Las Vegas Sun

February 11, 2012

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PETS:

When owners bark or bite

Lied Animal Shelter’s intensifying struggle with visitors who lose their cool

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Sam Morris

As Candy Orellana, with daughter Natalie, hands over her license Wednesday at Lied Animal Shelter, Sara Orellana passes a dog across the counter to Sandra Robinson. Unclaimed animals are to be euthanized 72 hours after they arrive at the shelter, the largest of its kind in the nation — a policy that has occasionally led to violent behavior.

Friday, Jan. 2, 2009 | 2 a.m.

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A wall at Lied Animal Shelter is covered Wednesday with missing-pet posters. In 2008, the shelter took in more than 50,000 animals.

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The shelter is investigating the case of Barbara Marques, whose cat was put down this week mere minutes after the 72-hour window expired and after Marques had promised to return with the proof needed to retrieve the animal.

Beyond the Sun

Emotions have always run high at Lied Animal Shelter, but outbursts and violence from angry pet owners there have gotten so bad that the shelter is planning to remodel its lobby to protect workers from the public.

“We’ve had people come over the top of the counter and grab staff,” James Seitz, the animal shelter’s acting director, said. “One day, it took six of us to get a guy out.”

The man’s dog had been captured and brought to the shelter this past summer, two or three weeks before he showed up.

The shelter must euthanize unclaimed animals 72 hours after they arrive at Lied, so the man’s dog was long gone by the time he arrived at the shelter.

When the staff broke the news to him, “he just went berserk,” Seitz said.

Seitz, a retired judge, said he and the rest of the Lied staff understand how devastating that kind of news can be to a pet owner. But Seitz said he has since noticed an increase in the frequency and intensity of enraged reactions at the shelter.

Lied employees now call Metro Police or city marshals for help about three times a month for the most serious incidents, Seitz said. The shelter tries to alternate between the two agencies because of how often the calls must be made.

Dust-ups for which law enforcement is not called — the shouting and “verbal assaults” — occur every day, said cashier Sandra Robinson, herself the owner of three dogs, four cats, three birds and goldfish.

“They’re upset because their animal is here,” said the 50-year-old grandmother who has worked at Lied for about 18 months. “You try to keep calm, agree with them, then try to tell them their pet was put down.”

A few weeks ago, Robinson said, a pet owner whacked a cashier in the head with the receiver of the Lied desk phone.

Sometimes the phone is used in another way — for threats. Some are left on the shelter’s voice mail — including this one, from the owner of a cat that had been taken to the shelter early in 2008.

“The next time somebody hangs up on me, that is just disrespectful. And if somebody comes on my property? To take an animal? I will shoot them dead. That is trespassing. I will (expletive) shoot them,” the man says in his three-minute tirade, which ends with him giving his real name and a false claim that he is a police lieutenant.

He warns the staff that he will be in the next morning to pick up his cat, then adds: “And I am not paying a (expletive) fine for nothing!”

Metro was called and the man arrested, Seitz said.

But it’s not always the Lied staff on the receiving end of the anger at the shelter.

On the morning after Christmas, a woman in her late 40s was pushing her way to the front of a line at the shelter when a man in his 70s called her on it. She turned and punched him in the face. Officers handcuffed the woman and put her in a squad car, but the man declined to press charges, accepting the woman’s apology instead.

Seitz attributes the increase in boil-overs to the bad economy, the fact that people are losing their homes and their jobs and do not want to lose a beloved pet as well.

Lied also sees a larger number of people than do shelters in many other cities, because it is the largest single-site, open-admission shelter in the country.

“San Diego and New York take in similar numbers of animals, but they are spread over six and seven several shelters,” Seitz said.

For 2008, through Monday, the shelter had taken in 50,103 animals, an average of 138 per day. In that time, it also adopted out 10,320 animals.

On Tuesday afternoon, a steady stream of people arrived to look for their pets at Lied’s “Lost and Unwanted” office. The office, which the staff knows as “lost and found,” is about a decade old. The paint on the concrete floor is worn away. Seven unmatched seats for the public line one wall. A 15-by-10-foot room in the waiting area was designed, according to a plaque, as a video/education room, But now it houses two vending machines.

Cashiers sit behind a low wall with the swinging door open to offices in back.

The office is open until 7 p.m., and it’s usually later in the day, as people get off work, that is busiest.

About 4 p.m. Tuesday, Leah Gibbons arrived with David Dewitt looking for their two dogs, Max, their Chihuahua, and Asia, a Thai ridgeback.

Gibbons’ face was racked with anxiety. She dabbed her reddened nose with a kerchief while Dewitt rubbed her back.

Their landlord had evicted them from their apartment. They went to find moving boxes and when they returned an hour later, Gibbons said, their apartment lock had been changed and their two dogs were gone. The apartment manager sent the dogs to Lied, she said.

When the cashier told Gibbons it would cost $120 to retrieve her dogs, she said she was unable to pay because she couldn’t find her credit card. Gibbons said she would come back the next day. At that point the couple had 48 more hours. They repeatedly asked for assurance that Max and Asia would not be marked for euthanasia.

“If they kill my dog,” Dewitt said, unwavering, “I’ll come down here with a vengeance. I’ll drive that Ryder truck right through this wall.”

If a pet owner doesn’t have enough money for fees, Lied staff can negotiate if the animal was captured in Las Vegas or North Las Vegas, because those cities won’t always demand full fee payment. If it was caught in Clark County, Lied usually can’t negotiate because the county demands full payment, Seitz said.

Lied receives private donations and funding from Las Vegas, Clark County and North Las Vegas but is operated by the nonprofit Animal Foundation.

The foundation is working on a several ideas to address the outbursts at the shelter.

It is seeking bids to remodel the lobby. Instead of waiting in lines, people will take numbers and wait to be called. Staff will be behind a partition.

New brochures are also being designed to explain the payment of citations, detail the intake and rescue process and talk about the need for proof of ownership.

Understanding the citation process is important because if a pet owner owes fines, he can’t get his animal until an animal control officer arrives to give him a citation. That wait can be two hours if the only officer available is in Laughlin, Seitz said.

The proof of ownership requirement is another frequent flash point.

People sometimes “wait in line 40 minutes when they are already emotional, then find out they have to go home to get more proof,” Seitz said. “That’s when they blow up, and start yelling, ‘I’m going to get my dog, I’m coming through!’ ”

Seitz, who is one of several in the running for the director’s job at the shelter, says shelter employees know and understand that in some cases the people they are dealing with have good reason to be upset — people like Barbara Marques.

About 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Marques and her husband drove from their North Las Vegas home to the shelter to look for their cat, Puddles, her indoor-outdoor cat that had been missing for a few days. When Puddles saw Marques at the shelter, “he came to the front of the cage like, ‘Oh, she’s here to get me,’ ” she said.

Told she needed proof of ownership to get her cat, Marques went home and returned to the shelter at 3:40 p.m. with pictures and receipts from a veterinarian.

Too late, she was told. Puddles’ 72 hours were up at 3:17 p.m. He was put down at 3:35 p.m.

Marques can barely tell the story, dissolving several times into sobs about the black-and-white feline she had for five years.

“I had told the man, ‘Would you please put a statement on the cage not to euthanize? I’m coming back. Don’t do anything to him.’ He said, ‘I’ll do that, but he’s not up for review until tomorrow anyhow, so there’s nothing to worry about. But I’ll put a note on the cage.’ ”

When she returned to find Puddles was dead, the man told her he forgot to post the note, she said.

Seitz said the shelter is investigating the incident, which he called rare since 2007, when Lied instituted new procedures. That includes scanning animals for identifying microchips twice, once upon intake and once just before euthanization, just to be sure.

“But if we have one of those (accidents) a year, it’s too many,” Seitz said, adding that Lied is the first place people should look for a missing pet. Photographs of most captured animals are also posted the Internet.

Before Chris Robinson took over as executive director of the shelter in April 2007, Seitz said, about one accidental killing took place each week.

He also said the shelter is not robotic about its 72-hour euthanization policy. Seitz said he held an animal, at the request of an owner from England, for three to four weeks to give the owner time to fly back to Las Vegas to retrieve the animal.

He believes what happened to Puddles was the result of “an unfortunate sequence of events.”

The employee Marques dealt with is the second newest person on staff and likely forgot because a matter came up with another customer about the same time that he was going to put up the note, Seitz explained.

“But it’s not all the culpability of one individual,” he said.

North Las Vegas has an ordinance that does not allow pet owners to let their animals, even cats, to roam, Seitz pointed out. Puddles was trapped by someone who called animal control.

Puddles also didn’t have a tag indicating he had been vaccinated for rabies. Marques said he was vaccinated but his collar broke off.

Later, when Marques, a 59-year-old medical assistant, was told about fears of violence at the shelter, she admitted that before the Lied staff asked her to leave, she got very loud. But, she added, that was only after she was told that her cat died less than 20 minutes after his 72-hour window had expired, and just a few minutes before she returned with the proper paperwork.

“I just couldn’t believe they would be so efficient, that they couldn’t just wait until the end of the day,” she said. “Especially since I had been there just two hours earlier and told them not to do anything.”

“So I lost him,” she added as she teared up again. “He never went far and used to sit in the driveway and wait for me to come home. I know — I know I shouldn’t get so upset about a cat, but when you care for them and everything, you get so attached. He never hurt anyone in the neighborhood. He would just sit and watch birds.”

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