As some of you know, I volunteer with a no-kill, non-profit shelter in the area, and have been doing so for over three years. The shelter has an absolutely stellar reputation. There are occasional problems there, just as there are everywhere... but overall, I've always had a lot of faith in the way it's run.
In the past year, though, I've become concerned -- and in the past ten days, I've gotten downright angry. I could be expecting too much, though... I don't know. So please, especially if you have shelter experience, tell me what you think:
Those of us who foster for the shelter had always been assured that our foster critters were getting checked for potentially contagious problems before they were handed over to us, unless we were otherwise informed. Sometimes they're too young or too ill for some kinds of testing and treatment, but we were told we would always be informed if that was the case, so we could take appropriate precautions for our own pets.
Late last year, it became apparent to me that in fact, animals were being taken in and put right back out into foster homes without so much as a flea-check. I raised the issue with the volunteer coordinator, and she and I had a talk with the intake person and one of the senior vet techs. I was assured that the issue would be resolved... but since then, they've had such rapid turnover in most of the positions related to the issue that things have only gotten more chaotic. I don't believe I have ever received the right paperwork with a foster, which makes it impossible to track the animal's medical history... and we've unknowingly taken home kittens with fleas, ticks, coccidia, severe URI... you name it.
On one occasion, I smelled the characteristic smell of coccidia on the poopy little kitten we'd brought home, so I went back the next day and told them I thought the kitten had coccidia. The vet tech shooed me out of the room, supposedly did some kind of test, and handed the kitten back to me, saying she was fine. Three days later, the poor little thing was so sick that I gathered my nerve and went back again. This time I stayed and watched the test done -- and sure enough, she did have coccidia, and they finally gave us some medicine for her.
That's the general attitude, by the way -- the vet techs seem vehemently resentful toward the volunteers and fosters, to the point of direct hostility at times. We're told in volunteer training that they appreciate it when we let them know about kittens who seem to have problems -- sneezing, runny eyes, etc. But when we actually do so, we're dismissed, as if we're too stupid for our observations to mean anything.
The six tiny kittens I took home last week were shockingly small and weak, but the staff told me, "Oh, don't worry, they'll do fine, just feed them when they cry." I asked for more detailed instruction, because I'd never fostered such tiny ones before, but all I got was "Don't turn the heating pad up any higher than Low."
As some of you know, one of those kittens died at the emergency vet that night, and they were all found to have, for god's sake, maggots infesting their intestinal tracts. The infestation was visible, to anyone who knew what he was looking at (which I didn't).
So clearly, nobody had done a thing for those poor kittens -- they just handed them over to someone who had no experience in fostering bottle babies at all. If they'd looked at them first, they would have known they needed some immediate treatment -- and that poor little girl I later took to the ER might have survived.
Now Dorothy, the stray I had been caring for in our back yard, is at the shelter awaiting adoption. I've been over there almost every day to check on her, and my name is on record as the person surrendering her, so it should not have been hard for them to contact me. But they didn't -- they just decided to send her for spaying! I could have told them she was already spayed (in fact, I had told them -- I had marked it on the forms), because it was obvious from her behavior during the two months I knew her before I finally got her a spot in the shelter. Plus, she's declawed, and that certainly ought to raise a question in their minds as to whether she was spayed at the same time!
But they opened her up anyway, subjected her to sedation, only to find that she was already spayed... and now she has an infection in the incision, a high fever requiring subcutaneous fluids, and a bad URI.
And I'm the one who placed her in their hands! I feel horrible for what she's being put through. I'm on the verge of going over there and just taking her back, taking her to our vet, getting her well, and finding her a home myself, however long it might take.
I can't afford it... between Dylan's injury and the ER visit for the foster kitten, we're down over $450 in the past two weeks. But I'm seriously thinking of doing it anyway, asking the vet to let me pay over time.
Am I wrong to expect better than this of our shelter? I know it's an incredibly high-pressure environment, with far more animals in need than can possibly be helped... I know that many of the people who work there do so because they like animals a lot better than people, and therefore they just aren't going to be pleasant to deal with... but it still seems to me that there's a carelessness over there, a literal lack of care, that was not the norm just a year or so ago.
Have I been deluding myself about the quality of our shelter? Is it just this way in shelters everywhere? And if not, if it should not be like this... what can I do? What should I do?
In the past year, though, I've become concerned -- and in the past ten days, I've gotten downright angry. I could be expecting too much, though... I don't know. So please, especially if you have shelter experience, tell me what you think:
Those of us who foster for the shelter had always been assured that our foster critters were getting checked for potentially contagious problems before they were handed over to us, unless we were otherwise informed. Sometimes they're too young or too ill for some kinds of testing and treatment, but we were told we would always be informed if that was the case, so we could take appropriate precautions for our own pets.
Late last year, it became apparent to me that in fact, animals were being taken in and put right back out into foster homes without so much as a flea-check. I raised the issue with the volunteer coordinator, and she and I had a talk with the intake person and one of the senior vet techs. I was assured that the issue would be resolved... but since then, they've had such rapid turnover in most of the positions related to the issue that things have only gotten more chaotic. I don't believe I have ever received the right paperwork with a foster, which makes it impossible to track the animal's medical history... and we've unknowingly taken home kittens with fleas, ticks, coccidia, severe URI... you name it.
On one occasion, I smelled the characteristic smell of coccidia on the poopy little kitten we'd brought home, so I went back the next day and told them I thought the kitten had coccidia. The vet tech shooed me out of the room, supposedly did some kind of test, and handed the kitten back to me, saying she was fine. Three days later, the poor little thing was so sick that I gathered my nerve and went back again. This time I stayed and watched the test done -- and sure enough, she did have coccidia, and they finally gave us some medicine for her.
That's the general attitude, by the way -- the vet techs seem vehemently resentful toward the volunteers and fosters, to the point of direct hostility at times. We're told in volunteer training that they appreciate it when we let them know about kittens who seem to have problems -- sneezing, runny eyes, etc. But when we actually do so, we're dismissed, as if we're too stupid for our observations to mean anything.
The six tiny kittens I took home last week were shockingly small and weak, but the staff told me, "Oh, don't worry, they'll do fine, just feed them when they cry." I asked for more detailed instruction, because I'd never fostered such tiny ones before, but all I got was "Don't turn the heating pad up any higher than Low."
As some of you know, one of those kittens died at the emergency vet that night, and they were all found to have, for god's sake, maggots infesting their intestinal tracts. The infestation was visible, to anyone who knew what he was looking at (which I didn't).
So clearly, nobody had done a thing for those poor kittens -- they just handed them over to someone who had no experience in fostering bottle babies at all. If they'd looked at them first, they would have known they needed some immediate treatment -- and that poor little girl I later took to the ER might have survived.
Now Dorothy, the stray I had been caring for in our back yard, is at the shelter awaiting adoption. I've been over there almost every day to check on her, and my name is on record as the person surrendering her, so it should not have been hard for them to contact me. But they didn't -- they just decided to send her for spaying! I could have told them she was already spayed (in fact, I had told them -- I had marked it on the forms), because it was obvious from her behavior during the two months I knew her before I finally got her a spot in the shelter. Plus, she's declawed, and that certainly ought to raise a question in their minds as to whether she was spayed at the same time!
But they opened her up anyway, subjected her to sedation, only to find that she was already spayed... and now she has an infection in the incision, a high fever requiring subcutaneous fluids, and a bad URI.
And I'm the one who placed her in their hands! I feel horrible for what she's being put through. I'm on the verge of going over there and just taking her back, taking her to our vet, getting her well, and finding her a home myself, however long it might take.
I can't afford it... between Dylan's injury and the ER visit for the foster kitten, we're down over $450 in the past two weeks. But I'm seriously thinking of doing it anyway, asking the vet to let me pay over time.
Am I wrong to expect better than this of our shelter? I know it's an incredibly high-pressure environment, with far more animals in need than can possibly be helped... I know that many of the people who work there do so because they like animals a lot better than people, and therefore they just aren't going to be pleasant to deal with... but it still seems to me that there's a carelessness over there, a literal lack of care, that was not the norm just a year or so ago.
Have I been deluding myself about the quality of our shelter? Is it just this way in shelters everywhere? And if not, if it should not be like this... what can I do? What should I do?