With urine and feces all over the floor, and on her bed, just inches away from her water bucket, a chocolate Labrador retriever eats while being housed in a kennel at the Carroll County Animal Shelter. Volunteers with Carroll County Animal Support are angry that the county facility isn't being cleaned as often as it should be by dog catcher Leonard Danner. Danner denies the claim, and says he cleans the shelter daily.
Phyllis Codling/The News-Democrat
Volunteers call for better shelter conditions By PHYLLIS CODLING
The News-Democrat
Volunteers working for a local animal welfare group are unhappy with conditions at the Carroll County Animal Shelter, located on Dean's Ferry Road off of Boone Road.
Sandy Smith, a member of the board of directors for Carroll County Animal Support, and Tammie Crawford, CCAS executive director, have been working to help dog catcher Leonard Danner keep the 10-kennel facility clean since early December.
Another concern is that the facility isn't warm enough for the animals in the winter time. Tammie Crawford, Carroll County Animal Support executive director, on Wednesday, Feb. 7, demonstrates an open hole in an outside wall, located only a few feet from a kennel where a dog is being kept. Though the thermostate was set at 90 degrees, the thermometer said it was just 60 degrees inside that day.
Phyllis Codling/The News-Democrat
The group, established in 2003, has been active for more than a year in getting dogs out of the shelter and into rescue organizations that help find foster or permanent homes for the animals. Often, Smith meets members of the rescues at the shelter so they can pick up the dogs they've pledged to aid.
She said she has often found that the kennels had not been cleaned, sometimes to the point where the dogs have nowhere to step in their runs without stepping in feces or urine. She said she offered to help with cleaning because she was "tired of the animals living that way. It's bad enough they have to be here at all."
Smith said she talked with Danner and agreed to clean the facility in the mornings, while he agreed to clean in the evenings. The arrangement was OK'd by Carroll County Judge-Executive Harold "Shorty" Tomlinson, who provided a key to allow CCAS volunteers access to the shelter when Danner is off duty or on a call.
However, Smith claims Danner isn't holding up his end of the agreement, and she now finds herself doing most of the cleaning.
This was the case again last week, she said, explaining that she had met Danner at the shelter about noon on Tuesday, Feb. 6. She agreed to help Danner clean that day, with the understanding that Danner would return to the shelter later Tuesday to clean and check the dogs' food and water.
On Wednesday, Smith went to the shelter about 1 p.m. to meet rescue volunteers who were taking two coon dogs being kept there. She noticed there were no footprints in the snow, which started falling Tuesday afternoon. When she entered the facility, the kennels were full of feces, urine and spilled food: It was clear, she said, that Danner hadn't been there during the previous 24 hours.
"There's no excuse for that," said Crawford, who was summoned to the shelter by Smith. Crawford, a professional dog groomer and breeder, said a kennel should be cleaned at least twice a day, if not more, for the dogs' health and comfort.
"He [Danner] should have been up here this morning, at least," Crawford continued. "It's neglectful, letting those animals stay in those filthy kennels; it doesn't take that long to clean."
Crawford said the drop-off kennel also hadn't been cleaned. Located on the outside of the shelter, the drop-off kennel is there for people who want to relinquish their dogs to the county when Danner isn't on site.
Dried feces were visible in the kennel area, and frozen urine was found in the water bowl.
"Who would want to leave a dog in there," Crawford asked, adding that through the feces, a dog placed in that kennel would be exposed to any disease the previous dog might be carrying.
In a telephone interview Tuesday, Danner disputed Smith's claims. "I come up here and clean it every day," he said, adding that he'd been taking care of the shelter daily for 11 years. "I don't need nobody to help."
But, Danner said Smith had promised to clean on the weekends for him, and said he was at the shelter on Saturday and found that it hadn't been cleaned. He said Smith hasn't been holding up her end of the bargain.
But Smith said her cleaning the facility on Saturdays and Sundays was never part of their agreement. Still, she said, "he hasn't pulled a single weekend since I started helping" in December, she said.
She said she had been going every day to the shelter to clean and care for the dogs until the past week or so, because her truck had broken down. "I told him that, and I told him I would be up there whenever I could."
But, she said the point is, "he's getting paid for it, I'm not. It's still his job."
Smith and Crawford said they also are concerned that the shelter isn't being kept warm enough.
Earlier last week, Smith said she arrived at the shelter to find that the heat wasn't working. She said about 1-2 inches of ice had formed in the dogs' water bowls. She contacted Danner and the county, and by Wednesday, the heater, located in the rafters of the kennel area, appeared to have been fixed.
The thermostat was set at 90 degrees, but the thermometer indicated it was 60 degrees inside, she said.
Even with the heat fixed, both Crawford and Smith believe that the shelter isn't warm enough. Whatever insulation was in the building when it was built has been destroyed by rodents, which also have chewed out large holes in the walls and ceilings of the shelter office. There also is a 12-inch square opening in an outside wall near one of the kennels that looks like a window, but has no glass or plastic to keep cold air out. Crawford demonstrated by putting her arm through the opening to the outside.
Additionally, many of the dogs housed at the shelter on Wednesday showed symptoms of "kennel cough." Also known as trachealbronchitis, it a contagious upper-respiratory infection caused either by bacteria or one of several viruses. CCAS tries to vaccinate all dogs brought to the facility, when possible, against the infection, Crawford said.
Tomlinson said Tuesday that he is aware of Crawford's and Smith's concerns about the facility, particularly the issue of keeping the kennels clean, and admits that it is possible Danner "maybe isn't spending as much time up there as he needs to." He said he has assured both women that he plans to address those concerns with Danner, "if that is, in fact, actually the case."
Tomlinson said his list of priorities as judge still includes either renovating the existing shelter or finding a way to build a new facility. He said the county still has the $13,000 it received as a grant from the state Department of Agriculture for renovations to the shelter, and that an additional $20,000 of county funding also had been set aside for the project.
The county received an extension on the state grant last summer. The grant expires in June, but Tomlinson said he hopes work will be under way to renovate or replace the facility by then and that the state will allow for another extension of the deadline to use funds, if needed.
Editor's note: Phyllis Codling is editor of The News-Democrat and also serves as president of Carroll County Animal Support.
Courtesy of PHYLLIS CODLING
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