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Michelle Quilter hitches a collar to Colby, a boxer she adopted. Seven other dogs found homes.
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New warden makes gains at dog pound

The Blade/Lisa Dutton

New warden makes gains at dog pound

A month and a half into her new job, Lucas County Dog Warden Julie Lyle says she is making progress scaling back euthanasia at the pound and providing more humane conditions for caged dogs.

"I am doing my best to get these dogs out alive," Ms. Lyle, 31, said last week.

The department's "live release rate" - the percentage of dogs that leave the pound alive thanks to adoption, a rescue group transfer, or owner redemption - rose to 53 percent during her first full month in office that began April 12.

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A year earlier, under former Dog Warden Tom Skeldon, the release rate was 30 percent, according to the department figures.


Dog lovers have closely watched the new warden's progress since her arrival from Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

"I think she's moving in the right direction," said Jean Keating, co-founder of the Ohio Coalition of Dog Advocates and vocal critic of the former warden. "She's here to serve the community, and those are the people who are going to support her and want her to succeed. I think as long as she remembers that, she can continue to move forward."

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Dog-kill numbers have been a touchy subject since Mr. Skeldon was forced out of office late last year during mounting criticism that he killed too many dogs and adopted out too few. He officially retired in January after more than 22 years on the job.

With 114 dogs in its custody, the pound last week was nearing its practical space limit, Ms. Lyle said. The facility has 212 cages, but many cages are inadequate or are strictly for very small dogs. Only the tiniest dogs are able to stand and move around in the cramped cages of the pound's adoption area.

While Ms. Lyle insists she hasn't had to euthanize dogs for space reasons, she said some dogs with potentially treatable behavioral or health issues have been put down for lack of space or staff resources.

For instance, a healthy and seemingly friendly dog that fails a temperament test for some relatively minor reason such as food guarding won't get a chance to change its behavior with training. That dog will instead die.

"It might not be for a reason that I would euthanize my own dog," Ms. Lyle said. "But I don't think we can do behavior modification at this point. Eventually I'd love to, but that's down the road for us."

Ms. Lyle believes it's more humane to put down a dog than to allow the facility and cages to get filthy and overrun.

"My concern with capacity is not how many can we house and feed, but how many can we care for," she said. "Just because we have 212 cages, we will never have 212 dogs … I'm not willing to let them sit and rot in their feces."

The warden continued, "Euthanasia is not anything that we enjoy here. But we will not allow animals to suffer in our care. If they're suffering, I will relieve them of their suffering."

Ms. Lyle said her goal is to see more dogs leave the pound alive, provided they're ready to be good pets.

To that end, she organized the department's first sponsored adopt-a-thon in a decade.

The "Find A Furry Friend" event attracted dozens of people yesterday to the county pound on South Erie Street and resulted in eight completed adoptions and six more potential adoptions.

"For a first try, I'd say it was a success," Ms. Lyle said moments after handing off an extremely friendly 5-year-old Labrador named Cirie to her new family.

She also plans to unveil a program for transferring more dogs into the hands of rescue groups.

Her predecessor drew much criticism from the pet-welfare community for his refusal to work with all-breed rescues, with the exception of the Toledo Area Humane Society.

John Dinon, the Humane Society's executive director, said the organization has expanded its relationship with the county under Ms. Lyle's leadership, accepting a limited number of temperament-tested "pit bulls" as transfers from the pound.

"She came into a very difficult situation, and she's been working hard to improve operations there," Mr. Dinon said.

Ms. Lyle hopes to gain approval from her department's union for a volunteer program to address quality-of-life issues in the pound. Citizens could then volunteer for various activities such as grooming, playing, walking, or taking photos for a dog adoption Web site.

At present, the dogs are rarely taken out of their cages. Ms. Lyle said that after her first meeting with union officials, she was told that they opposed allowing volunteers to walk dogs or groom them.

But David Vincent, chairman of the technical and service chapter of American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 544, which represents unionized pound workers, said he saw no unsolvable problems with the volunteer idea, provided there aren't liability issues and a clear line is set between staff and volunteer work.

"I think what she's trying to do is a good thing," Mr. Vincent, a sanitary engineer with the county, said of Ms. Lyle's efforts in general. "I think the image of that department needs to be changed. There's a lot of good people who care about dogs who work there, and they got painted with the same brush as the past dog warden."

Lucas County Commissioner Ben Konop complimented Ms. Lyle's performance thus far.

"She came to an organization that was in shambles, and in a relatively short period of time she's made some tangible progress," Mr. Konop said. "She gets a lot of mixed messages from [county officials], and I think that makes her job a lot more difficult.

"Unfortunately, I think a lot of the messages coming out are impacting her ability to significantly raise the adoption rates and significantly change the culture."

County Administrator Peter Ujvagi said yesterday that the county is experiencing a revenue shortfall, so it's "highly unlikely" that general fund money will be available to help Ms. Lyle out.

The dog warden's department is self-supporting, mostly through the collection of dog licensing fees, and doesn't receive a county subsidy.

And dipping into the county's reserves to save dogs' lives is also not happening, according to Mr. Ujvagi.

"To be able to maintain our bond ratings, there is no intention of entering the budget reserves," Mr. Ujvagi said.

Lack of staff resources was why Ms. Lyle said she had to euthanize a litter of five "pit bull" puppies earlier this month who weren't even a week old.

The pups were born to a growling and vicious mother who would not allow anyone near her brood. This was a precarious situation, Ms. Lyle said, because staff couldn't get in to handle the nursing pups or even clean their cage.

In the end, the puppies were euthanized with their mother because the only other option - patiently bottle-feeding each pup by hand - wasn't possible with the department's staffing.

"They were so small their eyes weren't even open yet, and unless someone was going to feed them they would have died" without their mother, Ms. Lyle said.

In a detailed report of her first few weeks on the job, Ms. Lyle highlighted some of the department's past practices she is discontinuing, as well as changes that she is making in day-to-day operations:

•Puppies are no longer left overnight without food. Previously, puppies had to wait 16 hours between feedings while waiting for staff. And puppies are now offered puppy formula instead of the adult food that was given to dogs of all ages at the pound.

•Staff now triple-check stray dogs for implanted ID microchips before euthanasia.

•To prevent the spread of disease, dogs no longer eat from the same food bowl during behavioral tests. Staff are also advised to disinfect dog cages whenever they get a new occupant. That precaution hadn't been happening for all of the department's cages.

•Staff now place a cover over dog cages in the euthanasia area so that their occupants don't have to watch other dogs being killed.

"I just hate having dogs view that," Ms. Lyle said. "They can smell it; they know what's going on. But to have them see you euthanize dog after dog, that just bothers me."

•Door-to-door license checks, soon to restart, now will be done in "a friendly, educational approach."

•A new ability to accept public donations via a "wish list" of items that's outside the scope of the department's $1.6 million budget. Currently needed items include chew toys, puppy formula, blankets and towels, fencing for an outdoor play area, dog shampoo and grooming supplies, old newspapers, and dog hair clippers.

Some of Ms. Lyle top recommendations for the department include:

•New cages. Too many dogs are housed in barren, undersized cages with metal grating to stand on.

•More outdoors time. She suggests that dogs be taken outside to relieve themselves at least twice a day. Most dogs currently have to defecate in their cage and wait for staff to clean it up.

•More accurate dosing of euthanasia injections. "At this point we are typically overdosing the dogs, at times very dramatically," the warden wrote.

•Longer hours on Saturdays and some evenings to better serve working people who may want to adopt a dog.

Contact JC Reindl at:

jreindl@theblade.com

or 419-724-6065.

First Published May 30, 2010, 9:41 a.m.

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Michelle Quilter hitches a collar to Colby, a boxer she adopted. Seven other dogs found homes.  (The Blade/Lisa Dutton)  Buy Image
Emerson Johnston, left, and mom Kerry Johnston look on as Dog Warden Julie Lyle parades a dog needing a home during the pound's adoption event.  (The Blade/Lisa Dutton)  Buy Image
Bob Druckemiller gets acquainted with Fran after the family adopted the pooch yesterday. It was the pound's first sponsored adopt-a-thon in a decade.  (The Blade/Lisa Dutton)  Buy Image
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