Fast Facts
Regional Animal Services Facility
In November 2002 voters approved Washoe County issuing up to $10.7 million in bonds to construct a regional animal shelter, and to impose up to a 3-cent property tax rate to operate the shelter and provide regional field enforcement.
The new 63,000 square foot facility replaced the 24-year old animal shelter located on Longley Lane that was operated by the City of Reno.
Washoe County is now the regional operator of the new animal services center through a new interlocal agreement with the cities, and has responsibility for all animal control services throughout the entire county including within the cities.
The $16.9 million project is a unique public/private partnership between Washoe County and the Nevada Humane Society which provided nearly $4.2 million in funding. In return, the NHS occupies part of the building to conduct their operations including providing adoption services and pays their portion of operating expenses related to the building. As part of the interlocal agreement The City of Reno provided the 5.5 acres of land on which the new facility is located.
Ground was broken for the project in October 2004, and construction was completed in early 2006.
Some of the special features of the facility include:
Washoe County Animal Control Capacity:
Dogs:
· 72 kennels The County continues to try and hold at 75% in the event of emergencies.
· 14 protective custody holding kennels
· 14 quarantine kennels
· 7 vicious dog kennels
· 12 isolation kennels
· 32 overflow/shared kennels
Cats:
· 96 cat cages
· 30 feral cat cages
· 24 isolation cages
Small Animals/Exotics:
· 32 cages
Nevada Humane Society Capacity:
Dogs:
· 86 adoption kennels
· 32 pre-adoption/evaluation kennels
· 12 isolation kennels On July 25,2008, there 188 dogs at 9:00 p.m.
Cats:
· 84 adoption cages
· 6 cat condominiums (18 cats)
· 2 adoption community rooms (20 cats)
· 34 pre-adoption/evaluation cages
· 16 isolation cages On July 25, 2008 there were 426 cats at 9:00 p.m.
Small Animals:
· 44 cages
SPECIAL FEATURES
Indoor/outdoor dog kennels
6 to 8 dog kennel pods to limit disease transfer and noise
Exterior exercise yards
Public awareness classroom space
Interior courtyards
Humane Society Veterinary clinic
Full service wildlife rehabilitation center.. Gone
State of the art kennel cleaning system
Shared facility support service areas
March 2006
It took this NHS agency less than one year to breach capacity and reinvent our standards when we built the shelter. They do lease 32 kennels from the County, but we will need them. Expetcop....or Seabee. The nightmare is real......We need help, and the enemy lies within.
24 comments:
That reads as 172 cage areas holding 426 cats. How can they reserve the right to do this?
The kennels for dogs number 156 including the leased from the county, so how are they holding 188 dogs, dogs being held do not appear on petharbor until they are ready for adoption so I am wondering if the actual physical number of animals including medical cases are being shown. What a mess.Sorry Oreo, this must be hard to live with.
Butters Mom, when our shelter brings an animal in, it goes on pet harbor immediately. This is for people looking for their lost animal as well. And of course, you stack "em when you have more animals than kennels and cages. I witnessed at Rancho, animals in crates, kennels, and cages in the hallways three high within the first three months of their implementing Whine-ograd's program. Rancho, at one point, had over 400 cats and only about 50 cages for cats. They had about 130 dogs and only about 50 kennels. And the area that they are in, the shelters are running about a 60% population of pits/pit mix. Pits are housed singularly because of safety reasons for other dogs and staff. So you can estimate that 60%, or be conservative at 40%, of the kennels only housed one dog. Personally I don't believe in housing more than one dog per kennel unless the dogs came in together, too many chances for fights in the tight confinement of a kennel. But you would see 4-5 dogs per kennel at Rancho and they have small kennels.
The activist who brought Whine-ograd to Rancho Cucamonga complained at public forum and it is in public record that animals were found dead in the mornings from fights. This was after implementation. Well, that is one way to protect your euthanasia record. Another activist in Rancho wrote a letter to the Daily Bulletin about her pulling public record showing a 600% increase in kennel deaths under Whine-ograd's program. Another way to avoid adding to your euthanasia numbers. Boks in LA uses this one.
My biggest problem with what you guys are saying about NHS is the turning away of owner surrenders. My motto in rescue has always been, get the animal and run. If you don't take it, the Lord only knows what happens to it. P.
A moment of clarification...Sorry for not being more specific. Dogs do go on petharbor as soon as they come in on WCRAS side, that is where the public would go to look for a lost pet. I don't know the time frame for NHS. I do know that sometimes on the stray side there will be a cpc or a bite dog and that dog is not shown as part of the general population because it has an owner to return to.
( Thinking positive ) However, some bite dog owners do request the dog be put down after its hold requirement is met. Nobody wants to geta lawsuit..
I must say I am appalled at 400 cats for a shelter that size, as a matter of fact I am appalled at 426 here.
I am a little confused by Butters Mom; are you one of the shelters that holds surrenders until they are nuetered and ready to go home ? There is a shelter in Ohio that if a animal has mange or heartworm, they do not advertise the dog for adoption until it is healthy and they believe it will have a good quality of life. That takes care of the " hero complex" or the pity adoption.
Addressing the latter part of Anon's comment, Oreo has read about the kennel deaths in LA, dog fights; horrible is a complete sentence. be kind to the next living being you meet and make the world a better place.....
Is that the LA animal watch site? I read that but thought it could not be true. Wouldn't the public tear down the walls? we love our boys but are always aware they could kill each other if something pushed their buttons. We never leave them unattended together. They are pitbulls and coming from a shelter who knows what is in their history. Ya know the sad part is, one dog we probably could have handled better.
Anon, some of the info on the LA blog is correct, however the blogger's assumptions are usually wrong. Rancho's died in kennel rose 600% after implementing their no kill program and LA's rose but I'm not sure of the percentage enough to pass it along. When a shelter is overcrowded, this is to be expected. And be prepared for complaints that the County has empty kennels and still euthanizing. Rancho had empty kennels and cages also for emergencies such as the fires of 2003 with massive evacuations. Empty kennels mean to me that fewer pets are put down, not the opposite. P.
I've been giving this situation a lot of thought. Personally I feel that all animals should be surrendered to an animal control agency and rescues should only be allowed to take pets from shelters, not from owners or as strays. The primary reason I feel this is because we don't have a true grasp of the extent of pet overpopulation because rescues don't report their numbers.
Who came up with this program? It lends itself to a non profit being able to have a never ending supply of pets which they pick and chose but no public accounting it seems. All pets, strays, owner surrenders, public surrenders should first go thru the county and then distributed out to NHS. If the county deems an animal adoptable, then NHS should be obligated to take it. There should not be two separate accounting agencies, the County and NHS. P.
Like many people in this valley and most on this blog i want to help.Thanks to Oreo for putting up my link, and allowing me to copy her mountain scene. I will do a different one soon;that one does belong to Oreo. I just can't figure out how to make my picture work.I hope to get an assemblyman to carry a bill forward next session to strengthen up some of the existing NRS laws in regards to how animals are housed. We never dreamed we would have this battle.
This is a very nice shelter and we need to keep it that way. NHS is using the grooming room to store cats? Help, get the oversight going here.
I clicked in as anonymous earlier, don't know how that happend.
I am the one saying we could have handled one dog better than two. we have the pit " brothers" like they know that when they grow up. These guys were in the same kennel I think, but they can't be kept that way now. Maybe it works better in a strange place, but it still seems like a bad idea to me. One dog to a kennel, the article on died in shelters did it for me.
That is not the easiest way to get a good picture. The numbers are higher than the cage levels.That is a nice shelter, but it is overcrowed right now. I have seen worse; but worse isn't what we voted for. Saying it is "okay with us" is like saying I can park on my lawn if I want. No you can't what is wrong with this system is that people think they can do as they please. What are the set ups for that building and why are they not being used ?
I only know what I hear from the park people, and that is not good, even from the volunteers. Is there some listing of how many hours these volunteers work? My wife has to turn in her hours to have the department get credit.
I read the newspaper blog today, what a bunch of fighting on there, thought they were going to clean up their act. I don't think they can because the guy running it is so biased his judgement is giving him the wrong direction. All he can see is no kill, but then he runs his rescue with them so look at his conflict of interst statement. The paper should give that to somebody else, this guy is in to deep.
I read the KCAS blog tonight, they are having the same undercutting up there as we are getting here. I bet from the same source. Their Brenda Barnette is our Bonney Brown, the same weird council dealings. They have some new directer I hope they stay on top of it. I was going to try to read the other local just to see what was new in our region, but my roomate said he had gone there and it was back to trash. Somewhere on here there was a Jerry Springer thing that is probably true. I know there is sometime we can save a lot more animals, but not the way we are doing it now. I don't go over to NHS , to many cats; I can't stand to see them in cages. another volunteer wanted me to come see some freaky thing and I couln't make myself do it. I fyou can't get them out of there and you can't complain, why go?
to anon
on the putting dogs together that come in together, we don't do that at our rescue. There is to much stress in a strange kennel. I have had GSD opposite sex aggression, that is occasionally why the dogs are given up. definately single kennel unless supervised. That is a shame about Ranch, it used to be known as a better shelter. What happened, we are in King County so I do have a reason to ask.
KCSharon, I have already sent the info to your city manager on Rancho Cucamonga and your animal control association. Rancho is the best example to use because it is truly an open door shelter run by the city, not a non profit. Non profits are not subject to public records request and therefore their numbers would always be questionable at best. You can find the info on Rancho's numbers on the city web site under general plan or something like that. It took me awhile to find it. Seems Rancho only averages 10 hrs a day in volunteer time. Volunteers are one of the backbone of the Whine-ograd program. When you do the figures, no way 10 hrs. can walk all the dogs and play with all the cats in one day. And staff is overloaded trying to find homes and you don't want to have staff doing the jobs such as walking, etc. No wonder the staff is so rude to people. There are two newspaper articles where Rancho declares it is not no kill and refers to the lines of people waiting to surrender pets. You cannot declare yourself no kill if you are the only open door shelter in the area. Then people will beat a path to your door to surrender. The heartbreak is that these surrendered pets are brought in as strays rather than owner surrendered. As strays, they have no name. Thus adding to the confusion and fear they already have from being abandoned by their family. Public surrenders is a killer at Rancho and it happens because of the deceitful term "no kill".
The newspaper blog is claiming 39 animals turned in per 1000 capita, the county is only getting 9.5 of that, the rest is the no kill. It really encourages people to just give up. Don't train, get a dog when you can't afford one; do inpulse adoptions.All so wrong for the animals caught in the middle. I don't want to be a hand wringer here, but the frustration is almost overwhelming. Why can't the county ensure the well being of these animals in our intake facility. Joe Public thinks it has some constraints, like floor space and air... how do they dodge that NRS ?
If you want to see changes at NHS or on the county side, you must band together then get people who think the same way as you on the Animal Control Advisory Board, the NHS Board of Directors or at least make connections or build relationships with them to hopefully influence them.
I believe there are many, many people in the area that are completely disenfranchised and disenchanted with NHS. Organize a grassroots movement one baby step at a time.
Remember to keep your friends close, but your enemies even closer.
PS: Some of the caging you have listed was supposed to be installed and provided to NHS under the contract with the consolidation agreement. The county reneged on completing the new shelter at their expense as obliged. NHS had to scramble to put cages in the cat rooms, wildlife, clinic, etc. This is the reason the "consolidated" shelter did not open on time as advertised. In fact, NHS had to keep animals at their old shelter for several months until all the caging arrived and was installed some time later.
If NHS ever vacates the building, they should remove all that caging since it belongs to them.
We are doing grassroots, folks like you and I are the single blade that will make this work. On the website northvalleys.org Kitty Jung is very straight forward about wanting to change the direction of the Animal Control Board.
Several people have tried to get cooperation with the current NHS Board of Directors. They ( BOD ) are lemmings to the sea. I must say the sickness runs pretty deep in that organization and it is hard to recall what the NHS used to stand for. Every person who has tried to negotiate with management has been fired or banned. When you tick off that many people, things do start to leak; but as you saw the other day on MD they just get labeled as
"sour grapes" I do feel that based on feedback here, your assumptions of displeasure are legitmate.
Oreo has several friends who have worked for the County long before the consolidation ( think over 20 years ) all of them think the newness of Dan to the area corresponding with Bonney being the new kid on the block; created this "us against them thinking". He is clearly in Bonney's court, and that is not meant as any slur, or suggestion of misconduct. He is a county employee. currently more vested in a contracting agency than he is the taxpayers who are footing the bill.The commission seems to be deferring the issue to Kitty, shame, Bonnie Weber was doing a great job.
To address the cages... Oreo would agree it would be nice to have NHS have equipment should they wish to move, but as with any building ; installed items must stay. also our feeling is, the agreement was with NHS. Not Wino, We would not support anything going to him or Bonney, under this management style.
Those of us who voted for the consolidation would love to see NHS suceed. We didn't vote to have it fail. I don't like the things that are going on,we need need education, wildlife , cruelty. We need to get the Humane Society back as it was intended.
I was at the county commission meeting the day this was brought up, Bonney and Mitch just stood there and blew smoke, and never answered the questions brought up; the Commison didn't push for answers in a reasonable way. The woman who spoke up and asked to keep the county as it is, spoke for many of us. We could have pummeled the commison and burned time; we thought that was wasteful. Maybe we handled that wrong.
We don't want NHS to go away, we want it to come back. Our 2 labs came from the old NHS, it did a lot of good in this community. And it sounds like expetcop was part of that good.
I'm not sure the T-kennels are considered "permanent."
But, the stainless steel cat/small animal cages are not considered permanent fixtures. The small rooms going down the glass hallway were supposed to be small animal rooms, and the county was supposed to provide custom built caging for those rooms. They reneged. NHS couldn't afford to pay for them after having to buy the T-kennels and all that laminate and stainless caging.
As for the "sour grapes" comments, I really do not understand what that is all about other than the usual--if you can't contribute with anything pertinent, attack the poster personally. I think its funny though that the assumption is that I was somehow wronged by Brown & Wino, which is absolutely incorrect.
Honestly, I'm not a fan of animal control anymore than I am of Brown & Wino, but it is for different reasons.
Gee, that makes sound like such a curmudgeon, which I'm really not. I want the shelter to be successful. I merely disagree with Wino's way to accomplish it.
We all agree we want NHS back to normal. Getting it there would be the direction Oreo is driving.
I don't know on T cages, when we sold our other home the six foot Tholl kennels were under a lot of discussion. Because they were totally free standing, not connected to any building or structure ( fence ) we were allowed to take them. The irony being that I have never kept my dogs in a kennel. We have always maintained two 4x16 covered kennels in case of emergency. Perhaps that is why Oreo supports the 75% rule, she was raised to be prepared.
This blog had never felt you were a " victim" we accepted you at face value as a knowledgeable resource and were grateful for your input. However there are a lot of disgruntled volunteers and ex-employees, Oreo doesn't seem to attract them. The problem we are having in getting this further off the ground is; many are still working for the government & fear retalition. Even in the incorporated areas it is a hot topic and coming out of the shadows could be a bad career move. If you work for the City of Sparks would you want to set Breslow off ? In Reno it is Sferrazza.
Oreo's opinion of AC is, right now they are ahead of NHS is providing animal care. The Manager has been around along time, if you are anywhere a long time, you can tick some people off. This is not the Cindy and Bonney show, it is animal welfare, long term. Over the years I have had diappoinments with both agencies, and yet know that both were doing the best they could with the rules they have to live by. I volunteered at the old NHS off and on for years, I have helped NDW, all agencies have their flaws. Expetcop is right, keep moving forward. Wagon's Ho !!
Oh, expetcop, if it were so easy. The humane community is its own worst enemy and the public usually doesn't care enough to get involved in these issues. And now days when someone speaks out against Whine-ograd, they are slapped with a cease and desist order quickly. This is how he is able to keep opposition away from him, the threat of a lawsuit. Those who do adoptions are usually over their household limits and can't speak out because they worry about retalition. The public and elected officials never cease to amaze me with their ignorance. P.
I think there has been so much smoke here the public doesn't know there is a problem.
When I read anon's Rancho stats I can get a sense of how painful that would be to deal with on a daily basis. As a heads up to those of you following the other Reno blog, he did say when you register only HE will be able to see your email address because he is the blog admin. I don't comment on there so I wouldn't register; but if you do; you may get a boat load of Spam.
Speaking of the other blog. I did read where he is attacking someone claiming they are posting under anon but that he and Whine-ograd know who it is. That is enough to stop people from wanting to post objections, that the blog administrator will track you down for Whine-ograd to attack. That's one way to only get those who agree with you to blog. Not even to mention that this blog is deliberatly posting misinformation. I wonder how high this blog jumps when Whine-ograd pulls his strings.
To everyone
I did go to the new site and it does say that, and the little runner at the bottom says something about adtargeting. I have never posted on there for the above mentioned reason. I didn't like the way they would gang up on people. The worst I remember was that Carson City trainer and that went on and on. I followed it like a bad dream you couldn't wake up from. I wouldn't post there because I don't agree with any of what he says and if you disagree it turns ugly. For a while he acted like he wanted to be judge and jury for everything from wolves to dogs getting dumped. He is one angry man.
A typical Whine-ograd follower, one who has so little experience in the real world of animals and gulliable enough to fall for someone like Whine-ograd. We all want to believe it can happen but we must keep our senses about it. There are realities that are not being accounted for in the "no kill" program as presented. I personally do not feel it is necessary to make animals suffer while trying not to euthanize them. There are alternatives that are much better for the animals but people's impatience don't allow for these alternatives. We didn't get to this position overnite and neither can the killing stop overnite. And one other thing to remember is that animal control did not create this problem and they don't have the solution to solve it. That will come from us, the public. The public is the one filling up the shelters and therefore, they must be held accountable. This can only be done with responsible legislation. If we didn't have the laws regarding the roadways, everyone would drive as they pleased without regard for safety of others. Same with this problem, we need more laws to force people to do the right thing. This is the reality, not a dream world where everyone sees and meets their responsibilities. We must stop planning for the present and plan for the future, which is something Whine-ograd doesn't do or even speak of. We can't change this moment but we can change the future. Spay/neuter has made drastic changes in sheltering numbers in the last 30 or so years. And it has done so without the help of the law. Imagine what it can do with the help of the law.
I am confused, are there two anonyous writers? I wanted to comment to the one from the Rancho shelter. when yous ay 4or5 dogs per pen. How did they handle fighting, I mean you couldn't right, so then were the damaged animals given vet care and wouldn't more kennels be cheaper than vet care, and it this a direct result of the pressure for no kill ?
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