Jackson Free Press

She was probably a real looker once. Last November, a happy, smiling Labrador decided to follow my son and me as we walked our bikes down Concord Place in North Jackson. She was apparently no longer a puppy. My kid noticed her dangling motherhood and remarked that she seemed to have her own puppies somewhere—or at least had them recently.

She had no collar and no body fat, but plenty of ribs. Her hair hadn't seen a brush in ages, and her generally sagging demeanor told us both that she ran a good chance of having heartworms. Despite the general air of ratty abandonment, she'd been following us for 20 feet.

I stopped my bike and walked toward her, and she backed away, doing that dog thing where the front legs want to retreat, while the back legs are determined to brave forward. We both called her, performing the ridiculous round of whistles, clicks and snapping fingers that humans commonly use to entice animals. She wasn't responding—but she clearly wasn't ready to move on, either.

I looked at the remnants of my Sonic cheeseburger. I looked at my kid, who stared at me expectantly. I knew when to take a hint.

I tossed the food toward the animal, and she sniffed it momentarily before chomping it down and heading off over somebody's empty yard. She had other mouths to feed, by the look of things.

"Will she be OK?" my kid asked me.

Not likely, though I didn't say this.

The American Humane Society reports that there could be about 70,000 stray dogs and cats born in the United States every day, though even the group readily admits that there's no way to lock down a number on the population.

"The majority of states do not keep track of the animals going through their public shelters, and if they did, the shelters still wouldn't see every animal. So there's just no way to compile the figures," said John Snyder, vice president of the companion animals division for the U.S. Humane Society. "I've heard 70,000 a day. I've heard 70,000 an hour. We can't know for sure. We're still using guestimates. After 100 years, we're still guessing."

Life for most of these animals, including the ones in fair Mississippi, will be brutal and short.

The Problem of Overpopulation
Stray dogs routinely waste away from starvation or get killed by passing cars if they stay feral. Another, even nastier, option is to die of heartworms—a woefully common way to go in mild-weathered Mississippi. Mosquitoes deliver the parasitic roundworm to the animal with a bite, and the little monsters pack the chambers of the dog's heart until it dies of congestive heart failure. Also likely, the congestion could lead to lung failure or kidney and liver damage. The latter two, in particular, could eventually reduce the animal to lying stricken and moaning out its agony for days before finally dying.

Of course, the animals headed into the public collection system we provide hardly fare much better, according to Mississippi Spay and Neuter founder and president Elaine Adair.

"We're anticipating that 70 percent of animals at animal shelters are euthanized across the state," Adair said. "That's a high euthanasia rate, compared to other areas."

Mississippi's average number of strays is difficult to determine. Like the national figures, there's no census for Spot or Morris. The only thing animal advocates know for sure is that the state's numbers are impossibly high, thanks to a host of personal issues keeping the stray animal population booming. The amount of poverty in the state is a bad start.

"It's very expensive to get an animal spayed or neutered," Adair said, explaining that the average $100 procedure in the state—though cheaper than those provided in many other states—is still often too much for many residents to handle. Many pet owners also have a general attitude of indifference toward their animals. Plenty have a pet only because the pet found them, either through a friend, relative, or it literally showed up at the door.

In addition, Mississippi is still largely a rural state, with some spots with no veterinarian available within "40 or 45 miles," according to Adair.

Evolution is another big issue. Dogs and cats have a remarkable capacity for reproduction—a trait they share with rats, roaches, humans and many other forms of vermin.

Big cats, like tigers and cougars, may have only an average of three cubs at a time, but the litter population with cats seems to expand as body mass drops—and felis familiaris is good and tiny compared to your average mountain lion.

Dogs, themselves, are not slow breeders. Just ask their ancestors. In 2005, The Christian Science Monitor recorded that the wolf population had rebounded in Yellowstone National Park within the 10-year period humans reintroduced the predator.

The Northern Rockies, for example, now contain more than 800 wolves. Idaho's portion of Yellowstone's population of 800 ballooned from a tiny tribe of 35 critters. Timber wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan also climbed to 3,200, 10 years after reintroduction. And the 30 wolves planted in Yellowstone grew to almost 200, enough to change the whole ecosystem of that park. Great for getting a beast off the endangered species list, but a small surprise that whole packs of stray dogs are running through derelict neighborhoods in some cities.

"It only takes a handful of years for a few abandoned pets to turn into a very significant population problem," Adair said.

Mississippi's warm weather also adds to the problem by increasing the number of months in a cat or dog's breeding season. It stands to reason that a gray tabby hunkering down in a Maine snowstorm likely isn't thinking too hard about sex. That's not the case in sunny Mississippi.

Adair said education is another factor.

"People in Mississippi use that slogan, ‘Pick one and kiss the others goodbye.' That means out of one litter, one finds a home, and all the others end up being destroyed," she said.

The Hard Life
Some pet owners allow unchecked breeding of their animals. The behavior is aggravated with the more popular breeds. Certain terrier varieties are the trend in Mississippi, particularly in the aftermath of dog fighting and recent pop-culture trends, so animal-control divisions of both city and county governments are seeing a slight uptick in the collection of pit-bull mixes. Activists say dog fighting has been an issue in the area, though Police Chief Malcolm McMillin said most tips don't pan out with arrests.

"We don't see it as enough of a problem to have a unit dedicated to it," McMillin said.

Though perhaps not commonplace, it is a reality. In January, police busted up one dog-fighting ring in West Jackson. It was one of the rare occasions where police were able to catch suspects in the actual act of running a bout. Most of the two-dozen dog owners and spectators fled the scene as police closed in, though officers did manage to arrest two Indianola men and one Jackson resident.

Dog fighting is easier to arrange in a rural area because neighbors in an urban setting have a habit of reporting the noise, a factor that may have led to Indianola residents Mitchell Huggins and James Lee Denton getting charged with felony dog fighting. Authorities also charged Houston Avenue resident Charles Jennings with felony dog fighting and for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Jennings' 16-year-old son was watching the fight, according to Sgt. Jeffrey Scott.

The trick in dog fighting is to make the opponent bleed to death. The pit-bull terrier breeds excel at this because they keep their battle tactics simple: Get a good hold on your opponent and hang on.

Breeders encourage strong jaws with a good grip. The results of the selective breeding are apparent in the exaggerated size of the jaw muscles along the sides of the animal's face. Those jaws clamp on like a Gila monster, and many opponents take hours to bleed to death after losing a fight.

Penalties for organizing a ring are comparatively minor, compared to the sheer brutality of the sport. Felony dog fighting in this state could cost offenders up to $5,000 in fines and no more than three years in prison. Many never see prison time. The court system released all three suspects from the West Jackson bust from the Hinds County Detention Center after they made bail.

The Fallout of Fad Breeding

The future of the dogs, like most dogs recovered from pit-fighting rings, is considerably more bleak. Ten of the dogs recovered from the West Jackson scene—mostly pit bulls or bull mixes—went straight to the city animal shelter. City employees euthanized three of them outright, purportedly due to grievous injuries. Police temporarily held the rest as evidence, though their life span barely extended the length of time between the arrests and the suspects' initial court appearances.

"None of the animals were adoptable," said Deputy Chief Gerald Jones, who oversees the Jackson city pound.

Their chances for adoption and survival were slim because families don't adopt pit fighters to play in the yard with little Billy, and pit bulls pose liability issues for any organization adopting them out. The breed lately suffers the bad reputation (some of it earned) resulting from years of over-breeding. Shoddy husbandry techniques from backyard kennels encourage aggression, low intelligence, physical abnormalities and increased susceptibility to disease. The Doberman and German Shepherd breeds suffered the same problem in the earlier part of last century.

Most local organizations refuse to deal in the breed.

"The municipality has to be careful in its policies concerning adoption," Jones said, explaining that any adoption of the breed could pose a legal liability to the city. The Mississippi Animal Rescue League holds to the same policy and will not adopt out pit bulls. Community Animal Rescue and Adoption, another local volunteer program working to find homes for animals at the city shelter, rarely touches them, averaging perhaps one pit bull adoption a year.

The Jackson shelter occasionally releases a pit bull to a home, but only after thoroughly educating the adopter on what he's taking home with him. The shelter warily eyes anybody looking to adopt a pit-bull terrier, because potential owners may be looking for a street-cred fashion statement—or worse, another pit fighter.

Some state municipalities have even attempted to adopt city ordinances banning or regulating ownership of the breed. The city of Jackson adopted an ordinance in 2006 forcing pit bull owners to register their pets with the city animal shelter, while the city of Clinton adopted a tighter ordinance that bans ownership of the breed outright, along with Rottweilers, Staffordshire bull terriers and American Staffordshire terriers.

Jackson Attorney Aafron Sellers filed an injunction in Hinds County Chancery Court on behalf of the Clinton Canine Coalition in 2006, to keep the city from enforcing that ordinance, though Sellers said the case was dismissed.

"To be honest, the city hasn't really tried to enforce the ordinance since it started, and nobody's come to me wanting to fight it on an individual basis since it was enacted," Sellers said, dismissing the ordinance as largely a "feel-good" measure created in reaction to a flood of anti-pit bull sentiment at the time.

The High Cost of Living
Most pit bulls in a shelter head inevitably to the euthanization table, but Adair said the chances for most any animal in the pound are equally slim. "I don't think people understand what really happens to most of the litter when they take it to a shelter," she said.

The Mississippi Animal Rescue League, a 38-year-old nonprofit animal shelter, serves at least nine counties, and took in a huge population of strays—17,000 animals in 2006, at a cost of half a million dollars. MARL estimates the cost to be about $800,000 for 2007, when the final costs come in. The high occupancy rate impacts the organization's euthanasia rate considerably, with about 80 percent of those animals put to death.

"As a nonprofit, we only have so much to work with," said Aileene Maldonado, program manager at MARL.

"I wish it weren't necessary, but there (are) only a few people looking to adopt (and) the animals keep coming in all the time. There's just no place for them. I wish there was another way."

The city's pound, which primarily works within city limits, euthanizes 60 percent to 75 percent of the animals and handles an average of 450 animals a year, though the numbers fluctuate with the season, so the 60 to 75 percent number is a sliding-scale average.

Jones said the euthanization rate would be lower if shelter employees were less rabid over collections.

"As a rule, we aggressively patrol, so we pick up more animals than many other shelters," Jones said. "Other shelters, they only deal in drop-offs. Every (animal) at the Mississippi Animal Rescue League (was) brought there."

The city facility is approved for 12 employees: seven animal patrol officers to work the streets, three shelter attendants, a manager and a secretary. The number of employees the facility has is eight. The high stray population overwhelms the pound's paltry staff, causing money issues, and accusations of sloppiness, critics say.

Animal activists frequently circulate e-mails demanding news organizations address reports of animal abuse at the pound, including rumors of painful animal euthanizations, neglecting to feed and water animals, and even reports of pound personnel leaving animals locked inside collection wagons for days.

But a reporter's calls to many of those same activists got very little information on the record, because activists say they must work with the pound to get animals adopted and don't want city employees to cut them off from the facility.

"In truth, there are very few people that work in the animal-care industry who don't have harsh opinions about our pound," said one local activist, speaking anonymously. "But it's very difficult to get advocates who work with the pound to speak out about the abuse. If we say anything against the pound, they will not let us help the animals. It's a real catch-22. You'd really like to do something to make people do what they need to do, but it can't be anyone affiliated with the advocacy groups because city employees have the ability, and likely will restrict the advocacy groups from helping, because they don't care whether they starve them, put them down or get them adopted, they don't care."

Jones referred all questions regarding complaints to Police Chief Malcolm McMillin, who could not be reached for comment. On the issue, Lyn Crawford, a part-time volunteer with Jackson Friends of the Animal Shelter, said she could not confirm reports of abuse.

"I've seen these stories in the past, focusing on specific issues. Some of the complaints may be valid. Some may not. A shelter is a shelter, and it's a hard place. It's easy for someone to hear something, and you know the game, one person hears something, and passes it along and by the time it gets to the 10th person, it's changed so much from the original sentence that you don't even recognize it, and unfortunately that's what happens sometimes."

Crawford said her group had met recently with McMillin, who came on as chief last November, to attempt to improve the pound.

"We don't want to gloss over issues, but we also know that you have to move forward in a positive way and continue to work through those issues," she said.

McMillin is an animal activist in his own right, having created the Second Chance Pet Partners program in 2001, which trains animals from the county shelter in preparation for adoption.

"We have 10 kennels in our program at the Hinds County Penal Farm. We have two handlers, inmates whom I've taught basic obedience training, and they train the animals, which makes them much more adoptable," said Teresa Gardner, who oversees the program. "We teach just the basics: sit, stay, down, come. It's been hugely successful. I've got people waiting in line to adopt a dog. The sheriff's department has been very supportive."

Gardner said the kennel itself is "debt free," its components largely donated by local businesses and the community. Plumbers, for example, donated the plumbing services, locksmiths the locks and so on. Much of the work is handled by county staff and penal farm inmates.

Jones said the county program will soon extend to animals in the city pound, facilitated perhaps by McMillin occupying both the offices of county sheriff and Jackson police chief.

A Little Help from Friends
Other local programs are also working to save unwanted critters. Jackson Friends of the Animal Shelter are a collection of volunteers acting as community go-betweens for the city pound.

Members file through the sea of sad faces looking out at them from the pens of the pound, pick the most likely inmates to attract a home, and arrange contact numbers, veterinary services and spay/neuter programs. Local veterinarians, including members of Hinds Community College's Vet Tech program, volunteer time and effort to the endeavor.

Community Animal Rescue and Adoption Inc. is another local organization that accepts animal drop-offs, though the organization's "no-kill" policy often keeps CARA's facility filled to capacity and frequently refusing those drop-offs.

"The no-kill concept is a wonderful thing, but it does have its drawbacks. If you don't adopt them out, you end up with a 30,000 square-foot warehouse full of animals," said Bill Milstead, chairman of the board for CARA. "It's not euthanization if you're putting down a healthy animal; it's killing. Though I understand the need for it, I couldn't work in that kind of environment myself. I just couldn't."

CARA also occasionally piles their animals into a 37-foot RV and carries them up to sister shelters in the Northeast, where long-standing spay and neuter policies and tradition allow those shelters to operate at half or less capacity. One three-day adopt-o-thon in the East can shake off more than 75 percent of the shelter's population.

The Mississippi Animal Rescue League, meanwhile, has expanded its own endeavor, opening a massive new facility on Greenway Drive in West Jackson. MARL abandoned its South Drive facility for lack of space, and now takes in anything from chickens to tigers, according to its Web site. A recent visit to the center turned up quality animals, such as a young harlequin Great Dane with excellent bone structure and good disposition (average price for an unregistered breed of the same quality: $200). The Mississippi Animal Rescue League imposes a neuter/spay program on all the animals it places in homes, though the total costs involved rarely surpass $60.

MARL, like every other animal-activist organization in the area, heartily urges owners to spay or neuter their pets, and dubs the process as a simple solution to a complicated problem.

Fixing the Problem
Milstead admitted that he wished Mississippians could update their views on spaying and neutering.

"We just have a different mindset in Mississippi," Milstead said. "I have a Friday TV show (Channel 3's midday report) where we offer low-cost spay and neutering, and we might get three calls. Please spay and neuter. The world doesn't need any more puppies or kittens. Every day in this country, an average of 29,000 dogs and cats are killed—at least 5 million a year—because there are no homes for them."

The importance of spaying and neutering has already caught on in some California cities and in eastern states like New Jersey, which mandates owners spay or neuter pets unless they have a permit allowing otherwise. The idea is just now catching on in the South, however, where some owners still consider the practice a kind of cruelty, or a bother.

Mississippi Spay and Neuter, a collaboration of Mississippi nonprofit animal-welfare organizations, is taking the problem on in a manner reminiscent of a Ford assembly line. The nonprofit is hosting a 53-foot "Big Fix" trailer in Jackson, containing a mobile clinic, specifically designed to mete out sterility.

The trailer, rented from the Humane Alliance of Asheville, N.C., contains four surgical tables, three preparation tables, and with the optimum number of staff can churn our more than 100 sterilizations a day at a minimum of cost. Male cat sterilizations are $25, while females cost $45. The facility also offers $5 rabies shots. The trailer will be parked near MARL's Greenway Drive headquarters until June 1. Pet owners can call 866-901-7729 to set up an appointment for their family friend—or that pesky roaming male whizzing on the car every Monday morning.

Terry Mayor Roderick Nicholson was a big enough fan of the rig to arrange for it to be parked in Terry, June 5 through June 7.

"In our community we've had an issue of stray dogs and cats," Nicholson said. "I've noticed the growing population in the area, and in some cases, the animals are burdening the residents. Some dogs are more aggressive than others by nature. We have a significant elderly population that likes to walk, but the dogs put a damper on their exercise."

The Big Fix rig can only handle cats and small dogs weighing less than 25 pounds, however. While MS SPAY is coordinating with local veterinarians to arrange low-cost spay and neuter programs, Adair said MS SPAY needs a more permanent solution for the Jackson area that can deliver services for large dogs.

"PetSmart Charities has asked us to put a high-volume charity clinic in Jackson because of the high euthanasia rate in the state, and we're currently looking for a building," Adair said. "We need about $120,000 in seed money, and hopefully we've got it. We think maybe in the next six to eight months, we'll be able to get started on that."

Adair said charities would provide the medical equipment, so all the organization would have to provide would be the payroll. "This facility would be a step up in the state, which is far behind in terms of humane animal control," she said. "We'll still have a long way to go, but it's a start."

To donate, adopt or volunteer, call: MARL at 601-969-1631; Jackson Friends of the Animal Shelter at 601-209-4186; Second Chance Adoption Program at 601-937-3161; CARA at 601-922-7575; MS SPAY at 1-866-901-7729 or the city pound at 601-960-1775. For the Animal Rescue Fund (ARF), e-mail: [e-mail unavailable] or visit http://www.arfms.com.

Animal Intelligence
Animals We Love

Previous Comments

ID

82292

Comment

It is sad situation out here with strays. I have saved over 3 myself that reside at my home. One being a pit who was bred down to nothing and left behind when the people across the street moved.... not to mention heartworms. NOW is another story.... what a ham she is. I wasted a minute to let you know that I see how bad it is. And I think there might be a solution of sorts.... maybe? To be able to breed dogs you will have to have a license or you get fined. Of course this is just the begining but something has to be done. I know vets and day to day people that would love to see a law passed to encourage responsibility of owners. Even a team of people who would go out and enforce. You have my name and number.... Adam does. What the he@@ lets do something that just might make a difference this year!!!!

Author

onlyone

Date

2008-04-10T13:32:47-06:00

ID

82293

Comment

Great article! This is a very serious topic, but I must admit that a few sentences made me chuckle: My kid noticed her dangling motherhood and remarked that she seemed to have her own puppies somewhere—or at least had them recently. It stands to reason that a gray tabby hunkering down in a Maine snowstorm likely isn't thinking too hard about sex. That's not the case in sunny Mississippi. Dogs and cats have a remarkable capacity for reproduction—a trait they share with rats, roaches, humans and many other forms of vermin. The nonprofit is hosting a 53-foot "Big Fix" trailer in Jackson, containing a mobile clinic, specifically designed to mete out sterility.

Author

LatashaWillis

Date

2008-04-11T12:18:07-06:00