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Animal Control Greenville, SC – Lose Your Dog, Get a Lecture

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When Joe, Elise Jerozal’s Parson Terrier, went missing, her mom Katie  Jerozal knew all of the steps to follow to bring home a lost pet. She put up flyers, canvassed the neighbourhood, posted messages on Facebook, and even posted a video to Youtube featuring Elise asking for help in bringing Joe home.

It’s no surprise Katie knew what to do – after all, she’s got an awful lot of experience with dogs. Katie’s mother showed dogs, and Katie herself competed in Junior Handling, taking her Pug to Westminster one year to as one of the top Junior handlers in the country. Part of the reason Katie bought Joe for Elise was so that Elise could show him in Juniors, and possibly train him for the obedience ring. Getting Elise into showing would make show dogs a third generation family tradition – Katie didn’t stop her involvement  with show dogs when she outgrew Juniors. She’s now a small scale, ethical breeder of French Bulldogs, owning a handful of top winning Frenchies, including a Best in Show and Best in Specialty show winning boy she still proudly talks about on her Lucida French Bulldogs website.

It’s Katie’s website that caused problems when she got in touch with Greenville Animal Control to report Joe as a missing pet.

Katie sent Greenville Animal Control a precise, well detailed email regarding Joe, via their website –

Joe is a 1 year old Russell Terrier. he was bought for my daughters 7th birthday to do obedience with. He was last seen in our yard where, we think, he was taken.
He was mostly white with brown markings
He went missing last night around 8 pm from (address redacted) ln Taylors SC
Katie got back an email asking her to clarify that Joe was missing from Greenville, to which she responded in the affirmative. The next response she got was this –

I noticed that you breed Frenchies. Have you ever thought of discontinuing that? There are cancers associated with breeding (mammary tumors, testicular cancer, etc.) that result from not spaying and neutering. Also, Frenchies, like any other breed, end up in shelters.

I would imagine that if you love your Frenchies, you would not want them or their offspring to be in harms way.

Susan

 

No suggestions on how to find Joe. No confirmation that someone would check the shelter to make sure Joe hadn’t been turned in. Instead, all Katie got was a lecture on how her insistence on having intact dogs (intact dogs she was BREEDING!) was the reason that dogs die of cancer and end up in animal shelters.

Did this idiotic and heartless response come from some well meaning but poorly trained shelter volunteer?

Nope. It came from –

Susan Bufano
Community Relations Coordinator
328 Furman Hall Rd.
Greenville, SC 29609
(864) 467-3986
(864) 467-3294 Fax

Community Relations Coordinator! Holy crap! Talk about a lack of essential job skills. I’m going out on a limb here, but I’d think that a large part of the job description of a Community Relations Coordinator for Animal Control involves actual public relations skills, the kind that support community members, instead of alienating them.

Of course, this is all on top of the fact that Susan is spouting the same tired and inaccurate myths about how keeping dogs intact is some sort of automatic cancerous death sentence (by this reasoning, I’m a little bit surprised that Susan didn’t also suggest Katie should look into getting Elise a hysterectomy before it’s too late, since ‘intact’ women could also grow up to get reproductive cancers). Her insinuation seems to be that Katie is some sort of irresponsible jerk who lets her dogs run around Greenville willy-nilly, clogging up the Animal Control shelters and generally forcing well meaning people like Susan to kill them against her will.

Sigh.

Look, I get the impression that Greenville AC is one of the better run municipal shelters. They have a vigorous volunteer program, they offer Animal Care Summer Camps for kids, and they offer low cost veterinary services, microchipping and spay neuter clinics. I understand that Susan’s intentions might have been good, but she’s letting her own personal agenda (her personal Facebook page talks a lot about animal rights and her veganism) get in the way of servicing her community – the very job her title conveys she is meant to be filling.

Greenville AC’s webpage features this on the very first page –

Screen shot 2013-08-02 at 10.17.13 AM

 

If you want to be the ‘first place’ people go when their pet is lost and missing, please start doing a better job of being supportive, instead of misguidedly judgmental. Greenville AC made an already traumatic time for Katie’s family even worse, by failing to support her in any way that could help to bring Joe home.

UPDATE

Joe is home! As Katie tells us via Facebook:

‘we were out handing out flyer to everyone in our neighborhood. I was cutting through a yard and I heard him bark. Elise ran into the yard and he was on an enclosed deck. How she didn’t see our flyers is odd. They weren’t home so we took him and left a thank you note’

Good news, and good job, Katie!

 

A Montreal family was devastated when their adopted black Labrador retriever, Pollux, ran away from home last spring.

Microchip Brings Dog Home from BC to Montreal

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Pollux the dog somehow traveled from Montreal, Quebec to Kamloops, BC – a journey of almost 4,245 kilometres or 2,637 miles

I never cease to be amazed at some of the journeys our pets can make, all on their own. I also never cease to be amazed at how effective microchips can be at bringing back our lost or stolen pets. 

This story definitely falls into the ‘amazing’ category.

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Microchips Bring Two More Dogs Home

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This past Christmas eve in Bentonville, Arkansas, Police Sgt. Robert Burkhart found a hound mix mutt lying still on the side of a busy road. The dog had been hit by a car, and showed little signs of life. With no collar or tags, her fate was measured in hours. Police in Bentonville have injured dogs euthanized, if they have no identification.

But emergency veterinarian Darlene Wier has a policy –  “No dogs .. die on Christmas Eve.”

Using a scanner, she found the stray dog’s ticket home buried in the skin under her neck – a tiny microchip, no larger than a grain of rice. The chip contained the name, address and contact information of the stray – and also her name, Coaster. Coaster had been adopted by her owner, Stephanie Comstock, from a local animal shelter two years earlier. Coaster had bolted while being walked along Comstock’s other dogs, and less than hour after she went missing, she lay at the side of the road, struck down by a car. Comstock and her children searched frantically, but found no sign of the missing dog until the phone call came in telling her that Coaster was safe – if not completely sound – and waiting to come home.

Comstock is grateful her dog is implanted with a microchip.

“This is the first dog we had that had a chip in it. Before, when you lost a dog, it was just gone. So to have the chip in there and to be able to get them back is just great,” Comstock said.

The microchip planted between Coaster’s shoulders meant that Comstock could tell her kids that their dog was alive and well.

Half a country away, up in Canada, another dog was heading home to its owner – almost seven years after it went missing.

On December 25th, 2001, Don French of Jutenheim Rottweilers was the proud breeder of a gorgeous litter of Rotties. He chose his own ‘Christmas gift’ from this litter, a pick male that he hoped to eventually show in conformation and obedience. Five months later, while Don was out grocery shopping, someone stole Don’s puppy out of his fenced back yard. Months of searching proved fruitless – the dog was no where to be found. Don reported the theft to the police and the Canadian Kennel Club, but as the years passed, he gave up hope of ever getting the pup back home.

Flash forward to December 22, 2008. Don French, now living in Burlington and working and no longer breeding Rottweilers, received a call from Hamilton Animal Control. A stray Rottweiler had been found roaming the streets, and Don was listed on the dog’s microchip as a contact person. Don is now a professional dog trainer – his first thought was that one of his training clients had put his contact info on their dog’s chip registration form. When Don asked who the owner of the stray Rottweiler was, Animal Control replied “According to the CKC, you’re the owner and breeder”. Puzzled and operating on a long shot, Don looked up the registration information for the boy he’d help whelp, almost exactly seven years earlier.

The chip numbers matched – the stray dog languishing in a run at Animal Control was Don’s stolen Rottie.

Hamilton Animal Control has no idea where the dog came from, or where he’s been. The dog looks to be in good shape – well fed and well cared for – so Don speculates that perhaps the puppy was sold to a family who had no idea that they were actually harboring stolen goods. Either way, no one but Don ever turned up at Animal Control to claim him, so on Boxing Day Don picked up and brought him home. Don says that Santo – Jotunheims Kaga vom Santo – might be seven years old, but that he’s still acting like a puppy. Don is considering putting him in the conformation ring, just for fun.

With all the news stories of pets reunited with owners thanks to microchips, it’s only puzzling that more owners at willing to have their pets implanted. Doing so could possibly be the best Christmas gift you ever give – to yourself, or to your pet.

“The main benefit of having the microchip is so (veterinarians) can easily locate the owners if a dog or cat is found. With the chips, the dogs can be found and returned home,” Sugar Creek office manager Melissa Freeman said.

“Collars can get loose and fall off or if the dog is stolen, the collar can easily be taken off – but the microchip cannot be removed,” Freeman said.

“(Coaster) is a lucky dog,” Wier said, noting that all pet owners should have their dogs and cats microchipped. “We love a microchip.”

More of Coaster’s story here, or read our own microchip miracle story here.