The San Francisco SPCA has had its share of problems recently, and I've covered a few of them -- accusations they'd abandoned their commitment to guaranteeing a home for every healthy and treatable homeless dog and cat in the city, and questions about how they handled the closing of their nearly-30-year-old Hearing Dog Program.
But the more I dug into this story, the less and less I agreed that there's a problem with the new 44,000 square foot veterinary hospital the SF/SPCA built adjacent to their adoption center.
Granted, they only recently began to do a good job of portraying the Leanne B. Roberts Animal Care Center as a vital part of their animal lifesaving mission. Before that, its original incarnation as a specialty hospital meant to provide revenue to the shelter had made a lasting impression in people's minds, even though that plan had been abandoned before the project was halfway built.
Somehow the hospital had the image of being a costly spa for pampered pets and a cash cow for the shelter (oh, if only there were a surefire way to raise buckets of cash for animal shelters!) and, as the project went over-budget and the economy tanked, a financial black hole that was killing other good programs in the shelter.
But is that image a fair one? Regardless of the project's origins, regardless of how it's been spun or not spun during its construction, the fact is that the new hospital has a vital, even essential, role to play in the shelter's stated mission of saving animal lives. And to understand what that role is, you also have to understand the quiet revolution that has swept through veterinary practice and the shelter world in the last few years. From my column this week at SFGate.com:
The new care center is part of the emerging -- some might say exploding -- field of shelter medicine. Ten years ago, that field didn't exist; today, 24 of this country's 28 veterinary colleges offer training in shelter medicine.
You might assume that shelter medicine is about making sure as many pets as possible are spayed and neutered, cutting down on the number of animals who end up in the shelter in the first place. Certainly that's a vital part of this field, as is the treatment of illnesses and injuries among shelter animals. But its greatest impact comes from a broader approach to preventing illness and behavior problems in shelter animals -- those very pets who will be playing with our kids and sleeping at their feet at night.
By developing shelter-specific protocols for evaluating the health of animals when they arrive at the shelter, shelter medicine practitioners ensure that dogs and cats in need of treatment can get the best care for their unique needs. If they're sick with an infectious disease, they can be kept out of the general shelter population, preventing the spread of illness.
The practice of shelter medicine encompasses every procedure that might affect the health and adoptability of pets in shelters, including making sure kennels, runs and adoption areas are cleaned effectively. It also promotes best practices for training non-veterinary shelter staff, so that animals needing medication receive it on schedule, and those with behavior problems are socialized and housed so as to minimize stress.
In fact, stress reduction is probably among the most important components of shelter medicine. Pets kept in noisy, over-crowded or sterile environments can become shy, fearful or "cage crazy" while awaiting adoption. Such animals often become difficult or even impossible to adopt, either because their shyness makes them easy to overlook or because their behavior problems make potential adopters fear they'll be problem pets.
I go on to describe my tour of the shelter's old hospital, and describe the many ways in which animal's lives -- those of animals in the SF/SPCA, in the city shelter, and belonging to homeless and low income San Franciscans -- are going to be saved by the new care center's cutting edge shelter medicine practice and its charitable work. But it's not just animal lives that will be saved; human suffering and taxpayer expense will, too:
Make no mistake; infectious diseases and stressful confinement don't just cost shelters money and result in the suffering and death of shelter pets. Keep one dog with kennel cough out of the dog park or one cat with ringworm from infecting the kids in the family, and you've saved hundreds of dollars in medical expenses for the humans who might adopt them. Stop one dog or cat from developing stress-related behavior problems, and you might prevent the development of a nuisance barking problem, destructiveness like digging and chewing or even keep a child from being bitten.
Certainly the new hospital, coming online in the midst of the worst economic climate in a generation, is controversial. But the SF/SPCA's decision in 1990 to guarantee that every healthy, treatable dog or cat would be adopted was controversial. The resulting 1994 Adoption Pact between the city and the shelter was controversial. Even the San Francisco SPCA's multimillion-dollar Maddie's Adoption Center, where animals awaiting adoption live in home-like environments instead of cages and runs and now a model for similar shelters across the country, was controversial in its day.
Beyond maintaining a healthy skepticism and a watchful eye, does it help the city's animals to assume this project, too, won't save lives and make our community a better place to live for people as well as pets?
You can read the full article here.
Ah yes, and already my hate mail has begun for this piece...
Posted by: Christie Keith | 16 February 2009 at 07:00 PM
I'll venture to say that the majority of that "hate mail" is coming from non-animal enthusiasts!
Posted by: German Shepherd | 16 February 2009 at 07:00 PM
No, at least so far, it's coming from people who think I drank the SF/SPCA's Kool-Aid.
Apparently once an organization has done something wrong, nothing they ever do from that day forward can be right, and any reporter who looks at each act, policy, or program on its own merits has sold her soul.
Oh, and the opposite is not true; while one bad action will taint every single thing you do in the future until eternity, no amount of good actions can innoculate you against anything you do wrong in the future.
Posted by: Christie Keith | 16 February 2009 at 07:00 PM
Hate mail=rocking someone boat=good thing...even though it sucks.
Change is something people fight. Personally a lot of the "no kill" fans have also be seriously naive about the cost factors to maintain a facility and the animals in it for the long term.
When I worked at a low kill shelter they often ignored the mental state of animals that had been returned because of poor placement--should the animal be rehabilitated and endure the anguish of being back in the shelter or humanely dispatched despite the outcry?
People want to believe the "good stories" and don't want to hear the others.
So, until people are ready to deal with the realities facing the pet overpopulation problem and finding ways of getting into prevention through education there will be outcries over change, setback, or failure.
As for the HDP, the standard legal procedure to dealing with terminated employees is abrupt and insensitive...until the lawyers decide to come up with another way to "protect" the agencies doing the termination that is probably how it will remain.
Okay, so beyond my rant I believe that change is often met with unpopularity. It is uncomfortable but the only way things move forward...and change will be accepted eventually despite all the kicking, screaming, and hate mail.
Posted by: Ark Lady | 16 February 2009 at 07:00 PM
"...should the animal be rehabilitated and endure the anguish of being back in the shelter or humanely dispatched despite the outcry?"
Is that really the choice? I don't think so. How about the anguish of being killed for no reason other than space, convenience or habit?
And there is no pet overpopulation problem, as has been more than adequately demonstrated by Nathan Winograd. There are just pets that haven't found the right forever home yet and that can take time, however much time it takes. As long as the animal's physical and psychological needs are being met while they are waiting for adoption, then I doubt that they are enduring much "anguish", whatever that is.
In any case, Christie, is the new hospital really any different than the spiffy ASPCA one we see on Animal Precinct? I can't imagine that anyone got up in arms about theirs when it was built/opened. Maybe SF/ASPCA needs to point out the other SPCA's that have similar facilities, to demonstrate that there's nothing particularly unique about theirs.
Of course, there will always be those species-centric folk who think that anything that is given to an animal is something taken away from them. They need to Get Over It.
Posted by: Susan Fox | 17 February 2009 at 07:00 PM