Kestrel, I have a question about canine distemper

[jmowreader]

The Cumberland County dog pound (no one who knows anything about Cumberland County's animal control operation would accuse their holding facility of being an "animal shelter") is currently in the throes of an outbreak of canine distemper.

I could spend all day running down the Cumberland County, NC, animal control department, but we'll take it from the words of the Assistant Director who was recently hired to suggest and implement new ideas then was fired for actually suggesting and implementing any: there's no hot water plumbing in the kennel area (the pipes to carry hot water from the water heater to the kennel area simply do not exist in that facility, and it's about three years old), no one was using cleaning products like bleach to disinfect the kennel area, and the only drug the animal control department owns is Death Plus.

Now here's the question: are they ever going to be able to get the distemper virus out of there?

[jtuck004]

1. The short answer is no. The reality is that

because it is spread by airborne and fluid contact, you could get all the animals out, disinfect the whole shelter, every hidden spot under a mop handle, every bend in every cage, kill it all, but the first infected animal you bring in spreads it again.

Read this

http://www.aahanet.org/PublicDocuments/VaccineGuidelines06Revised.pdf

The Shelter Guidelines for inoculations. All dogs should be inoculated upon entry. No exceptions, unless they are being euthanized.

All the kennels and dog runs should have the dogs removed to a safe place, other side of a door, something, then cleaned at least once a day, (twice is better but labor intensive) with a wash down of chemical and then rinse.

They should be in separate runs with separate food and water, bowls cleaned in a disinfectant and dried before reuse.

[jmowreader]

2. They talked about wholesale euthanasia but decided against it

Before they suspended adoption, something like 30 dogs went out that came down with distemper. 20 of them were returned to the shelter, the other 10 were euthanized by their new owners. I have no idea what it costs to euthanize a dog at a private vet, but I'd be sending the bill to the county after hearing the news of this.

[kestrel91316]

5. If they don't have money, the first thing they need to do is stop bringing animals in.

Shut the doors. Then quarantine the place. Nobody OUT. Let the chips fall where they may, euthanize all victims because the neurological sequelae IF they survive are horrible and incurable. When everybody is either dead or ok and adopted out, they need to discover the miraculous principle of DISINFECTION. And when it is finally safe to let animals back in, after a time, they need a policy of vaccinate on entry.

JMHO. But you and I both know they won't do it.

[jtuck004]

9. Yup

and sorry, I didn't see your name the first time I read that post. Didn't mean to jump in the way.

[jtuck004]

7. That sounds about right. I have seen whole shelters

euthanized for the same reason. Then filled and killed again.

One shelter in Texas a couple years ago sent dogs in crates into town, where they drowned the dogs. In their crates. Apparently euthanasia fluid was too expensive.

The answer is to empty the shelters. That's why our little nonprofit works to spay/neuter pets at no charge to the owners in areas of low income. We try to make it the community's event so they can reach people who wouldn't likely trust us that quickly. Did an event last summer, 138 cats and dogs in two days, two vets. I don't think they have had a single stray killed since.

In your case you need to figure out how to fund inoculation and materials, and get the county to let volunteers clean kennels. The veterinarians who will be defending the $300,000 or more invested in their education and practice, and the county may be defending their jobs. So you have to be very respectful and understanding of their needs, but there are ways...

[jmowreader]

11. They don't have the money for vaccination, for the sickest of reasons

The dogcatcher here decided it was unfair for the road officers to have pretty uniforms and the shelter workers to not, so he took all the money he COULD have spent on animal care, and uniformed the shelter staff.

People have attempted to volunteer to Animal Control. The dogcatcher doesn't want volunteers in his facility. No one knows why. He also doesn't want a veterinarian down there. Every so often they'll hire someone who knows anything about how to do this, and that person gets run off.

The only positive thing they've done down there is to set up an agreement with a shelter up north. It's in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts people have done their spay & neuter programs and their animal adoption setup so well they don't have enough animals for everyone who wants to adopt, so they come down here and pick up animals. Before they did this, the euthanasia rate on cats was about 90 percent. (Even better: when I first moved down here, they had a DIFFERENT arrangement...they were selling cat carcasses to Carolina Biological Supply, at a price which made it completely uneconomical to run any kind of a cat adoption program at all. They were euthanizing cats the minute they came into the shelter. This program has ended but it went on for many years.)

This is just one of the multitude of reasons I am so happy to be leaving Cumberland County.

[jtuck004]

12. If you haven't already found it from Kestrel's other link

http://www.sheltermedicine.com/portal/is_vaccination.shtml

But it sounds like your first problems are going to be gaining trust and getting some political support. Don't get too wrapped up in what they "ought" to be doing, and try not to tell them how to do their job (they already fired one person with that approach, it sounds like It can really impede your progress), and try to figure out how to make it easier for them to do this. Or find someone with power and buy them lunch, find out what they think and how you can help them.

I agree with Kestrel, but it may be that they don't like this any better than you do, really, and need a way out that lets them save face, if possible. Not easy.

[TheMadMonk]

6. Unless they are being euthenised immediately.

Further, as best as is practicable, any movement between kennels and euthenasia facilites should be one way in that direction only. This should include staff as well.

Also all short term, multiple occupation facilities such as kennels, hotel rooms, and hospital rooms should all have ease of cleaning as one of the primary design considerations.

Improvements in infection control has nearly always resulted in the best bang for your buck and yet modern policy is to eliminate or deemphasise the staff which changes sheets and washes the bed pans, sweeps the floors, wipes surfaces and dusts corners. The ones who lay the physical foundation on which all other standards of cleanliness are built.

If you don't want distemper, bedbugs and golden staph, you need good cleaners and service staff as much as you need vaccines, pesticide bombs and last resort antibiotics and yet when it comes to cutting financial corners, they are the lowest paid and the first out the door.

[jtuck004]

8. Absolutely

[kestrel91316]

3. Well, I'm not up on the latest in shelter medicine wrt dogs, being a feline GP.

I will nose around and see what I can find out.

[kestrel91316]

4. Link to the UCDavis shelter medicine page on canine distemper:

http://www.sheltermedicine.com/portal/is_canine_distempervirus.shtml#top3

Just between you and me, if they are so lackadaisical as to not even use disinfectant, they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of controlling ANY disease that gets in there.

People like that really piss me off.

[flvegan]

10. Odoban, available at Home Depot, etc.

Takes time but it's quite effective in cleansing a place of distemper. That or soaking the entire place in bleach and water. Nice thing about Odoban is that in mass quantities, it doesn't burn the eyes and throat, nor the skin of any dogs that come into contact with a large amount of it.

Sad that there are places like that out there. Even more sad that the only positive thing I can see in this is that they use Death Plus and not some gas chamber or .22 rifle.

[jmowreader]

13. Would you like me to make you scream REAL LOUD?

The woman who got fired for making waves, she says there is this big closet down there. (Understand: this is a NEW BUILDING. It's been up maybe three years, and it was designed by the best people in the animal shelter business.) It's full of every kind of cleaning product you would ever want--Odoban, Lysol, bleach, quaternary compounds, everything--but no one was using the stuff. She had to teach the workers to put cleaning solution in the water they used to mop the floor.

Not sure it matters much--the "best people in the business" apparently forgot to tell them to run a hot water line to the shelter area, because there isn't one.

Animal control has been a huge problem here for many years. They designed the shelter to meet the exact need at the time--"meeting the exact need at the time" is the theme song of the state of North Carolina. (They do it in other things too...when they built the jail they took the average number of detainees and inmates--about 500--and built the jail with exactly that many beds.) Then the state started getting big on raiding dogfighting rings. They generally euthanize vicious dogs but they can't do it until after the owner's trial...and when you put fifty or sixty pieces of evidence into a place that's already at its legal maximum, what are you going to do? Why, go through the place, pick the 50 ugliest dogs and break out the spare bottle of blue juice.

The animal rights people in this county wouldn't go near that place even if they could. We have three no-kill operations in the area--the SPCA has one, the Fayetteville Animal Protection Society is the second and The Haven is the third. Animal Control's been trying to put those three out of business for years. I know the woman who runs FAPS. Nice lady. I used to print for her, and every damn time she came in she had some new horror story about an Animal Control raid on her operation--it happens on a weekly basis. They do the same shit at the SPCA. The Haven is in a different county; they used to be in Cumberland County but the inspectors really had the ass for Linden Spear (who, admittedly, was running afoul of her license) so one of her supporters in the next county over donated a corner of his tobacco farm and enough money to build a good facility.