Animal Control Interim Director Ted Davis said he is meeting face-to-face with representatives of the Jefferson County Humane Society next week to discuss collaborative ways to improve the municipal animal shelter.
Animal Control was discussed Tuesday during the Pine Bluff City Council Public Safety Committee meeting. Davis said the meeting with the Humane Society was not scheduled as a result of complaints that were posted on a Facebook page under the name JeffersonCounty HumaneSociety on Tuesday and went viral throughout the day.
Davis said he and the society’s president Tana Pointer spoke Tuesday morning. He saw the Facebook post later and received calls from members of the public about its content.
Alderman Bill Brumett read the post aloud to Davis during the meeting.
The post alleges that dogs at the shelter are “staying in their own feces,” “are standing in water” and “don’t have any cots or bedding.”
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The post further alleges that Humane Society volunteers don’t get any cooperation out of the department and that the “supervisor is never available” and “the employees make their own hours and come and go as they please.” The post alleges that the shelter is often closed during the scheduled adoption hours of 1-5 p.m. weekdays.
“A volunteer groomed one of the dogs to try and get it adopted in October and put a festive scarf on the dog. Three months later the same feces-encrusted scarf is still on the dog and he is still sitting there waiting,” the post continues, before concluding with an appeal for the public to call the mayor’s office repeatedly until the problem is solved.
Contacted by The Commercial on Tuesday, Pointer said the Facebook post did not come from her or the club’s secretary. The post had been removed from the JeffersonCounty HumaneSociety page by the end of the day Tuesday.
“I don’t do Facebook,” Pointer said. “I didn’t know about it until somebody called me and I had them tell me what it said.”
Pointer said that any frustrations the Humane Society has with Animal Control should be addressed face to face and not on Facebook.
“It’s all about the animals and we need to put our differences aside. … I talked to Ted today and hopefully, they’re headed in the right direction,” Pointer said on Tuesday.
In an interview Wednesday, Davis addressed the accusations in the post. Davis said that the kennels are cleaned regularly, but that there will occasionally be feces in a cage because of the nature of dogs in general.
Davis said that there can be standing water in the kennel area if it is not hosed out according to procedure. The department sometimes uses workers who are performing community service who may use too much water. Davis said the staff is aware of the issue and tries to make sure all employees, volunteers and community service workers follow the proper procedures.
Davis said that the dogs cannot have cots or bedding in the kennels with them because that makes the area more difficult to keep clean. However, the department has started more frequently using plastic-based bedding that provides the dogs with some comfort without presenting cleanliness challenges, Davis said.
Davis said that volunteers are desperately needed, and that if volunteers from the Humane Society feel they are unwanted or that the department is uncooperative, that was certainly not the intent.
Davis said one of the key goals of the city administration is to build a new animal shelter. Funding for and permission to issue bonds to finance the shelter was approved by voters in a special election in February 2011. For the vision of that facility as a no-kill, modern and innovate facility to become a reality, Davis said the city needs to build successful partnerships with the Humane Society and the county government.
“It’s a three-legged stool that we’re hoping to build this new shelter on,” Davis said. “It will have to be a community-wide effort, with their help. But in the meantime, let me assure you, we’re going to do our very, very best to give the best care to the animals that we can.”
Davis said the current animal shelter is not perfect, and the staff are aware of that and are working on ways to improve it. Davis has just completed a three-month study of the department and will soon be making his recommendation to the city council as to how it should be structured, who should lead it and ways it can be improved.
Pointer said the Humane Society would like to see the city staff be more aggressive and treat animals with more respect, adding that the way animals are treated in a city’s shelter is a reflection on the city as a whole. She said they should be more proactive, rather than reactive about patrolling the neighborhoods and issuing citations.
Pointer also said the adoption hours for the shelter should be increased.
“If they’re not going to be open on Saturday, they should at least be open one night a week,” Pointer said.
Davis said the shelter is working on a trial one-day-a-month Saturday when the shelter is open for adoptions. It will likely launch in February, he said. Supervisor Brandon Southerland said at Tuesday’s committee meeting that the department has had Saturday hours in the past, but they did not result in many additional adoptions.
A Commercial reporter and photographer went to the shelter during adoption hours on Wednesday, and the building was staffed and open.
Southerland and other staff would not allow the photographer to enter the part of the building where the dogs are kept, saying that it was department policy to only allow photos of the animals to be taken outside. They said that people had been coming to the shelter lately and taking pictures and it was agitating the dogs.
Later Wednesday, Davis said that was incorrect and apologized. He said the animal shelter is open to the public, and the only time the adoption area is closed during working hours is during the morning hours when the facilities are cleaned.
The reporter was allowed in. The area and animals were clean, with the exception of about four cages where a dog had defecated in the kennel. Water was on the floor in only a couple of places where the concrete was not level. The animals did not have bedding in the kennels.