of peoples' yards. Meanwhile, the city's stray animals were left to roam the streets.
By 1894, abuse had grown so flagrant, that the ASPCA agreed to take over the city's animal control duties. The organization had been founded as a humane society in 1866 by Henry Bergh, who denounced the cruelty practiced upon urban animals (notably carriage horses and those trained to fight for sport). He urged New Yorkers to follow England's example in tackling the problem legislatively.
Using the revenue collected from dog-licensing fees, ASPCA officials began patrolling the streets in horse-drawn carriages, picking up strays. The animals were brought to shelters, where a more humane method of euthanasia, suffocation via gas chamber, was performed. Although some animals were adopted, this was not the ASPCA's primary focus-and no one expected it to be. Rather, newspaper articles of the day praised the agency for killing more stray animals than ever before.
It wasn't until the middle of the twentieth century, that adoption began to catch on as the preferable form of animal control. At this time, many people owned companion animals, which meant dogs and cats were no longer looked upon as societal servants. Consequently, "what we've seen in the years since the ASPCA was founded, is a change in what the public expects animal shelters should do," says Zawistowski. After the ASPCA began running full-service adoption programs in 19tk, funding fell well behind the cost of providing these services. On January 1, 1995, the agency's contract to provide animal control to the city expired. Under increasing pressure from animal rights activists to lower their euthanasia numbers and drained of monetary resources, they declined to renew. The group now focuses on the more popular-and fundable-programs of humane education and cruelty prevention.
The Giuliani administration subsequently formed the CACC. The agency was set up to be an independent, nonprofit organization which had a contract with the Department of Health to provide a service to the city (paid for with tax dollars). But it has always looked more like a government agency than a not for profit: the mayor appoints four of the seven board members, while the other three are city commissioners. Meanwhile, in the years since its split with the city, the ASPCA has remained a wealthy corporation with a fat list of donors, while the CACC has struggled. The two organizations have few joint programs, though the ASPCA rescues 100-200 animals per year from CACC facilities. Ruth First, public relations manager for the ASPCA would not comment on events surrounding the city's shelters for this story.
Carolyn Daly has had it with New York's animal welfare system. A public relations representative at Stanton Crenshaw in Manhattan, Daly has been the spokesperson for the CACC since the spring of 2001. She is particularly incensed by the swift displacement of her friend and former employer, Marilyn Haggerty-Blohm, whom she says was fired after telling the board of the CCAC that some animals in police custody had died as a result of reduced shelter hours. "The Bloomberg administration didn't like her personality and they didn't like that she was revealing hard, sad realities about the effects of the budget cuts," says Daly. "There is no leadership [at the CACC] right now and that does more harm than good." Daly is no longer employed by the CACC but agrees to speak on the group's behalf because, frankly, there's no one else to do it. "I will keep talking to the press because it's the only tool I've got," she says. "And if Marilyn were still there fighting the good fight, I'd be right beside her."
Animal rights activists like Gary Kaskel, founder of the Shelter Reform Action Committee (SRAC), couldn't be happier about Haggerty-Blohm's dismissal. "The former executive director got away with murder--in the literal sense--for four years," he says. "She operated the shelters like a Giuliani bureaucrat, not a shelter professional." Among the charges: manipulating statistics to the advantage of the CACC, firing volunteers who spoke to the press about internal problems and failing to promote off-site adoptions for fear of anti-CACC backlash. "Her primary job was to keep public criticism away from the mayor," says Kaskel, who is thrilled that Bloomberg, unlike Giuliani, is conducting a nationwide search for a replacement (Haggerty-Blohm was working in the mayor's Office of Operations when she was tapped to head the CACC). As for the revelations about animal deaths due to reduced shelter hours, Kaskel maintains this was a "manipulation" on the part of Haggerty-Blohm, who staged a crisis to try to save her job.
Such accusations only add fuel to Daly's fire. "The Gary Kaskels of the world have complete and total agendas," she says. "This is extremely counterproductive." Daly maintains that activists like Kaskel will not be satisfied until euthanasia, a necessary evil given the current population crisis-there are an estimated 5 million owned and stray animals in New York City-is eliminated as a means of conserving space in municipal shelters (Kaskel does not deny this charge and insists that low cost spay and neuter programs, humane education and aggressive adoption programs would put an end to euthanasia). Mayor Giuliani once asked Haggerty-Blohm how the city could implement so-called "no-kill" shelters says Daly. "She responded by asking him when the lease for the World Trade Center was up because that's how much space we would need."
Of the 56,000 animals that entered the CACC's five shelters last year, 15,000 were adopted and 38,000-68 percent-were killed. Most adoptions are to rescue agencies, with private shelters taking in animals when they can. In 2001, fewer than 6,000 dogs and cats were adopted directly from CACC shelters. Why are so few people adopting from city shelters? Failure to get the word out is part of it. "People still get us confused with the ASPCA," says Jody Jones, Special Projects Coordinator for the CACC. But citizens are also less inclined to adopt from a shelter that conducts euthanasia, says Jones, who shows a video of an animal being put to sleep to all potential volunteers. They choose "no-kill" facilities over city shelters without realizing the consequences of their decision.
Upon arrival, animals at the CACC are examined by a vet and assigned a "status" of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, with 1 being a healthy, loveable animal, and 5 indicating one with serious medical or behavioral problems. Euthanasia is performed one to two times per day on the "least adoptable" animals (usually status 4 and 5). If space allows, the CACC tries to give deeply frightened "status 4" animals more time to get used to their environment before being reevaluated by a behaviorist, says Jones. But it can take several weeks to a month to really nurse an abused or neglected animal back to health, says Sandra DeFeo, Co-Executive Director of the Humane Society of New York, a private no-kill shelter. "We can take an animal that will flounder there and make it flourish here. The CACC doesn't have that luxury."
There's no question it's the animals that suffer most. On the day I visited the CACC's Manhattan facility, a nondescript cinderblock building in Harlem, I met an adorable Golden Retriever mix in the lobby. He was accompanied by a man who found him wandering alone in the street. The dog is so friendly and well mannered that he immediately catches the eye of Patty Adjamine, director of the rescue agency New Yorkers for Companion Animals (NYCA). She persuades the man to take him home for a few days, until she can find a place to board him. "You don't want this dog to die do you?" she asks. "If you leave him here that might happen."
Adjamine is a serious woman with ropes of long gray-blond hair. Her modest appearance gives the impression that she spends more time on the animals in her care than she does on herself. At the shelter to pick up a couple of Persian cats, she decided to take in the stray dog too--even though money and space are tight. "I could just tell he was a good dog," she says. "I wish I could take them all but I can't." Through the NYCA, Adjamine places dogs and cats in foster homes and boarding houses until she can find permanent owners. She says she's been receiving more calls lately from citizens who have found stray animals and attributes this to the reduced hours at the city shelters. "I have to tell people I can't help them all the time," she says. "You just can't close the municipal shelters for 12 hours out of the day; we need support right now."
Outside the CACC, a frisky dog, half Pit bull, half Labrador waits impatiently in the backseat of a police car. He was found tied to a parking meter on 167th Street. A storeowner called the cops after several hours had passed and no one came to fetch the dog. Officer Seth Maloney, who responded to the call, says the animal was freezing and soaking wet from the rain by the time he got there. He appears malnourished as well. "We only bring animals here as a last resort," says Malony, who estimates he picks up about five strays a month. "If it's a small dog, we'll bring them to the precinct and try to get one of the officers to take him home." A shy, soft-spoken man, Malony seems genuinely affected by the animal's plight. You can tell this is one of the most unpleasant aspects of his job.
On July 1st, Mayor Bloomberg signed a bill that cut operating hours and adoption programs at CACC facilities in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island. The bill requires shelters to accept dogs and cats 12 hours a day, seven days a week, instead of 24 hours a day. Adoption programs now take place five days a week instead of seven. This must include the weekends. The bill also gave the city four extra years to build desperately needed full-service shelters in the Bronx and Queens (currently there are only drop off facilities at these sites). A bill signed in 2000 required that those shelters be completed by this year.
Lobbying on the part of animal activist groups and the Bar Association induced Bloomberg to create the Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals, a nonprofit organization, which works with the Health Department, rescue groups and city shelters to boost adoptions. The Alliance has also applied for a grant from Maddie's Fund, a $200 million corporation with the goal of creating a no-kill nation. The latter awards five-year grants to programs dedicated to increasing adoptions and working to end the killing of healthy dogs and cats. Mayor's Alliance President, Jane Hoffman, says Maddie's Fund has all but promised her a $16 million dollar endowment. The money will not be funneled directly to the CACC, but will instead be used to subsidize vets for neutering pets belonging to low-income families. Still, Hoffman hopes that this service, combined with the adoption outreach program, will take some of the pressure off of the CACC. "Our goal is to make the CACC so phenomenally successful that it puts everyone else out of business," she says. "I would love for the Mayor's Alliance to go out of business in 5 or 6 years when we've achieved that goal."
The Shelter Reform Action Committee's Kaskel is also hopeful about the future of the CACC under Bloomberg's leadership. "This is a mayor you can deal with," he says. "My only complaint is the slowness with which progress is being made."
Not surprisingly, Daly, of the CACC, disagrees. She cites Bloomberg's remarks about the kinds of animals picked up by police after shelters are closed (i.e. Rottweilers and Pit bulls from drug busts and illegal fighting rings) as proof of his insensitivity to animal causes. The mayor's comments came after news reports revealed that a Rottweiler, who was sedated, piled in the back of a police van with two others and left there until shelters opened in the morning, was found dead with a 109 degree temperature. "To stereotype certain dogs as ones we shouldn't care about is as unfair as it gets," she says. "If Bloomberg really understood New Yorkers he would know that most of us don't live with fluffy poodles."
But despite disparities on the surface, Kaskel and Daly agree on several key reforms. Both maintain that the Health Department is the wrong agency to oversee the CACC, as it has no mandate to protect animals. Rather, it is their job to protect humans from "animal borne diseases and hazards." Daly thinks the Police Department would be a better choice, because it's the cops who deal with the majority of animal control issues in the city. Kaskel's goal is more ambitious: he would like to see the creation of a new agency altogether, called the Department of Animal Affairs.
They also see a serious conflict of interest among members of the CACC's board. Of the seven members, only one, Dr. Jay Kuhlman, owner of the Gramercy Park Animal Hospital, can be considered entirely impartial. Two (Larry Hawk and John O'Connor) are associated with the ASPCA, while the others are government officials with no specific training in humane issues. "The ASPCA is a $42 million non profit and Larry Hawk is the president," says Daly. "It is his job to raise money for that organization. We need people on our board who are committed to raising private funds for the CACC." Both Daly and Kaskel call for an objective board comprised of members of the New York City community.
Dr. Kuhlman understands these concerns. "It's tough to say what is the right thing to do," he says. "Ultimately it might be better to go further in the direction of including fewer government officials." But, he points out, it can be beneficial to put people on the board who have fresh opinions and different kinds of skills: "we have individuals who are good at fundraising, others who are good at public relations and some who just care a lot about animals," he says. "It's a good mix."
Kuhlman knows he and the rest of the board have their work cut out for them: restoring public relations is crucial to the success of the CACC. Re-branding would provide a much needed face lift and help separate the agency from its' troubled past. And innovative outreach programs, with the help of the Mayor's Alliance, would send a necessary SOS to the community.
Some say lower fees for adoption and rescue would also attract more visitors. It currently costs $100 to adopt a pet from the CACC. For the price, you get an animal that has been spayed or neutered, vaccinated and implanted with a microchip-so he can be tracked down if lost. Two months of free pet care and health insurance are also included. Still, the fee, as well as the $25 charge to surrender your own animal (there is no charge to bring in a stray), is sometimes seen as prohibitive. "A lot of people panic [when they encounter the surrender fee]," says The Humane Society of New York's DeFeo. "So they leave the animal outside the shelter or they give it to someone who might not be a good owner."
Rescue workers also balk at the fees they are asked to pay. The CACC charges rescuers $40 for a status1 animal, $25 for a status 2 animal and $25 for a status 3 animal (purebred or under 30 pounds only). Mutts and large breed status 3 animals as well as status 4 and 5 animals are free. Many rescuers say the price is unfair considering they provide a service to the shelter and help to increase their adoption numbers. The charge can also be crippling when tacked on to the cost of continuing vet bills, plus the price of housing and feeding the animal, says NYCA's Adjamine. "It can cost several hundred dollars to save a dog."
Jody Jones, of the CACC, counters: "these animals have been vaccinated, fixed, implanted with a microchip and licensed all of which costs money. The CACC is merely recuperating the rescuers' expenses in caring for the animals, while saving them from higher vet prices at times."
But despite all the controversy surrounding the CACC, we are largely responsible for our own animal welfare crisis. "I don't blame the CACC for the pickle the city's in," says DeFeo. "The animals shouldn't be in the shelters to begin with." In fact, if all New Yorkers spayed or neutered their pets there would be no overpopulation problem to speak of. Common sense goes a long way too. Animals should not be allowed to roam freely in the city and no one should purchase or adopt a pet unless he or she is fully prepared for the personal and financial responsibility.
To ensure we are held accountable, the city should start enforcing laws already in place. "There are one million owned dogs in this city and only 100,000 of them are licensed," says Daly. "If everybody was forced to get a license and all the money was earmarked for the shelters, the problem would be solved." License fees--currently $8.50 for a neutered dog and $11.50 for an unneutered one-could also be increased, particularly for animals that have not been fixed.
Given the state of the economy, asking New Yorkers to consider the fate of the city's puppies and kittens may sound like a tough sell. Especially when the people fighting for their rights sometimes come off as, well, a bit fanatical. But Hoffman, a self-proclaimed "outsider" in the animal community, looks at it this way: "These people see as many as 125 animals dying every day, for no other reason than because there are not enough homes. They look into those animals' eyes and they feel the pain of their deaths. I understand that--the depth of their pain."
The CACC also deserves our recognition as a vital social service program. "When people think of life saving organizations, they think of police and fire departments," says Daly. "No one ever says animal shelters. What people have to realize is that this is not Lord and Taylor. You can't just decide to close at 5 instead of 6." There's too much at stake.
Sarah Stebbins is a New York based magazine writer. She can be reached at sarahstebbins@hotmail.com