Posted on September 20, 2009 by: WayCoolDogs

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San Antonio, Texas, has about 100,000 stray dogs that have prevented residents from jogging, taking leisurely evening walks, or spending time in their own yard due to fear of being attacked by dogs. Facing a huge number of calls by victims,  the Animal Care Services has launched a new pilot program this summer that blends education with strict enforcement in three-week surges.

Previously the Animal Care Services, a city department of San Antonio,  received about 300 calls a day for stray animals in the area with animal control officers picking up the stray dogs and hauling them away. But with the new program,

• The first week involves animal control officers targeting neighborhoods where they went personally to houses and explained the laws regarding dog control.

• The second week involves the offer of free spay and neuter services, rabies vaccinations and microchips.

• The third week involves a sweeping of the area, picking up all loose dogs they can find.

“We pick up everything we see,” said Debbie Allen, field operations manager for ACS.  The complaints of animal bites for the year were 2,819 by April alone.  This data involved the incidents of animals biting other animals, according to department spokeswoman Lisa Norwood. “I think in the past we’ve seen a lot of bites go unreported,” she said. “It’s not necessarily because of more strays.”

STRAY DOGS AND PACKS OF DOGS INCREASING

Dr. John Herbold, a professor with the local branch of the University of Texas School of Public Health, said the numbers of stray animals and packs of dogs in San Antonio and Bexar County appear to be on the rise. Emergency room doctors, he said, are “upset at the number of people they see” with animal bites.

With not enough staff and long hours, ACS moved last year from a cramped facility across from the San Antonio Zoo to a 15-acre campus at Old Highway 90 and Texas 151.

• At the new 348-space site, the department changed the way it houses animals, placing them one or two per kennel.

• ACS officers were limiting the number of animals they picked up in the streets, bringing in only those that were sick, injured or aggressive.

• The department also began turning away animals when its kennels were full.

• Predictably, euthanasia numbers dropped.

Hired this summer as the department’s new director, Gary Hendel at the time acknowledged tension between the city’s drive to stop killing healthy, adoptable animals by 2012 and its obligation to keep the streets clear of strays. “The citizens are paying for animal control,” Hendel said in May. “The right way to run an animal shelter is, bring in the strays.”

City Council members amended the 2010 budget to give ACS $500,000 for more kennels. They also decided against cutting 15 ACS positions, including four animal-control officer jobs. They also approved another measure that some believe could exacerbate stray numbers — beginning Oct. 1, ACS plans to increase its $10 owner-surrender fee to $40. Residents who want to leave their animals with ACS must pay the fee, although it would remain free to drop off strays at the facility.

In the field, Hendel said he would move the saved officer positions to the sweeps team in the pilot program. Beginning Oct. 1, four animal control officers will be assigned solely “to clean up neighborhoods,” he said. ACS has conducted sweeps in the past, but Hendel said he expects the new program to make strides.

A pilot plan as made from the basis, ” if you want to know where all the loose dogs are, you just follow the bikers and runners, because they attract them like magnets.”   Allen, the field operations manager, in  liaison with cycling groups made a plan to develop a pilot program to address the issue. So far, Allen has met with members of the San Antonio Wheelmen and the Hill Country Bicycling Touring Club. The latter group highlighted routes and the dogs that routinely haunt them.

Wild packs

Residents of Highland Park met Sept. 5 at a home in the neighborhood south of downtown to discuss pressing issues, including the presence of packs of dogs. As if to illustrate their concerns, at one point during the meeting, a stray pit bull limped into the yard.

Dana Clark, Annie Clark’s mother, attended.

“The dogs are there day after day and nobody sees (an ACS) truck,” Clark said. “When it gets really bad, we all start writing to each other about where we see packs of dogs, watch out for dogs.”

She added that she once had a fluffy white cat named Sugar with blue eyes and a pink nose. One day, Sugar went missing, and Dana Clark found muddy dog prints on her front porch.

“We found the cat’s body all chewed up in the neighbor’s yard,” she said.

Beth Booher, another resident, said some of the loose dogs belong to neighbors who don’t keep them restrained. “It’s been a huge concern in the neighborhood. There are so many loose dogs here, you actually don’t feel comfortable,” she said. “I think it’s going to be a never-ending problem until people start to take responsibility.”

Debbie Allen showed up at the meeting to tell residents about the new sweeps program.

She said officers had conducted a three-week operation at Woodlawn Lake last month. They’d knocked on 500 doors, micro-chipped 60 animals, picked up nine dogs and issued 10 citations, she said.

“This year, we started Debbie’s education-by-citation program,” she said.

It’s against city ordinance not to have an animal restrained. Residents also are required to buy a permit if their animals are not spayed or neutered.

Allen said ACS would turn its attention to Miller’s Pond, a Southwest Side neighborhood, this month, and it would target Highland Park in October.

Rachelle Ramirez, another resident, hoped it would help. “I stopped running,” she said. “I don’t really want to get chased by dogs like these anymore. They’ll growl at you and look like they’re going to attack you. It just takes one time to get mauled.”

Annie Clark hasn’t stopped running — after all, she’s still training for the half-marathon. She has, however, moved out of Highland Park to a home in South Bexar County.

She said the stray problem there is even worse.

“People dump their dogs out there all the time,” she said. “We have wild packs of dogs that run around. I carry a stick when I run now, and I whack dogs with it all the time.”

Death by the San Antonio pound:

Galvan is a supervisor at the San Antonio Animal Care and Control shelter, commonly known as the pound. On this humid morning, when the gas chamber was ready for another load, the husky would join a grim processional that this year will send nearly 50,000 cats and dogs to their deaths — more per capita than any other major American city.

Despite what some visitors are told when leaving unwanted pets, animals stand almost no chance of being adopted, thanks to old-school policies, bureaucratic inertia and a shoestring budget. So even as the national euthanasia rate plummets and many other cities save most of the animals they take in, San Antonio’s kill rate has doubled in the past 18 years. Almost nine of every 10 cats and dogs that enter the pound are put to death, many within an hour of arriving. (Death by the pound)

SOURCE: Collaring the problem of stray dogs.

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