Kelley left an interesting comment - that TLAC's director just signed something at the most recent Austin Advisory Commission meeting stating that animals who make it into the adoption program will get to stay there until they are adopted, regardless of how much time it takes.
I don't know about this recent action, but I have to assume it's the same thing that they've been telling volunteers for a long time. Their policy has been that an adoption dog gets to stay in adoption until he's adopted, unless his behavior deterioriates to a level that makes him a danger to the public or it's inhumane to keep him in a cage any longer because he's losing it.
All it takes is for staff to note in a dog's file that the dog was too rough (a danger to the public) or have the behaviorist observe his cage behavior and find that it's not good (losing it) for them to justify killing him.
Staff have made many comments to us about how it's not fair that a dog gets to stay in adoption for 100 days, or whatever it takes, when other dogs, who may be better behaved, don't get the chance to make it to the adoption side because of lack of space.
Frustratingly, very little effort seems to go into enriching the dogs' lives at the shelter to avoid behavior deterioration. Volunteers, with very little training or experience, try to work with the dogs, but are usually totally ineffective for dogs who have or develop issues. The volunteer base at TLAC is a revolving door. It's mindboggling how many new volunteers we get each month, yet how few stay active for more than a month. But TLAC cites national averages on volunteer retention at shelters, which are just as poor, and decides that they must be doing a good enough job if they're just like everyone else.
Because of the lack of volunteers, most dogs really only get out of their cages for 15 minutes a day, if that.
And, by the way, the puzzle toys for feeding has still not been implemented. They did a pilot program for about 3 weeks a few months ago, which worked very well for those dogs, but now they're still working out the logistics on how they can do it for all of the dogs, so the program is still on hold.
And they've definitely backed off of their promise to give us a week's notice before euthanizing an adoption dog. They also haven't brought in any professional trainers. Because I was out of town, I missed some meetings with Dorinda, so unfortunately, I can't write as much as I'd like to about this right now.
On a positive note, the APA! program is starting to take some of our adoption dogs to off-site adoption events to help get them more exposure. Also, the group has pulled out a few dogs from the adoption side who weren't doing well and put them in foster homes to get them training and find them new homes.
I believe that the key to getting Austin to no-kill is with this new APA! initiative and not by trying to change TLAC. I have already started putting more of my time into the new program and have been spending less time at TLAC and assume it will stay that way. I'd still like to be a volunteer at TLAC, to know what's going on there and help coordinate the program with APA!, but banging my head against the wall with TLAC is a waste of time.
I hope that soon, APA! will be helping and saving all of the animals and we can leave TLAC to their job of protecting the public from dangerous animals (the italics is supposed to denote irony).
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2 comments:
There was just a dog put to rescue who had been in adoption but was "too old and wasn't attracting much interest."
I don't know what happened to this dog, I will have to put in an FOI.
I would disagree that APA is the answer. APA is trying to do what TLAC should be doing, only without our tax dollars which are going to TLAC, which is nice, I guess, but only with people APA "approves" of or whatever (I would not be one of those people). This is unfortunate as our group and APA share the same mission. Until everyone realizes they are indeed out of high school, I wonder how much good will end up being accomplished.
I still would like to see CAPA passed here, but there are some bits in it that actually conflict with state law, so unless state law changes CAPA can't be passed. Very frustrating.
For a lot of "kennel crazy" dogs, once they go that way they never go back. Once they become frustrated in their kennels, they are always frustrated in their kennels and need to be in foster homes. I volunteer with APA and one of my favorite dogs who I've known since he was 4 months old went "kennel crazy" at about 8 months. He was trained at Lee Mannix for 6 weeks and doing fantastic but when he went out to site he had to go home within five minutes due to trying to bite several people in that short time span, but like many dogs, that bad behavior was strictly isolated to being inside of a kennel: he passed his temperament test and is now adopted. Kennel crazy pups shouldn't be under the euthanasia banner because they ARE adoptable, they just need their life to be something other than constant chaos and frustration. just pointing that out. keep on educating!
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