Cutting dog deaths

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IT WON'T be easy to change the culture at the Lucas County Dog Warden's office so that responsible pet ownership becomes a priority and euthanasia a seldom-used last resort. But the experience of other cities shows that change is possible.

In a two-part series this week, Blade staff writer JC Reindl demonstrated how the Canadian city of Calgary and the American metropolis of Chicago have greatly reduced the number of dogs put to death unnecessarily. The solutions ranged from ensuring that every animal up for adoption has a name and making shelters attractive, friendly places for people to visit, to increasing fines against irresponsible owners and putting in place aggressive spay/neuter programs.

The results were dramatic. Calgary, which has twice the population of Lucas County, euthanized fewer than 5 percent of impounded dogs last year. In Chicago, the number of killed animals dropped by some 55 percent between 1997 and 2008, in part because of the "best practices" employed by shelters such as PAWS Chicago and the Animal Cruelty Society. In Lucas County under longtime dog warden Tom Skeldon, 72 percent of the dogs taken in last year were killed.

The common factor in the success of these cities and others like them was a change in the way local officials and animal control officers viewed the canine challenges facing their communities.

In Calgary, the attitude was summarized by Bill Bruce, the city's chief animal officer, who contends that animal problems are almost always people problems: "When you have a vicious dog, you can almost guarantee the owner's a jerk." PAWS Chicago spokesman Sarah Ahlberg described the change in focus inherent in the simple act of giving every animal a name. "We treat them as special beings because they are very important to us," she said.

In Lucas County, where adoptable pets have numbers like prison inmates and irresponsible owners routinely avoid fines simply by giving up their animals, almost 2,000 dogs were needlessly killed in 2009.

Because each community is different, the answers to Lucas County's animal control problems are not as simple as blindly copying what Chicago or Calgary is doing. But the principles remain the same whether they're applied in Chicago, with its 2.8 million people, or Shelby County, Kentucky, which has a human population of only about 40,000.

Lucas County residents have shown they are ready to become a community that honors and protects its canine companions.

The next step is to choose a dog warden who is committed to implementing practices that encourage responsible ownership and reduce the number of dogs killed each year to those few animals that are truly vicious or are suffering because of illness or injury.