HIGH INTAKE

The Young-Williams Animal Center staff admitted 17,213 animals into its facilities in 2007, but only 4,430 were adopted, reclaimed or released. More than 12,000 were euthanized.

According to Brian Douglas, the center’s spay-neuter program-manager, the facility takes in from 50 to 100 stray and owner-surrendered animals a day.

Douglas said people surrender their animals for reasons ranging from economic hardship to moving. One family surrendered their pet because they were going on vacation. When Douglas explained that their pet wouldn’t be at the center when they returned, they replied, “Oh well, we can always get another one later.”

Tim Adams, the center’s executive director, said the center has a total capacity for up to 500 animals.

“We can hold about 230 to 250 dogs depending on where we double up,” he said. “[Young-Williams] can hold about 150 to 175 cats depending on where we double up. We have one livestock pen for goats, sheep, cows or horses. We have about 30 spaces for small mammals.”

When an adoptable stray animal is dropped off, it is placed on the adoption floor. But if the center is full to capacity, state law requires Young-Williams to hold that animal for three days before euthanizing it. The center is required to hold animals with implanted microchips for five days, but the staff usually holds a microchipped animal for 10 days before euthanizing it. Both laws give missing pet owners time to reclaim lost pets. But there is no law protecting owner-surrendered animals. They can be euthanized immediately after they’re dropped off. 

Adams said euthanizing animals is the hardest thing his staff has to do on a daily basis.

“We want to get to a point where no adoptable animal ever has to be euthanized, but with 17,000 plus animals coming in [a year], we are not at that point yet,” he said.

Taylor Slemmer, humane educator at Young-Williams, pointed out that it’s been said in the animal sheltering community that the Southeast is about 15 years behind the rest of the country.

According to Debi Boies, co-founder of Pilots-N-Paws, a Web site for pilots and animal rescue workers to coordinate rescue flights, some shelters in the Northeast have waiting lists for animal adoption.

But Slemmer said she’s met people in the Southeast who are as devoted to our animals as anyone she’s ever met up North.

“I wouldn’t make any blanket statements,” she said. “But there are a few factors that seem to be at work here.”

THE FACTORS

Feral Cat Population
Feral cat colonies in Knox County constantly produce more kittens.

A feral cat is a cat not socialized to humans. This means the cat was either born outside, or it was a companion cat that strayed from home and over time became unsocialized to humans, according to Alley Cat Allies, a national advocacy organization dedicated to the protection and humane treatment of cats.

Lisa Chassy, veterinarian at Young-Williams, said it’s difficult to tame feral cats. “They could sometimes with diligence and two or three years be tamed down, but if they [feral cats] are not socialized to humans by seven or eight weeks of age, the chances they’ll be tame are pretty slim.”

Douglas estimated the potential number of feral cats in Knox County to be around 80,000. His estimate is based on studies conducted in Alachua County, Fla., Santa Clara County, Calif., San Diego County, Calif., and four towns in Massachusetts. Together, the studies found that feral cats comprised at least 36 to 46 percent of the total cat population, suggesting there are almost as many feral cats in a community as there are owned cats.

Xan Rawls, operations director at Young-Williams, said feral, fearful and aggressive cats made up almost 18 percent of incoming cats and nearly 2 percent of the center’s total intake in 2007.  “I would suspect all 341 were euthanized as being unadoptable,” she said.

Alley Cat Allies says the best course of action to control feral cat colonies is through Trap, Neuter, Return. This method involves individuals trapping feral cats, taking them to be neutered and returning them to the same place they were trapped. The organization’s Web site provides guidelines on how to humanely trap, neuter, return.

Unaltered Pets
The Young-Williams staff is trying to change local attitudes and behaviors toward spaying or neutering your pet by educating the public on responsible pet ownership.

Tracy Dewhirst, president of the Knoxville Veterinary Medical Association, said there are fundamental responsibilities of pet ownership.

“The responsibilities of owning a pet, I think, probably run similar and hand and hand with the responsibilities of having children,” she said. “That is when you adopt them and take them into your home, you’re responsible for their well-being, their safety, their health, providing proper nutrition, providing proper housing for them, making sure that you have a budget that will allow you to have the proper health care for them.”

Dewhirst said getting a pet vaccinated regularly and spayed or neutered is fundamental proper health care.

Adams said the biggest issue facing companion animals in Knox County is residents understanding the need and importance of spaying and neutering.

“People in the South are not as aware or accepting of the benefits of spay-neuter because they have not heard as much about it as others,” he said.

The staff at Young-Williams works in local schools, offers classes, speaks to community groups and runs articles in the newspaper and on television to try to further educate the public.

They have also found funding for a free spay-neuter program for residents of Knoxville and Knox County.

“We have altered just over 5,000 animals in the past year, but the more we do, the longer the waiting list gets,” Adams said. “We have over 2,000 animals waiting for surgery, and we are running this program seven days a week and doing about 160+ surgeries a week.”

Adams said he hopes this aggressive spay-neuter campaign will result in a reduction in the number of incoming animals in the coming years.

“Experience in other cities tells us that it could take as long as five years before we see a significant decrease,” he said. “I would be thrilled with any decline in incoming at the moment.”

Chassy said one typically sees the number of puppies, but not as much kittens, start to go down first in communities where enough spay-neuter happens.

“That is because you’ll start to see fewer litters in the first one to two years of a program,” she said. “Each year, the age group of dropping admissions then begins to go up. Why? Because last year’s unwanted litters weren’t born, so now there are fewer one- to two-year olds people don’t really want.”

Chassy said the center is looking to create a paradigm shift with this program where spay-neuter becomes the normal and expected status for a pet.

“Once that happens in the community, then our intake numbers will decline dramatically,” she said.

Chassy said there is a strong resistance to neutering male animals, but spay-neuter programs are most effective when they get more males than females altered.

“Male intact dogs are more likely to roam, more likely to get in fights, and more likely to bite people, especially if they’re on the end of a chain,” she said. “A female dog will have typically one litter a year, sometimes two if it’s a smaller breed. Male dogs can sire a litter every two to three days year round. Male cats [can sire a litter] every two to three days 10 months of the year.”

Sunlight
The center’s staff is battling more than the region’s acceptance of spay-neuter benefits. They are also battling its geographic latitude.

Chassy said that cats living in the Northeast generally have one to two litters a year, but ones living in the Southeast can have two to three. She said cats are seasonal breeders, and their breeding is all light cycle dependent.

“It’s a sunlight thing. It’s how long the day is, the length of the day,” Chassy said. “We’re closer to the sun [than the Northeast], so we have a longer daylight cycle in a day. In the Northeast, they’ll have a shorter breeding season, so whereas, we might have [cats breeding] 10 months out of the year, they’ll have [them breeding] six or eight.”

Chassy said the Northeast generally has harsher winters than the Southeast, reducing that region’s cat populations.

“Any kittens who are born [in the Northeast] at a very early time in the winter like February or March, a lot of them will die of frostbite, or they won’t make it through the first week of life because of harsh conditions,” she said. “And you get a lot more mortality in cats just because of the more severe weather.”

Animal Welfare Legislation and Enforcement
According to the International City/County Management Association’s guidebook Animal Control Management: A Guide for Local Governments, there should be a minimum of one full-time animal control officer, plus backup to cover vacation and sick time, for every 25,000 people residing within a given area.

Dave Head, director of animal control for Knox County, said based on the guidebook's standard, both the county and the city don’t have enough officers.

“The city hasn’t had an increase in officers since 1984 or 1985, right in that range there,” he said. “[The city] has seven officers. They should have 14. Then you get into land mass, number of populace in Knox County, I should have 15. I’ve got six.”

Head said while he has six officers, one must work dispatch duty, and one must work the night shift, leaving only four officers to cover 527 square miles during the day. After submitting a formal request to the major, chief comptroller and head of human resources, he was recently permitted to hire a replacement officer. Head said he doubts he’ll be able to do additional hiring because of the county-wide hiring freeze.

Karen Pappas, the city’s animal control supervisor, said she has seven officers to cover the city limits. She said two officers work the night shift and typically three or four work dayshift from 7 a.m.-3p.m covering 103.34 square miles.

In 2007, she requested more officers in the department’s budget proposal for 2008. This proposal went before the police chief, city council and city mayor. Pappas said one officer position was allotted, which is the first change the department has seen in close to 25 years.

“She runs two shifts, from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. with six people,” Head said. “And on call because we’re 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Somebody’s [always] on call for animal control.” 

Head has been with Knox County Animal Control for four years. In 2000, he was recruited out of Florida to supervise animal control in Chattanooga. Head said Florida has stricter animal welfare laws than Tennessee does.

Head said Florida has what he calls “a three-count rule.” If an animal is picked up for running at large, the owner is fined $150. A second offense is $300. A third offense is $500, and the owner doesn’t get his or her animal back. If an animal isn’t wearing its required rabies tag, the owner is fined $150. A second offense requires the animal’s owner to implant a microchip at his or her expense, to pay for a rabies tag and to pay a fine of $500.

Head said while the city of Knoxville requires pet owners to register their pets and pay for a license, the county has no license requirements. If a pet owner violates the city’s license regulations, the penalty is a $50 fine.

Head said the city and the county need to make animal welfare laws stricter and animal control enforcement stronger. In his opinion, both have been effective in Florida.

“How many times when you drive to Orlando do you see a dog running loose?” he asked. “You don’t see them. You can drive from here to Halls and probably see five dogs running loose.”

Head said Tennessee is psychologically and physically 15 to 20 years behind concerning animal control, but the state is making positive changes. Last year, the state senate passed a law to approve the use of dart guns for animal control. Head said he is currently writing the credentials on how to teach and do chemical capture for the state.

Dewhirst also said stricter legislation would dilute the area’s homeless animal population, but she warned the legislation wouldn’t have any power if the both the city and the county didn’t have the means to hire officers to enforce the legislation.

“You can say all day we’re going to fine people that don’t do x, y or z with their pet, but if you don’t actually have the means to go ahead and follow through, the legislation is very weak,” she said. “And I think that can be said across the board with all legislation.”

Dewhirst said she thinks local rescue groups and humane organizations are the best way to educate and raise awareness, and that people who are passionate about helping homeless animals should support these groups.

“We in East Tennessee have been so fortunate to have probably one of the highest number of rescue groups in the country,” she said. “I did a radio show on WNOX for a year and featured a different rescue organization every week, and we never even got through all of them. …It’s going to take private monies and people who are passionate about this to support these groups because I do think we have a lot of good people on the ground doing really good things.”

THE PEOPLE ON THE GROUND

Pilots-N-Paws

Debi Boies, a retired nurse from Landrum, S.C., started helping Doberman Pinschers in December 2006. She was a case worker for Special Needs Dobermans, a group that raises medical care funds for owners who can't afford their dog's medical treatment.

In October 2007, Boies and a small group from Special Needs Dobermans started the Doberman Assistance Network, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with a mission to provide a second chance to Dobermans who are in shelters in urgent need of rescue.

It was through her work with the Doberman Assistance Network that Boies met Judy Davis of the Doberman Pinscher Rescue of North Florida. Boies and her husband recently lost their 12-year-old Doberman and were looking for a playmate for their younger one. Davis introduced them to Brock, a Doberman who Boies thinks was likely used as a bait dog for dog fighting.

"He has small white hairs from scars all over his beautiful head," she explained. "All the points have been filed off his teeth. He had a huge abscess on his back. He was heartworm positive with other parasites as well."

Boies said she and her husband fell in love with Brock but weren't sure how to get him to South Carolina. The Boieses own a Prevost bus and belong to a club of Prevost bus owners. Boies sent a message out to fellow members to see if any were traveling through Florida, and if so, if they would bring Brock back with them.

Jon Wehrenberg, a retired business owner from Knoxville, Tenn., now flies the single-engine Cessna he once used to meet with clients strictly for recreation. He is also a member of the Prevost bus club the Boies belong to.

After reading Boies' message about Brock, Wehrenberg e-mailed her back to see if he could pick Brock up in his plane and fly him back to her. "I thought he was kidding," Boies laughed. "I said, 'Are you kidding, Jon?', and he said, 'No, I'm serious. I'll come by Greenville-Spartanburg airport, pick up your husband, and the two of us will go down and get him and bring him home to you.'" Boies thought Wehrenberg's idea was great.

When Wehrenberg returned with Brock, he asked Boies if she could explain the logistics of animal rescue work. She explained to him how they coordinate ground transports using multiple volunteers driving hour to hour-and-a-half legs, sometimes taking two days to complete. "Those pups or cats or whatever may change vehicles probably once an hour for two days," she explained.

Wehrenberg couldn't understand how rescue workers were able to coordinate these transports successfully due to all the coordination involved and wondered if anyone ever transported animals using general aviation aircraft. "It was a new concept to her," he said.

Wehrenberg started browsing Yahoo! Web sites where people post animal transport needs.

"I volunteered for a couple of flights, did a few flights and realized how much easier it was for me to just do a flight than it was for somebody to arrange 10 or 15 legs of a ground transport," he said, "But I also realized that there were an awful lot of planes and pilots who could be put into service doing what I was doing."

In February 2007, Boies and Wehrenberg launched Pilots-N-Paws, a Web site where pilots and rescue volunteers can connect. There are approximately 86 pilots who have joined since its creation. Rescue people post requests on the site, and then pilots visit and view their posts. "We hope that pilots will look at the 'Animal Needing Transport' board, and if it's an animal they can help with, then they contact the rescue volunteer directly," Boies said.

Boies said she and Wehrenberg are always available to answer questions, but there isn't anyone who sits down and schedules flights for the site. "It has to be free choice on the pilot's part to volunteer or not," Boies said. "I don't want anybody to feel pressured that they have to do something."

So far, Wehrenberg has carried 92 dogs and flown approximately 145 hours this year doing animal rescues. Three of those flights were transports for Young-Williams Animal Center.  

Wehrenberg said he doesn't have a favorite rescue story. "They're pretty routine," he said. "We do a lot of pre-flight planning so that we all meet at the airport at the right time. ... There's no mess, no drama, so there's not that many stories. But we've had an awful lot of cute dogs that we've hauled."

Unlike Wehrenberg, Boies is not a pilot. She's actually afraid to fly. But she did go on one rescue flight with him. The directors at Young-Williams wanted to meet with her and Wehrenberg to see how Pilots-N-Paws could work with shelters across the country. After their meeting, Wehrenberg and Boies delivered a Doberman who wasn't doing well in the shelter to a rescue group in Greensboro, N.C.  "I was very proud of myself," she admitted. "Like my husband says, 'She'll do anything for the animals.'"

Wehrenberg and Boies are in the process of getting a board of directors so Pilots-N-Paws can be a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. They hope pilots who volunteer their time and the use of their planes will be able to claim their expenses on their tax returns.

"The costs of operating my plane, if I do it on the basis of just the costs of ownership of the plane plus the operating expenses that go along with ever hour of flying the plane, the total cost per hour is around $270 an hour," Wehrenberg said. "The cost of fuel alone runs pretty close to $90 an hour."

Karen Lively, Young-Williams rescue coordinator, said Pilot-N-Paws really changed things for the animals. "We used to set up these laborious transports where the animals are taken for a 2-hour leg of a trip, and then they're picked up and taken by someone else for two hours, and sometimes, that can go on for two days." she explained. "It made it so much easier on the animals because they can be there so quickly."

Lively said Pilots-N-Paws is a terrific site. "It's just such a new idea," she said. "It fills such a need. It's just amazing we haven't done this before."

Ultimately, Wehrenberg and Boies have the same goal: transport rescue animals in need from one rescue or euthanizing shelter to a safe place for their chance at adoption. "Shelters kill 600-1,100 animals a month," Boies said. "That's our goal to give them an avenue to get to where they need to go.  That's why we're here."

The Spay Shuttle

The staff at Young-Williams wanted to make spay-neuter services affordable to Knox County residents, so they found funding to launch a free mobile spay-neuter program.

The Spay Shuttle, a $250,000 self-contained mobile veterinary surgical unit, is equipped with a prep station and two surgical stations. It has the capacity to secure up to 30 animals in air-condition or heat, depending on the time of year.

Brian Douglas, the spay-neuter program manager at Young-Williams, said the staff started performing surgeries inside the shuttle in July 2007 while parked behind the center. The shuttle began its road service the following December.

Douglas said the shuttle travels to a variety of city and county locations, targeting areas that have the highest dog and cat density, according to both the city and county animal control units. The locations are:
•    South Knoxville Community Center
•    Caswell Park
•    The Knox County Health Department on Dameron Avenue
•    Chilhowee Park
•    Carter Park & Library
•    Corryton Library

Douglas said the staff is currently researching other potential locations.

He said the shuttle program has six full-time employees: a program manager, a veterinarian, a surgical coordinator, a veterinary assistant, a veterinary assistant/driver and a scheduler. In addition to that, the program rotates approximately six veterinarians and 12 veterinary assistants who staff surgery on the weekends. He said they also rotate four administrative employees and almost 24 volunteers through that process.

Douglas said the staff has done close to 40 surgeries a day, but that involves extra staff and caging. He said they generally limit surgeries to 30 a day so they get all the animals done in a timely period.

As of Dec. 1, Douglas said the program has completed around 7,500 surgeries, 6,000 of which occurred in 2008. Nancy Harvey, the shuttle’s full-time veterinarian, performed almost 5,000 of those surgeries in the past 16 months.

The shuttle currently has a waiting list with 1,945 animals on it, and it is booked through the week of Christmas. Anyone calling now to register an animal for surgery will have a three- to four-month wait.

Douglas said he isn’t sure if the shuttle has affected the center’s high intake numbers.

“Most spay-neuter programs don’t see reductions in shelter intake for the first 18-24 months, and the fact that we’re only entering our 16th month, it may just be too soon at this point. We’re hoping to see a reduction in the next six months,” he said.

Douglas also pointed out that due to recent economic hardships, the shelter has seen an increase in owner-surrendered animals, which may be masking the shuttle’s effects.
 
The Spay Shuttle staff recently welcomed a new member to its team. Rover, a Freightliner Sprinter vehicle customized by Mavron, Inc., was designed to safely transport more than a dozen dogs at one time. The vehicle has separate heating and cooling, and it is designed to allow for complete sterilization on a daily basis.

Douglas said Rover is part of a transportation component of the spay-neuter program designed to:
•    Provide transport for those without it
•    Target areas of the city and county where animal density is high but client participation is low
•    Be available for use as an off-site adoption vehicle 

“By providing transport, we can remove a major barrier to getting the animals to us,” he said.

Douglas said Rover was donated to the program by the Aslan Foundation, and the staff plans to search for a transportation coordinator after Jan. 1.

“Our hope is that we can use the vehicle to promote spay-neuter awareness on a neighborhood level, as well as, reach animal populations that are highly likely to be reproducing and not up-to-date on veterinary care,” he said.

Knoxville Feral Cat Friends

Jennifer Smalls became concerned about a cat in her neighborhood because it seemed to be constantly having kittens. Smalls said she didn’t think the cat had a home or a regular source of food or shelter. 

“I couldn't touch her, and I was perplexed because I didn't know what a feral cat was,” Smalls said. “I'd only had experience with tame cats.  I decided that I wanted to help the kitty and get her spayed, but I wasn't sure how to go about it since I couldn't touch her, and I didn't have any experience with feral cats.”

Smalls contacted AnimalWorks, a no-kill animal shelter in Blount County, to see if its staff could recommend a group to help her. They directed her to Knoxville Feral Cat Friends.

Smalls said Knoxville Feral Cat Friends started as a small group of people who were feeding feral cats in colonies individually all over town. She said these people decided in 2000 to pool their resources together to try and form a non-profit.

“It can be overwhelming for someone to try to take care of a colony by themselves when the cats are not spayed-neutered and new cats are being born all the time,” she said. “At the time, there was no advocacy group specific to feral cats and no real direction about how to manage a feral cat colony.”

She said the group was organized under the umbrella of Peaceful Kingdom, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization working to end animal overpopulation in Knox County. Peaceful Kingdom agreed to take Knoxville Feral Cat Friends under its wing.

“The main point of starting KFCF was to advocate for feral cats, to work toward spaying and neutering cats in order to quell the overpopulation problem and to manage existing colonies of cats,” Smalls said.

According to Smalls, there are currently about 10 people who are most active in Knoxville Feral Cat Friends. There are maybe another 10 or 20 who are not as active, but they have been involved with the group at some point and in some capacity.

“Most caretaking of feral cat colonies is done by individuals rather than as a ‘group effort’ by KFCF,” she explained. “We meet together once a month, and maybe a few other times in a year, but for the most part, the real work is done by individuals.”

Smalls has been involved with Knoxville Feral Cat Friends since 2002. Her role within the group is to receive and answer its e-mails, to help fulfill requests from people asking for help with managing a feral cat colony and to do legwork, such as getting people traps to use and giving them instructions on the trapping process. She said there are other participants who also do the same.

Smalls said the group’s ultimate goal is to eliminate unwanted cats' deaths in the shelters because of overpopulation.

“There are just not enough homes for all animals who go to shelters, so TNR is a viable and humane way to control the population while leaving them in their current environment,” she said.

The group also wants to improve the lives of feral cats that currently exist in colonies, Smalls added.

“It's compassionate to provide regular food and water and shelter, instead of leaving them to fend for themselves,” she said. “Cats who have to fend for themselves are more prone to parasites and disease because of improper and inadequate diets. They are also affected by the elements, so we want them to have shelter from extreme weather conditions.” 

But Smalls emphasized that Knoxville Feral Cat Friends is not a group that will assume all responsibility for all feral cats in the area.

“We try to empower those who ask for our help by instructing them on TNR and managing colonies, so that more people can assume responsibility themselves,” she said. “One group of 10 or 20 people cannot manage all feral cat colonies or single-handedly stop the cycle of overpopulation.” 

Smalls said she wants people to know that it's imperative they have their own animals spayed and neutered, which she said will reduce the number of unwanted animals and feral cat colonies locally.

In order to financially support its foster care, adoptions and spay-neuter surgeries, Smalls said Knoxville Feral Cat Friends accepts private donations and holds fundraisers.

“Our most reliable fundraiser is regular donations from individuals who give on a monthly basis or over some other period of time,” she said. “We have done other fundraisers like selling Lifestyle coupon books, sponsoring a 5k run and selling cat-related merchandise at flea market-type events.”

According to Smalls, the group also collects an adoption fee from people who adopt from participating foster parents. The group also has a link to PayPal on its Web site, where she said a good portion of its donations are made.