Put down

HOUSTON — In an effort to curb costs, four dogs and four cats impounded at the Houston Animal Shelter were shot Tuesday after being in the city’s animal control center for three months.

Houston, the only city in the Mat-Su Borough with its own animal control powers, is required by municipal code to keep unidentified animals for three days and identified animals for five days, police Sgt. Charlie Seidl said. After this, the city can either adopt out or dispose of the animals in a humane manner.

“Preferably, we want to adopt them out. … I adopted one of the cats in the pound myself,” said Seidl, who killed the animals. “But these animals, we have had them in the pound since the first week of November.”

Shooting the animals is the only option the city has for euthanasia, Seidl said, as one of the department’s officers has not yet finished his training in administering a lethal injection. Seidl said the conversation had been going on for some time as to what to do with the long-term residents of the shelter.

“Officially, on Friday the 29th, the mayor had called and asked about the status of the shelter. That was when he explicitly expressed the animals needed to be euthanized,” Seidl said. “We were not going to do that without expressed direction. On Friday, I made sure I had that clarification.”

Houston Mayor Roger Purcell refused to comment on what happened at the shelter, but he did deny giving Seidl an order to put the animals down.

“I didn’t know any animals had died until (Wednesday) morning. I’m in Juneau right now,” Purcell said.

Deputy Mayor Lance Wilson said he was not aware of exactly what or when an order was issued, but he said there has been discussion of the rising cost of running the shelter. When Wasilla chose not to renew the contact it had with Houston to cover its animal control duties, the staff and budget of the shelter had to be cut, Wilson said. However, he said that as soon as officials cut the budget the number of intake animals increased.

“I think it’s probably due to the economy being worse. People can’t afford to keep their pets anymore, so they drop them off here,” Wilson said.

The council approved two increases in the shelter’s budget during the last year to pay for additional food and medical care of the animals, Wilson said. But the city has to operate on finite resources and provide a number of city services using those resources.

There are currently no animals in the Houston shelter.

With the cuts, it is now up to Community Services Officer Dennis Lords to run the shelter and coordinate adoption efforts. Besides the one cat he adopted himself, Seidl said the city has been fairly successful at getting dogs and cats rescued.

Julia Durand, president of Alaska Dog and Puppy Rescue, said her group has had a long relationship with the Houston Animal Shelter. Not two weeks ago, she said, the Wasilla-based group rescued four dogs from Houston. This time, however, Durand said the group did not receive a call before the dogs were euthanized.

If they had called, she said, a member of the rescue group would have gone to the shelter to evaluate the dogs. Unless the dogs were aggressive enough to attack humans, Durand said the group would have found foster homes for them while trying to adopt them out at weekly adoption clinics in Wasilla and Anchorage.

“We are always in need of more foster homes. The more we have, the more we can rescue,” Durand said. “But when there has been a need — like when they called two weeks ago — we would have found people that would have fostered these dogs.”

Instead of renewing its contract with Houston, Wasilla signed a deal for the Mat-Su Borough to take the city’s strays and give-a-ways. Palmer has long had such a deal with the borough.

Bob Haskell, the animal control chief for the borough, said Houston has not approached the borough about taking over animal control duties from the city, but said that “it makes sense to have one entity over the entire borough’s animals.”

The borough completed a new animal shelter facility last March that can house an average of 100 cats and 100 dogs, Haskell said. The average intake is between 300 and 400 animals each month. But even with these numbers, euthanizing a dog or cat to free up more space is rare, he said.

“One of the nice things about the new shelter is that we really seldom have to answer that question as to what is too long,” Haskell said. “We haven’t had to euthanize any cats for time and space issues since September. … In January, a total of three dogs were euthanized for space.”

When they do have to put an animal down, Haskell said several members of the shelter’s staff are trained to administer a lethal chemical injection.

As for euthanasia by way of a gunshot, it is a method not endorsed by either the American Veterinarian Medical Association or the American Humane Society, according to the groups’ websites.

Deputy Mayor Wilson said Houston does have an agreement with a local veterinarian to administer lethal injections. However, the rate charged per euthanization has recently skyrocketed, he said. What started at a base rate of $65 per dog is now almost double that.

This is why the community service officer is getting the necessary certification himself, Wilson said. But in the meantime, the city had to look at other options.

Wilson said the council examined having the borough take over animal control in Houston when Wasilla decided not to renew its contract. At that time, Wilson said, the council thought it would be more cost effective to downsize but continue with animal control. In light of recent events, Wilson said he expects the conversation to come up again.

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.