What’s going on with the San Francisco SPCA?
By Christie Keith
June 12, 2008
I’ve been working on a story about the abrupt closing of the San Francisco SPCA’s Hearing Dog Program, and the more I dig into it, the less I understand what’s happening at what was once the best and brightest shelter in the country.
SF Weekly is reporting that the SF SPCA, which is a private shelter that does not do animal control, has all but abandoned its “no kill” mission — the same mission that once made it one of the richest shelters in the country, due to huge donor support — and has implemented new guidelines making it easier for its staff to kill pets with borderline and treatable health and behavior problems. The described two animals recently killed at the shelter, a six-month-old puppy named Isaac, and a feral kitten named Tulane, who started out his life at the SF SPCA and was adopted into a home:
Tulane appeared to be a good adoption candidate, according to his medical log. Volunteers reported he enjoyed having his head petted, and purred contentedly when sitting in their laps.
The person who adopted Tulane already had a domesticated cat the kitten got along with. But Tulane never formed a bond with his adopter. On May 2, more than a year after the adoption, that person returned a very different cat to the SF/SPCA. Now 18 months old, Tulane demonstrated fearful and aggressive behavior and was categorized as “completely feral,” according to the log. He was put in a cage where he ran in tight circles, knocking over his food bowl. Veterinary staff assumed the spilled food meant Tulane wasn’t eating, even though at least two employees say there was fresh crap in his litter box.
The SF/SPCA’s feral team was making plans to return Tulane to a managed feral colony where they thought he would be happier and would likely eat better. But before arrangements were made, veterinary staff decided, without a full medical examination, that the cat’s failure to eat was a symptom of a serious condition. Tulane was euthanized.
Why the big rush, that the paper says cost Isaac, Tulane, and other animals their lives?
The reason for the new euthanasia policies is, in part, money. The SF/SPCA is scrambling to find funding to complete its controversial $30 million, for-profit animal hospital, the Leanne B. Roberts Animal Care Center. The project is only half complete, and with the looming specter of hiring staff, new equipment costs, and opening expenses, there has been an emphasis on saving money around the shelter, where it costs an estimated $43 a day to house a healthy cat. Since president Jan McHugh-Smith was hired a year ago, she has scaled back or eliminated internationally known behavior and medical services that had saved thousands of animals over the years.
Employees and volunteers were alarmed at the recent closure of the 30-year-old Hearing Dog Program, along with major changes to adoption policies, cutbacks to the Cat Behavior Program, and the loss of the volunteer Affection Eaters program, which might have been able to help Tulane.
The cutbacks and new policies have caused at least seven staffers to quit, as well as an uncertain number of volunteers. Some of them have organized into two groups who are vowing to expose the new policies even if it means that donors, the lifeblood of the nonprofit, stop cutting checks.
And it’s not only the legendary Hearing Dog Program that’s been shut down:
McHugh-Smith has also made controversial changes to the Cat Behavior Program. Longtime SF/SPCA cat behaviorists Dilara Parry and Mikel Delgado, who were the most prominent standard-bearers of the now-defunct no-kill policies, gave their notice in April, claiming management had been continually undermining them. And, Delgado says, there had been a shift in the policy that every treatable animal should be given a chance at adoption.
“The cat behavior staff had to struggle to keep this program together, especially over the last year,” says Delgado, who is a certified cat behavior consultant. “This was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting.”
Management made it clear that less time and money would be spent on marginal animals, Delgado says, and services were vanishing. The volunteer-run Affection Eaters program, which helped traumatized cats regain their appetites in the shelter, quietly disappeared.
The SF Weekly piece is painful reading for someone, like me, who was involved with the shelter in the early days of its no-kill transition under the guidance of then-director Richard Avanzino, now the head of Maddie’s Fund, a national organization dedicated to funding community efforts to become no-kill.
I have a series of interviews with people involved with the story set up over the next few days, and am not really sure where this will go, but the SF Weekly report clearly lays the blame at the feet of the SPCA staff who are hellbent on pushing through the hospital project, now careening widly over-budget.
Read the full story here.
No, it’s not a joke. Or if it is, I don’t know the punch line. But I do know my dad, the Pet Connection’s Dr. Marty Becker (seems so weird to spell out your dad’s name like that) is in New York now, preparing for a bunch of meetings and upcoming appearances.
To the right is a picture of what you can find on the back of my ‘98 Plymouth Voyager minivan. I also have a pair of dog silhouette magnets and a bumper-sticker for Bark magazine.
I was planning to fly down this morning, but I am fried. (We finished the books around 6 a.m. on Tuesday.) So I’m going to spend today hanging with the pets and leisurely doing a little laundry and then pack to go.