Left behind and over crowded
Dogs in area shelters are often brought in during the warmer months of the year, and many are transferred, or euthanized when shelters run out of room.
By Halie Barger
Chaser was given a new name, cage and bed when he arrived at the Humane Society, but Delanie Couch gave him his forever home. Like many other dogs in the shelter, Chaser was transferred due to overcrowding in other locations, an issue that is prevalent in southwest Ohio. Chaser is a 14 year old chocolate lab who has lived in many different homes, but Couch’s home is his last stop.
“They told me that he hadn’t been at the shelter for longer than a week, but that he came from another one because they were going to have to put him down,” Couch said.
There are 63 no-kill shelters in Ohio, according to No Kill Network.org. No-kill means that if an animal stays in the shelter for too long without being adopted, the shelter will not euthanize them.
Corey Roscoe, The Ohio State Director of the Humane Society of the United States, said each of the 88 counties in Ohio have a shelter through the county’s dog warden, but the total number of shelters in Ohio is difficult to quantify.
“Organizations like the Ohio Animal Welfare Federation have been trying to quantify how many organizations operate for companion animal protection for years, but the task has been challenging,” Roscoe said.
While there may be plenty of shelters in Ohio, many find it difficult to house all the stray animals that come their way. Although, according to Roscoe, these types of overpopulation issues are not happening everywhere in Ohio. In fact, some shelters are nearly empty.
“Right now, there are shelters in the greater northeast and northwest regions of the U.S. with so few pets in their care that they have a waiting list of loving families looking to adopt.” Roscoe said. “Conversely, there are other shelters in the southern and rural west and mid-west so overcrowded that they are forced to consider euthanizing perfectly healthy or easily treatable pets every single day.”
Animal shelters are taking steps toward amending the disparity issue.
“Animal shelters and rescue groups have been addressing this challenge by relocating animals from areas of overcrowding to locales where certain types of dogs and cats are in short supply, improving their chances of adoption,” Roscoe said.
One of the leading causes of overcrowding in shelters is animal abandonment, according to Leslie Renner, the President of the Preble County Humane Society. Renner added that animal abandonment is at its height in spring.
“We are pretty much at capacity all of the time,” Renner said. “We always have owner surrender dogs, people calling us wanting to bring dogs in, a lot of times we will have them from out of county because maybe their county’s shelter is a kill shelter.”
According to Renner, dogs are also often brought in due to behavior problems.
“So often, the dog can be here a week, and we’ve got it turned around and going in the right direction,” Renner said.
The student problem
The Preble County Humane Society is located 20 minutes north of Oxford, and like the Animal Friends Humane Society, it sees animals from the Oxford area. Lt. Lara Fening, of the Oxford Police Department, said the public safety assistants are particularly busy with animal cases this time of year.
“We have had a number of problems in the past over (school) breaks with how animals are being cared for,” Fening said.
Many area shelters, like the Preble County Humane Society, won’t adopt to college students.
“Student life is not a good time to have the responsibility of a pet and it’s not a good environment for the pet,” Renner said.
Student life can imply a number of different things. For students at Miami it means renting houses, apartments or living in a fraternity house. Most of these living situations include multiple occupants in one household. According to Mike Murphy, volunteer and board member at the Animal Adoption Foundation in Hamilton, Ohio, these types of social situations can be detrimental to an animal’s health.
“We had some folks turning them (the animals) into frat or sorority animals,” Murphy said.
Lesile Renner in Preble County has seen firsthand what can happen to animals living in non-ideal college environments.
“A guy called, he and his buddy bought a pup at the beginning of the school year sharing responsibility, well of course the one guy was doing more the other guy was very rough playing with the pup,” Renner said. “He started playing rough with the dog, I mean really rough, that the dog bit him in the nose.”
Renner said that the dog had to be brought to her because other shelters wouldn’t accept a dog with a bite record.
Fening says a lot of issues happen when students leave Oxford for break and leave their animals behind.
“We have to make special communication on what our expectations are,” Fening said. “Inevitably there are animals left behind and they starve to death.”
The Animal Adoption Foundation also chooses not to adopt to students.
“We used to adopt out to college students, but we had some unfortunate experiences with that,” Murphy said.
Adopting an animal
While this time of year can mean an increase in the population of area shelters, adoptions also increase as the weather grows warmer.
“They (adoptions) do increase more during the summer months because people are outside more, and they’re thinking now would be a good time to get a dog,” Renner said.
However, not just anyone can adopt an animal.
The adoption process varies from shelter to shelter, and for many there are strict stipulations, such as having a fence in your backyard.
For the Animal Adoption Foundation, the adoption process requires an in person interview to ensure the animals are a good fit for the owner and vice versa, according to Murphy.
Similarly, according to their website, The Animal Friends Humane Society’s application requires you to establish whether or not you are employed, where the pet will live and if you attend school.
The Animal Adoption Foundation and The Preble County Humane Society like many other area shelters utilize social media to promote the adoption of their animals. Couch and Chaser showed up on a post from the Animal Friends Humane Society celebrating his adoption.
Couch is a student at the University of Cincinnati graduating in May, and does not have the typical student living situation. Commuting to UC from her house in Hamilton meant that she could adopt Chaser without fear of student life getting in the way. She has a fenced in backyard and a carpeted floor, which was one of the requirements for Chaser due to his hip dysplasia.
“Chaser is so good,” Couch said. “During the day he just wants to lay around.”
Couch knew Chaser was a good fit from the start.
Abuse in Oxford
Lara Fening of the Oxford Police says the public safety assistants deal with a lot of abuse cases in the area.
The standards for animal abuse and cruelty cases are pretty low in terms of the law, according to Fening. (Reporter Paige Roberts explores the issue of animal abuse in her story for Oxford Stories.)
Fening says all animal owners are required to show is a source of food, water and shelter.
“As long as these animals are minimally taken care of, that’s acceptable,” Fening said.
Animal abuse cases are called directly into the Oxford Police Department, where their public safety assistants are sent out to investigate.
In the case of a stray pet, the Oxford Police Department has an on-site kennel where animals can be held as well as a microchip reader, according to Fening. In the case that no one is searching for the animal, it is then transferred over to the Butler County Dog Warden.
Animals that are left behind are seen all over Oxford. According to Fening, many animals are dropped off in random areas.
“We had a dog that was left at the dog park the other day,” Fening said. “There are worse places to abandon a dog.”
Local residents also work to track down the owners of lost, stray or abandoned animals. A number of social media sites regularly feature posts where individuals try to track down owners or let the community know they’ve taken what seems like a lost or stray animal to a shelter.
Oxford resident Julie Schlichter says this time of year strays seem to be everywhere.
“I live on a farm right outside of town, and there are always people dumping their dogs on our property this time of year, ” Schlichter said.
Fening said she’s working to educate students, community members and landlords to prevent the abuse or abandonment of animals in the Oxford community.
