What a month at Pets Alive. One of the worst I can ever remember.
It has actually defeated me a little bit and slammed me to my knees. I’ll get back up again and dust off and go on, but sometimes we need some time to sit in the dust and cry. This is one of those times. Tomorrow or maybe next week I’ll be back with my fists in the air, but this week I’m feeling rather defeated.
First we had to say goodbye to Glen. Our wonderful, very senior horse. He had been battling a series of medical issues since we had taken him in a few years ago. Cancer, severe malnourishment, inability to absorb protein and much more. He was a tough case and we spent a lot of money and time and love on him. Last year, we even had to remove one of his eyes and still he valiantly fought on, grazing, hanging with his goat friends, and greeting EVERYONE who approached his fence. He was a special horse and we all loved him dearly. It was difficult to let him go and I still miss him and feel a pang in my heart when I see the gate to his pasture just standing open and empty. No matter how many years I am here, I hope that never goes away. I hope that it always hurts to lose one, and that I will always feel this terrible loss when we do.

Moving on, we got three mama cats and their kittens in. One “mama” cat was still pregnant and gave birth this week. Four kittens, all premature, three dead at birth, and the last one likely to not make it. Tough to see a little cat, no more than a kitten herself, really, give birth and lose her babies. Please. This is terrible. Please spay and neuter your pets. This poor baby didn’t need to be having babies of her own.
A staffer also noticed one of our feral cats was sick. We trapped him and vet said he had a massive tumor in his mouth that was not operable. We had to let him go.
Then my own dog Sera, named after Pets Alive founder Sara Whalen, was diagnosed with a bad form of cancer and we’re likely to lose her very soon, even though this week we will do an amputation to attempt to buy us some more time.
And Pets Alive PR’s Chrissy B’s dog is seriously ill as well this month. A little dog that I have grown to love a great deal. (Go Boomer, I KNOW you can beat this!)
Then one of our birds, Olivia, who is 68 years old, looks like she might be in liver failure. Vet took blood today and we’ll know in a few days. She is my office bird and I’m definitely not ready to say goodbye to this girl. This girl who taught me to LOVE birds. I never much cared for them before I met her and she totally changed my world in that regard. She is very wise and we often have conversations about the state of the world. I’m hoping it is nothing, and she will continue to greet me each morning with her diabolical laugh.
Earlier in the month we had a dog get badly hurt in our kennel. Our kennel is dilapidated. No matter how often we patch it up, band-aid it, duct tape or pray, it is falling apart and now dogs are getting injured. Second serious injury in two months. We walked through it and looked around and know that there isn’t anything to do that can make it safe. The very way it is built, invites tails or legs to go through to the other runs where they can be grabbed or pulled.
A new kennel would cost about $300,000. We don’t have anywhere near that. I called a couple of companies and got quotes to redo the inside. They ranged from $50,000 – $90,000. Sigh. That is just the INSIDE. And that is just materials.
I don’t think we are left with ANY choice. We are going to have to postpone our medical building and put money into redoing at LEAST the inside of our kennel. The dogs need it. When they come here they should be ok. Safe. No more injuries or even risk of injuries…just good stuff.
The kennel has to be redone and we have no where else to pull the money from other than the medical building funds. We have been scrimping and saving and putting money aside whenever we can for that building and we’ll just have to start over. There is no compromise when it comes to their safety. But the dream of a medical building is stalled now.
Then we got a dog in that tested negative on all her tests from the sending shelter, and yet we came down with some sick dogs, and couldn’t find out where it came from or what it was we had. Lots of backtracking found it to be this dog which we tested AGAIN. Turns out this time with US running the tests, she was POSITIVE. This after having all negative tests and after going through our own quarantine period with no symptoms. However, while here she infected three other dogs. One of them died today.
Our dear, sweet, Shadow. You fought so very hard. Rest in peace, baby. I’m so sorry.
Look. We are a shelter. We get it. We understand this. Do YOU? In a shelter like ours where we are bringing in 60-80 dogs a month, we are GOING TO GET ILLNESSES and CONTAGIOUS diseases. There isn’t a year that goes by that we won’t see parvo or influenza or kennel cough.
This is part of running a shelter. Sure, we could be totally safe and only take dogs that come from foster homes where they have lived for 60 days but um…that’s a bit impractical wouldn’t you say? And diseases don’t JUST come from other shelters. We could take in a dog from a family home and have it be ill and contagious.
We have EXCELLENT quarantine protocols. In fact we have the astonishing credit of being one of the ONLY shelters in the United States to ever get a serious case of influenza and equine streppococous that did NOT SPREAD IT TO EVEN A SINGLE OTHER DOG in our facility. That is almost UNHEARD of in this business. Unheard of. And we have had parvo multiple times and didn’t lose any of the dogs and didn’t spread it.
Yeah. Seriously.
We’re good.
REALLY good.
We take tests on all incoming dogs and we make sending shelters send us all results on them before they even send the dogs. But there is NO WAY that we can always prevent EVERYTHING.
Our kennel staff are all HIGHLY trained in quarantine protocol. They suit up in TYVEK suits to handle the dogs on quarantine. They don’t use the same bowls, or pooper scoppers in those runs. We have different mops. NOTHING used in quarantine is ever brought OUTSIDE quarantine.
And if even ONE dogs shows sick – they ALL stay in quarantine another week to make sure they are all safe.
This next part is going to get a little dull, but read it anyway because it is important to understand.
Most shedding periods are from 5-7 days…so if you have no sick dogs in 7 days then it stands to reason that all is good and they can move into the general population. MOST places only quarantine for 3 days. We can’t understand that. If shedding periods (shedding = when a dog can contaminate others) could be 5 or even 7 days for most diseases then why would you not monitor a dog for that time period?
In fact because of our “too lengthy” quarantine period we were REJECTED by the PetSmart’s Rescue Waggin’ – where they would transport dogs to us for free from other shelters that were kill shelters. They wanted us to change to 3 to 5 days quarantine periods. We said no. They rejected us. Said that we wouldn’t move dogs quickly enough if we held on to them that long. Really? Seven days to be sure all were safe? Really? OK, then keep your dogs, we’ll work with grassroots movements like the Freedom Train and ARF and PILOTS FOR PAWS – all awesome volunteer transport services that do this for FREE and for the LOVE they have for these animals. Ah, but I digress (wanted to give them a plug though!)
We have been known to ask volunteers to LEAVE when they violate our quarantine protocols or enter an area that we say is off limits. We take it seriously. It isn’t a joke. We have 100 dogs here. You infect ONE, then we could have a full blown contagion on our hands.
We had that happen once. A volunteer violated our protocol, entered an area they should not have been in, and then went and hung out in the volunteer lounge. We HAD influenza at the time. When we found out what had happened, we had to assume that volunteer had infected our kennel. We couldn’t risk it.
So we shut down for two weeks to make sure NO dogs came up sick and we started seeing a bunch, so we treated EVERY SINGLE dog.
Ouch. THOUSANDS of dollars in medical costs and THOUSANDS in lost revenue for the weeks we were closed.
But we’re serious about this. We are probably the ONLY shelter that would do such a thing. You think most others would shut down? Have you HEARD of such a thing? Probably not.
Even NO KILL shelters would likely euthanize the infected dogs and continue on. None of us can really afford to be closed. Yes, no-kill means you CAN euthanize for serious medical or for behavior issues so many that call themselves no-kill could still kill these animals and not violate their mission statements. Here, we don’t though. Our mission statement is TRUE no kill.
If we can fix it, we do. We don’t kill animals here.
The dog that came in was negative for everything.
So how could she then be positive?
Well there are a few ways. Say she came into the shelter that had her and then they did a test and sent it out for results. In that time she lived there for a week. She was exposed to a sick dog. Even though she was negative at the time of her test, she was then exposed and THEN became positive.
This can happen. Of COURSE this can happen. Or perhaps the lab didn’t run the test right. This is possible, just like in humans.
We can sit and wonder forever how it can happen, but in this case it did.
Oh, to add to the problem? Did you know that 20% of dogs can be infected with a contagious disease BUT NEVER EVER SHOW ANY SYMPTOMS? Yep. This is true. 1 in 5 dogs could have influenza or distemper or equine strep and never show a single symptom, but pay attention to this part – THEY CAN STILL AFFECT OTHER DOGS! Dogs that DO then develop the disease and get sick from it and do show symptoms and can also infect other dogs.
Wow right? Our job can be really rough.
And yet except for that one volunteer incident, we have NEVER EVER had a time when we KNEW we had something that it spread to even a single other dog.
I am telling you – THAT IS UNHEARD OF.
We are truly good at this and truly an exception to most shelters. Thanks largely to Janet, who is absolutely amazing and the training that she has given the kennel staff who thank goodness follow her protocols exactly and diligently. They are AMAZING. (Juan, Marcos, Daniel – we LOVE you guys!).
So let’s add some more problems to the mix, shall we?
Come walk in our shoes a little more.
Vaccinations don’t kick in for about two weeks. So vaccinating a dog at the sending shelter and then sending them here means nothing really. Oh and for distemper and parvo? The dogs NEED to have a series of three shots. It isn’t ok to vaccinate them ONCE a year. If they didn’t have that initial 3 year series as a puppy or if you don’t know – THEY NEED it to build immunity to that disease.
Here are more interesting statistics. Remember that 20% number? Well 20% of dogs that were vaccinated for a disease aren’t immune to it. So yeah. We can have a dog on this property for 3 years, vaccinate them every year and they aren’t immune to certain things they have been vaccinated for.
Should you be scared?
No. I don’t think so.
The risk IS very very small.
These diseases CAN be contagious but we’re really good at what we do and you can probably pick up more disease at your local vet, groomer, pet store or DOG PARK than at our shelter!! SERIOUSLY!! I kid you not.
But should you have your dogs vaccinated and should you use precautions if you are a volunteer here? Of course. That is simply common sense.
Some staff here strip down every day in their garage and throw their clothes in the wash before entering their house. Just a precaution. None of us have ever had any problem, nor any volunteers that interact with our dogs here but every volunteer should know that just like bringing your kid to day care where they can catch the flu from other kids, your dog can catch the flu too if you bring him to the vet, dog park or groomer etc.
So on top of all the hell we’ve had this month, the loss of income, the EXHORBITANT expense of treating sick dogs and proactively treating “not sick” dogs “just in case”, I had a volunteer call me up today to try to lecture me about our quarantine protocols.
You know, I TRIED to be gracious. I did. I actually REALLY REALLY like this person. A LOT. I guess I don’t have it in me. Maybe it is a character flaw. But seriously, do you know how many hours, Janet and I have spent on the phone with vets this week? We talked to specialists ALL OVER THE COUNTRY FOR HOURS about disease and time and how to protect everyone, and we researched on the web and we sent blood samples from EVERY SINGLE dog on the property to be tested (talk about expense!).
Do you have any idea of the stress, the time, the expense, – all to make sure we were doing everything we could and everything right? (oh and don’t forget our biggest fund raiser of the year is in a few days and we are running around like rabbits without a head ALREADY!)
And other then the dogs we had that were sick (and pulled immediately) – not a single other dog has shown it. Then we stayed closed an ADDITIONAL week to make sure. And the volunteer told me that she could no longer “trust Pets Alive” because we sent a dog out to Humane Education class.
Never mind that the dog was not exposed.Never mind that the dog went the day BEFORE we knew we had something wrong. Please read that sentence again. The dog went the day BEFORE we knew we had anything here. Never mind that this particular illness can’t live in the environment for longer than an hour or two so EVEN if the dog was infected and EVEN if the dog was exposed and EVEN if the dog touched a kid that had a dog at home, there was no chance their dog could have gotten anything.
But she felt the need to take me to task for not “informing her” and that it was disrespectful.
Wow.
Blown away.
Seriously.
So even though the dog she was handling had nothing to do with anything here and even though we didn’t even know until the next day, and even though we are only TEN people strong here, we should have stopped what we were doing, stopped all the precautionary work, stopped all the phone calls, research and meetings to deal with this the best way we could…we should have personally called her to tell her what was happening?
I’m not getting this.
Volunteers are our lifeblood. We tell you everything we feel is important but we don’t tell you every detail of our work, what we are doing and all our decisions. I don’t HAVE that kind of time.
You either trust us to do the right thing, or you don’t. Our track record is 100%. If you don’t trust us then that is on YOU, I definitely won’t ever feel it is on us. I know we do the right thing.
Do we make mistakes? Sure we do. Recently volunteers came to us and said that we had wrong size igloos in some of our runs. Big dogs, but medium igloos. Huh? What? I went out and looked. DAMN if they weren’t right!! Seems the staff had moved a whole bunch of dogs around and about and matched some up, etc, and DIDN’T MOVE THE IGLOOS with them! We immediately addressed it, talked to staff about it and fixed the problem. We COUNT on volunteers to tell us this stuff, point out where we could do better, help us with providing the BEST care we can for every animal here.
But we don’t want to hear how you think you can do everything better either. If that’s true, then this is my suggestion – PLEASE – go start your own rescue. The world can use more of us. We’ll support you and help you and hold your hand and do whatever we can to see that you succeed. But make sure that before you come to us and tell us how we’re doing it all wrong, or how we SHOULD do it, that you at least have your facts and your information straight. Because we’re really busy. We do what we can and the best that we can. We could ALWAYS do better. We will ALWAYS strive to. But work WITH us, not against us, and understand ALL the challenges that we face, and not just the ones in your part of what we do here.
OK, now I have to go and wipe this dust off, wipe the tears away and get
my fists back up. I have work to do. We all do.
And one last time…to our staff and dedicated volunteers – THANK YOU!