PREVIOUSLY: County Shelter Will Start Euthanizing ‘Un-adoptable’ Animals More Quickly, Sheriff’s Office Announces

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Last Friday around 4 p.m., Denise Rogers got an email from the Humboldt County Animal Shelter informing her that of the 16 cats being held there, 11 would be euthanized if they weren’t gone by March 13. 

“I immediately called,” she said. “I was furious. I spoke to management. They said it was a directive they’d received from [Humboldt County Sheriff Billy] Honsal. They were going to clean out the shelter.”

Rogers is the principal officer of local animal rescue nonprofit Friends for Life, one of a handful of local organizations that works hand-in-hand with the Sheriff’s Office to manage the shelter and find homes for the animals who wind up there. She’s also the administrator of the Shelter Emergency Medical Fund, which helps pay medical bills for animals that arrive at the shelter sick or injured. 

Friday’s email was the first Rogers had heard about a change in procedure at the shelter. For as long as she’s been volunteering there, she said, the shelter was willing to hold cats and dogs — even those that had been labeled “un-adoptable” — as long as there was room. Meanwhile, rescue organizations such as Redwood Pals, Friends for Life and Upward Hound worked to find adopters, foster homes or other rescue groups willing to take the critters.

That process takes time — weeks or even months sometimes, Rogers said, but by working in collaboration with shelter manager Andre Hale, her group and others have had a lot of success rehoming animals. The shelter’s euthanasia rate is less than five percent (last year it was under 3.5 percent), which is uncommonly low among county and city shelters. (The Sheriff’s Office contracts with the cities of Eureka and Arcata.)

But the new shelter procedure will be much more strict: Any animal deemed “un-adoptable” can be euthanized after just two weeks.

Following a stir on social media, the Sheriff’s Office issued a press release Tuesday explaining the new guidelines. 

Jennifer Raymond, director of the Humboldt Spay/Neuter Network (a.k.a. Spay Humboldt!), was among those upset by the change. After learning about it late last week, she sent an email to supporters on Monday with a subject line declaring, “Directive from Sheriff Honsal Will Turn Animal Shelter Into a Killing Ground.”

The email went on to say the shelter’s willingness to hold animals as long as there’s room “made it possible to save many lives,” and it expressed frustration that her organization hadn’t been consulted or notified sooner.

“Not only is this decision a death sentence for the animals, but it is a slap in the face to the many rescuers who donate their time, working tirelessly to save the lives of needy animals in our community,” her email said.

The press release issued by the Sheriff’s Office notes that this will be a change in procedure, though the policy hasn’t changed. In fact, the policy guidelines are even more severe. They state:

All stray animals must be held for four working days, not including the day of the impoundment, Sundays or holidays. … On the fifth (5th) day, an animal may be euthanized … .

“This has been part of our policy for years,” Sheriff’s Lt. Mike Fridley told the Outpost in a phone interview Tuesday. And he said the new informal deadline is flexible. “This two-week thing is not hard or steadfast,” he said. The Sheriff’s Office will be willing to grant extra leeway if an individual or group has a specific, workable plan to rescue an animal, or if an is making progress on behavior issues, he said.  

The bottom line, though, is that there’s simply not enough room at the shelter to hold onto “un-adoptable” animals for months at a time, he said. “That’s the problem: We’re always at maximum capacity. I think we’ve got four open kennels right now.”

There’s also the issue of liability, Fridley explained: If staff determines that a dog is dangerous, they can’t give that animal to a family with small children. He suggested that euthanasia is more humane than keeping an animal in a kennel for months on end. “If you’re stuck with a dog that’s flat aggressive, there’s just nothing else we can do with these dogs.”

Local animal advocates say it’s not that simple. Many of the animals deemed “un-adoptable” at the shelter wind up being rehabilitated by rescue organizations and adopted. 

“I know in back of my mind, staff thinks that if an animal is sick or in a cage it’s suffering,” Rogers said. “But the alternative is a dead animal.”

Mara Segal is part of Redwood Pals Rescue and serves as the volunteer coordinator at the Humboldt County Animal Shelter. She spoke with the Outpost via phone Tuesday afternoon, and at several points during our conversation she was interrupted by a litter of exuberant puppies attacking her shoelaces.

Unlike Rogers and Raymond, whose organizations deal primarily with cats, Segal and her colleagues were notified about the change in procedure a couple weeks ago. They were told that eight “un-adoptable” dogs had been at the shelter for longer than two weeks and would be euthanized if they weren’t gone by yesterday, March 3. 

Redwood Pals and Upward Hound managed to relocate all eight dogs, even though they’d all been deemed “un-adoptable.”

“That’s what we do,” Segal said.

One of the dogs was reunited with his owner, who’d been in jail and believed someone was looking after his dog. “That was a very happy reunion,” Segal said. Upward Hound found local adopters for two others. Redwood Pals is working with a local German shepherd rescuer for a pair of the dogs, and the remaining three are being sent to humane societies out of state. 

Segal said she’s discussed the local situation with employees at a big foundation that works with shelters. “They say the two-week part isn’t the unreasonable part” of the Sheriff’s Office’s approach, she said. “The unreasonable part is that the shelter has ‘adoptable’ and ‘non-adoptable’ animals.”

More progressive shelters operate in a less binary manner, she said. Rather than dismissing certain dogs as “un-adoptable,” staff at these shelters will diagnose each animal’s specific health or behavioral problems and let that information inform the search for a new owner.

By way of example, Segal described a dog that reacts poorly when a prosthetic hand is shoved in his food bowl.

“In some places that dog would be still adoptable,” she said. “Let’s say it loves other dogs or is good with people. … [Staff] would set the parameters. They might say, ‘This dog would make a great running partner, but it’s not a couch-potato dog for a home with small children.’”

The Humboldt County Animal Shelter doesn’t operate that way, she said. If an animal shows aggression toward people or other dogs, or if it aggressively guards its food or toys, it gets labeled “un-adoptable” and isn’t even shown to the public.

Asked whether staff at the local shelter has the kind of education and training necessary to make such calls, Segal replied, “I would say no. … This shelter does not employ someone specifically trained for animal behavior. I don’t want to say staff doesn’t know any of that; they definitely know some. But they’re not trained in that specifically. It’s kind of a learn-on-the-job [situation], and sometimes that’s more successful than others.”

Animals may get freaked out by the shelter environment, locked in a noisy kennel and surrounded by strange people. “Those animals may be labeled as fearful,” Segal said, but they might just need an opportunity to warm up to the situation. “That is a place where the rescue groups and the shelter can work together fairly successfully,” she said.

Segal said the shelter relies heavily on local rescue organizations like Redwood Pals and Upward Hound to function. She keeps track of volunteer hours and said they log between 500 and 700 hours at the shelter each month, the equivalent of three or four full-time employees. “And that doesn’t include my personal time,” she said.

She and others believe the new change in procedure is unnecessary. 

“I would completely understand it if the shelter is pressed for space,” Raymond said. “But the shelter is not pressed for space, especially for cats right now.”

Asked whether there are indeed empty cat kennels at the shelter, Fridley said, “That I don’t know.”

Asked why some of the rescue organizations and volunteers weren’t consulted or notified earlier he said, “They’re not part of the shelter. They’re partners we work with. They’re not policy makers.”

Along with the press release issued Tuesday, the Sheriff’s Office provided a link to an email exchange between Fridley and Hale, the shelter manager. When Fridley informed Hale of the new guidelines she questioned the decision: “What about when an organization wants to get them out but is having a hard time finding a placement for them?”

Fridley did not answer the question. Hale later suggested a time limit of a month rather than two weeks. “For some of the out of area rescues it can take time for them to respond, have an available space, and then arrange transport,” she wrote.

Fridley rejected the suggestion without explanation. “We are going to stick with the two week limit,” he wrote.

We asked him to explain his reasoning. “Because two weeks is the policy,” he said, but then he corrected himself, noting that the policy is actually five days. So why two weeks? “It’s a date we picked,” he said.

Ultimately, he said it the move is a matter of necessity, and he understands the community concern.

“This is not something I want to be famous for,” Fridley said. “It’s a bad deal all around. Nobody wants to put cats or dogs down. … It’s one of those things that we’re always full. The animals that come in need to go out.”

Asked whether the shelter has ever had to turn animals away because it was at capacity, Fridley replied, “That I don’t know.”

The new shelter procedures aren’t set in stone, though. Fridley said he plans to discuss the situation with leaders from local animal rescue groups. “I’ve set up a meeting for next week so we can all brainstorm, maybe come up with a different plan,” he said.

Segal hopes so. She said the new procedures sure sound like they’ll result in more dogs being put down. But she’s also concerned about the public backlash.

“What I worry about is that people won’t want to support the shelter because they don’t like this decision, and that will negatively affect the population,” she said.

She suggested one way people can help: “Adopting the adoptable dogs goes a long ways toward helping everything.”