Dog pound guidelines determine animals’ fate

Lucas County Dog Warden Julie Lyle has a series of steps the pound takes when a new dog comes to the organization. THE BLADE Enlarge | Photo Reprints

Every week, dozens of animals that arrive at the Lucas County Dog Pound are killed. Some of the dogs are too sick or injured to be saved. Others are deemed unadoptable because they fail temperament testing or because they act aggressively or fearfully while at the pound, while some are simply discarded because of their breed.

Many animals are picked up by a deputy warden because they are found wandering the street or are brought in to the pound as strays by a member of the public. These dogs are determined to be “running at large” or “strays” respectively. If the dog has a license, it will be held 14 business days to see if an owner turns up to claim it. Without a license, the dog is held three business days at the pound to see if anyone claims it, before being evaluated for possible adoption.

Other dogs are surrendered directly by their owners. Often these owners can no longer take care of the animal because of loss of a home or an income or because the dog is too sick and they cannot pay the animal’s medical bills. Some pet owners also bring in dogs because they have acted aggressively toward a family member or have bitten someone.

If an owner requests that the dog be put down, the pound will comply with the person’s wishes without putting the dog through medical or behavioral screening, although staff will discuss the possibility of adoption with the owner, warden Julie Lyle said.

Once the holding time has elapsed, most dogs undergo medical and temperament testing to determine whether they are suitable to be put up for adoption. The exception are dogs that a veterinarian determines are too sick or injured to maintain a reasonable quality of life. Those dogs are euthanized.

Animals with a history of biting, or those that have been aggressive toward staff or attacked other dogs at the pound are sometimes killed without undergoing a behavior assessment. This is because testing them would put staff or another animal at risk, Ms. Lyle explained. Dogs that are aggressive toward staff members because they try to attack or bite them are labelled by the pound as “aggressive/unsafe.” If a dog acts fearfully and cowers at the back of its cage and tries to nip staff members who attempt to remove it for behavioral assessment, it is listed as “fearful/unsafe.” These dogs are killed as well.

Dogs that are aggressive toward other dogs, labeled as “dog aggression” are a danger because if let out into the community they could attack other people’s pets and end up biting people too, Ms. Lyle explained.

“Pit bulls” can also be killed without being temperament tested if the pound has too many of the dogs, stated in records as “at capacity for ‘pit bull’-type dogs.” The warden will usually hold no more than 10 “pit bull” dogs at a time for behavior testing or for transfer to the Toledo Area Humane Society. Dogs beyond this number will be killed even if they are well behaved and adoptable.

“Pit bull”-type dogs include any dog with “pit bull” characteristics such as short stature, block-shaped head, and wide mouth. Breeds include American Staffordshire Terriers, American Bulldogs and Staffordshire Bull Terriers.

Some “pit bull”-type dogs have scars on their faces, necks and front of their legs, a sign they have been used for dog fighting, according to Ms. Lyle. These dogs are also automatically destroyed.

“We have a lot of dogs that don’t have that history, and to me there is no point in keeping dogs used for dog fighting when we have plenty of lovely dogs that would be great pets,” Ms. Lyle said.

The pound uses standard temperament testing procedures to determine whether a dog is safe for adoption. Called the Safety Assessment for Evaluating Rehoming, or SAFER, the testing involves a trained staff member hand­ling the dog’s fur and paws and staring into its eyes to see if it responds aggressively. The trainer also tests what happens when food or a toy is taken away from the animal and how it behaves around other animals. The animal is scored on a range of 1 to 5 on each aspect of the test, with 1 indicating the best, most non-aggressive reaction. To be put up for adoption, animals must score between 1 and 3 on the test. Those that score 4 are made available for transfer to rescue groups for rehabilitation, but so far no organization has been interested in taking these dogs so they are killed, Ms. Lyle said.

Dogs can fail the behavior evaluation in four main ways. If the dog aggressively guards its food when the trainer attempts to take it away, it will be labeled a “food guarder.” If it guards non-food items such as a toy it is labeled a “resource guarder.” If it acts aggressively while being handled by the trainer, the dog will be determined as having failed the test because of “body handling.” If the animal acts aggressively toward another dog that is brought in, it will be determined to have failed because of “dog aggression.”

Signs of aggression include growling, biting, showing its teeth or charging at the person carrying out the test.

The SAFER test was developed by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and has been used since Ms. Lyle took over the dog pound last year.

There are ways of rehabilitating dogs that show some types of aggressive behavior. For example, at the Toledo Area Humane Society, dogs that suffer from food aggression will have food placed in their kennel 24 hours a day so they no longer see it as a scarce resource and stop guarding it. However, Ms. Lyle maintains the pound does not have enough staff, space, or financial resources to spend time rehabilitating dogs or hiring a behavior trainer.

“We’re full to the brim,” Ms. Lyle said. “We have no space to keep dogs longer than the minimum stay for dogs that aren’t adoptable.”

Even if the warden had a bigger pound facility, she would need more staff and money to spend time rehabilitating dogs, Ms. Lyle indicated.

Lucas County Administrator Peter Ujvagi said such an operation could only be paid for through community or business contributions. Rehabilitating dogs is not the mandate of the dog warden, he said.

The county has a $600,000 dog warden reserve fund, built from dog license fees and other fees charged by the warden’s office, but Mr. Ujvagi told The Blade’s editorial board this week that he is not in favor of spending any of that money on behavior modification of dogs, saying that was not a “priority” of the county government.

“We’re primarily an enforcement agency. We are obviously working very, very hard to be able to transfer dogs as quickly as we can to all the available shelters that can accept them. There are no shelters or others that can accept dogs that need to go through behavior modification that we know of,” he said.

“Is this community, the public and private sector, prepared, under the economic conditions and the resources that we have, to fund an ongoing permanent operation for behavior modification?” Mr, Ujvagi asked.

Contact Claudia Boyd-Barrett cbarrett@theblade.com or 419-724-6272.