pet connection

This is a transcript of Christie Keith’s interview with San Francisco SPCA President Jan McHugh-Smith, about the April 21, 2008 closing of the Hearing Dog Program, a recent article in San Francisco Weekly that was highly critical of the agency, the shelter’s plans to construct a state-of-the-art veterinary hospital, and the SPCA’s ongoing commitment to saving animal lives.

Christie Keith: I understand based on reading the media releases and the information (SF SPCA public relations representative) Kristen (Green) sent me why the decision was made to end the San Francisco SPCA Hearing Dog Program, that basically it was a resources issue and whether that was the best place to focus your resources.

But I think what my real question is the way it was done, the very suddenness with which it was announced and I was wondering if you could explain how that came to happen?

Jan McHugh-Smith: Well, I know it seems sudden to the volunteers and staff, but the board had been evaluating all of the programs for the San Francisco SPCA since the fall of ’07, and looking at and weighing out all of the different pieces of each program. The outcomes each program produces, the cost of the programs, how close they were to our mission; that type of thing.

How many animals they influenced – how many animals they saved I guess I should say. So, it was part of the board’s process and it was months and months.

Then in April the board made a final decision to close down the program, and because it was between graduations and we knew that we wouldn’t be able to support hearing dogs being put into new homes, we decided to just shut it down and put the dogs up for adoption because they weren’t fully trained yet.

They were months away from graduation and it just seemed best to shut down the program and move forward with setting up support systems for the teams we have in place and trying to formulate our relationship with CCI.

Christie Keith: And all of the people on the SPCA Hearing Dog Program waiting list, were they basically transferred to CCI or did they have to reapply there and start from scratch? Do you know?

Jan McHugh-Smith: Our partnership with CCI is a support for the application process for the people on the wait list. So if you were on the wait list, you do have to apply through CCI because they have a little bit different application process.

But for those people that decide they want to do that, that process is going to be streamlined through the support we’re providing to CCI to hire somebody to do that.

Christie Keith: That’s great. Now, you’re saying that the dogs that were moved out of the Hearing Dog Program and into the adoption program were months away from graduating. That is somewhat different from what some of the people I spoke to who are involved with the Hearing Dog Program (who) had said that some of those dogs were pretty close to being ready for placement.

Jan McHugh-Smith: I guess it depends on what you consider ready for placement. It takes four to six months to train the dogs. Obviously each dog is an individual and has different challenges around their training. We usually do group graduations and that was slated for the end of June.

We terminated the program in mid-April so the dogs would not have been placed until two months later. So they had some training left to do.

The thing I was most concerned about was when the real moment of truth: when the person gets the dog, they still have to be trained on how to work their dog. That’s what CCI is so great at. They spend a lot of time training the new teams together.

We were trying to wrap up Hearing Dog by the end of the fiscal year and my concern was if we graduated these dogs at the end of June, then we would have been continuing to run the program into July and August. Tthe program was closed in April and the graduation for those particular dogs would have been the end of June. Those dogs were basically still in the process of getting trained.

Christie Keith: Right; I understand. So, have they all been adopted now?

Jan McHugh-Smith: Yes; they were adopted.

Christie Keith: Do you have anything else that you wanted to say as regards to the Hearing Dog Program, the transition?

Jan McHugh-Smith: Well, I’m excited about our partnership with Canine Companions for Independence because that’s their core mission, to train assistance dogs. I had the opportunity to go up and visit their headquarters in Santa Rosa and their program is really amazing.

They have on-site residences – places for people to live who are going to be receiving dogs. They have brand new equipment that they use to train their dogs. They have humane kennels for their dogs to live in.

Christie Keith: I know that SF SPCA went out and found dogs, most of them small dogs although not exclusively, in shelters. That part of the mission of SPCA was to provide the dogs to humans, but it was also to save the dogs themselves. Does CCI work with shelter populations or do they mostly use donated and purpose bred dogs?

Jan McHugh-Smith: They use purpose bred dogs probably. They have used shelter dogs in the past, but the drop out rate was very high. It was for us, too.

Christie Keith: What was the rate? The drop out rate?

Jan McHugh-Smith: I want to say it was 50 percent. (Unintelligible) saving lives. The San Francisco SPCA has a very extensive transfer program. We go to many different agencies in the Central Valley to pick up dogs that are slated for euthanasia and bring them to our place for adoption.

A lot of the dogs that the Hearing Dog Program brought in just went right into our adoption program because they didn’t qualify as a hearing dog. So in terms of saving lives, we’re continuing to do more in that area.

Then in terms of CCI, they work with Labradors and the Labrador I met was about a 40 pound female. They talked about they’ve never had any problems with placing that size dog with people.

If people really wanted a shelter animal, I know the Sam Simon Foundation does shelter dogs down in Malibu.

Christie Keith: The main issue the SF Weekly article hit on on was the SPCA’s involvement with developing the animal hospital. Kristen sent me the information that 50 percent of the animal hospital will be dedicated to your animal lifesaving mission – services for shelter dogs, spay/neuter, and so on.

Jan McHugh-Smith: There’s another thing that I really would like to clarify about the hospital: it’s a non-profit hospital. They kept saying “for-profit” in the SF Weekly.

Christie Keith: If you look at a group like Pets Unlimited, which funds its lifesaving with its hospital and nobody has a problem with that.

What do you think is the reason that this became the focus of SF Weekly’s critique of the changes at SPCA?

Jan McHugh-Smith: There’s been a number of models that the SPCA has looked at over the years and one of the models early on was working with for-profit veterinary specialists. That’s when there was a lot of concern in the community about having them be a part of the hospital, and there was a lot of controversy around that.

So I think what’s happened is people, they’re holding onto that. They don’t realize that we’ve actually changed the model to just be our private, non-profit wellness center and they don’t understand that a lot of our veterinary shelter medicine programs are going to be living over there. They’re thinking it’s just some big for-profit hospital, but that’s not the reality. It’s just left over confusion from previous (unintelligible).

(At this point, there was a technical problem with the recording equipment, and the remaining minutes of the interview are based on handwritten notes. Remarks attribted to McHugh-Smith were transcribed verbatim and accurately during the interview.)

McHugh-Smith stressed that the development of the hospital was necessary for the health and well-being of the shelter animals, not just paying clients of the hospital. She particularly pointed out that disease control protocols – including protecting new shelter animals from spreading disease to the existing shelter population and from getting sick themselves, as well as reducing stress while they are being treated medically and spayed and neutered — are part of the shelter’s animal lifesaving mission.

Jan McHugh-Smith: Sheltering has changed so much in the last 20 years. Maddie’s Adoption Center was a paradigm shift in its day, and now, it’s the same with the hospital. I want people to have faith in the SF SPCA. We are a model for people to follow, of how to use best practices.

She said that she found it uspetting to hear the SF SPCA called “a kill shelter,” or suggest it’s lost its commitment to animal lifesaving.

Jan McHugh-Smith: We have the same commitment to saving lives that we have always had. We have a 98 percent live release rate, and in combination with Animal Care and Control, a city-wide 84 percent live release rate. That’s something any shelter should be proud of.

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The SF SPCA also provided these points in response to the article published in SF Weekly:

• The San Francisco SPCA (The SF/SPCA) has INCREASED the numbers of companion animals it has saved this fiscal year as compared to last by 766 animals (421 dogs and 345 cats).

• No healthy, friendly animal is ever euthanized at The SF/SPCA. Every viable humane option is exhausted before a euthanasia decision is made.

• The San Francisco SPCA save rate this year is an enviable 98 percent for the organization and 84 percent YTD for the City when our figures are combined with those of our partner, San Francisco Animal Care & Control (ACC). Additionally over 70% of the cats that we have taken from ACC over the past year were those with medical and behavior ailments.

• Nearly 50% of the Leanne B. Roberts Animal Care Center is dedicated to homeless animal rehabilitation and sheltering. The new Animal Care Center will enable us to help save more lives.

• Tulane, the cat featured in the article, was examined by our veterinary staff and determined to be irredeemably suffering. Releasing him into a feral colony would have been unethical, inhumane, irresponsible and not to mention illegal.

• Issac, the ‘puppy’ in the article, was a 50 pound juvenile dog that had bitten and broken skin. Re-homing a dog with a history of aggression directed at children is reckless.

• The Hearing Dog Program placed 17 dogs last year, at a cost of $650,000-over $38,000 per dog. Hearing Dogs under training at The SF/SPCA were living for extended periods of time in kennels unsuited for long-term housing. We appreciate the importance of Hearing Dogs in the deaf community, but recognize that other agencies, focused solely on training and placing service dogs, can provide this service more effectively.

It’s unfortunate that after spending several hours engaged in candid, honest and forthright conversation with current SF/SPCA staff, Mr. Geluardi choose to dismiss the accomplishments of our hard-working team of volunteers and staff. Programs are changing at The SF/SPCA – that’s how agencies progress and have a stronger impact on their mission. One thing that has not changed, however, is the dedication and passion of our staff and volunteers – and our everlasting commitment to providing humane housing, rehabilitation, and adoption to as many animals as possible.