The Sedalia Animal Shelter is running near capacity and a small influx of animals could at any time throw them into a “bottleneck” situation.
“It doesn’t take much to get our shelter at capacity,” Sedalia Animal Shelter Director Randi Battson said Tuesday, Dec. 26. “Ten dogs coming in is enough to do what we call ‘bottlenecking’ our shelter, where we're at capacity and we can't take anything in until something changes.”
Bottlenecking happens for several different reasons: a lack of adoptions, a large amount of owner surrenders, or a great number of animals running at large. And when the bottleneck does happen at the shelter, the calm front-end of the shelter doesn’t mirror the back.
“A lot of people come in and they look in our adoption windows,” Battson said. “They'll see that we have open kennels in the front and not understand when we say, ‘hey we're at capacity, we can't take your dogs in.’ Because they see the open kennels but there's this big process of what it takes to get an animal in the door.”
To get an animal ready for adoption, the state requires the shelter to hold them for five days if they are an unknown stray. If it’s known the animal has an owner, either because they're microchipped or because it has been in the shelter before, the shelter must hold them for 10 days before they can be put up for adoption. Not so for strays, they can be adopted at five days.
“So, after five days, we own the dogs that we believe don't have owners or are dumped or stray,” Battson said, “but then we have to rely on the spay and neuter clinic as far as when can we get that dog in to get it spayed or neutered before we put it up for adoption.”
Battson said the local spay and neuter clinic is in the process of changing hands and the lengthy process means they can temporarily perform fewer procedures as the new vet wraps up work at her current practice.
“She still has a prior practice that she's still trying to maintain as well, so we may have the dog in here 10 days because we knew it had an owner, it was microchipped and now we probably have to hold it for one to six more days before we can get it into the spay and neuter clinic,” Battson explained.
This time of year, dogs running at large in Sedalia are a big problem. Many people don't like to take their dogs out for a break, so they'll just turn them out and hope the pets won't leave the yard.
“Before you know it, they’re blocks away and the neighbors are upset,” Battson said, “and we come get the dog. This time of year until about the end of February, it's pretty high for owner surrenders, so we limit how many owner-surrenders we can take in each week because our number one priority is public safety.”
The Sedalia Animal Shelter is a municipal facility and has a mandate to take dangerous dogs first.
“We need to have room to take in the bite cases and we need to have room to take in the dogs that are potentially in danger or causing a danger to the citizens,” Battson said. “What would also be fabulous from the public is if we kept our dogs at home. I understand that it's cold and you may not want to go out with your dog, but you can always sit your dog out on a tie that’s attached to your back porch and leave them out there 10 minutes if you're too cold to go out there with them and then bring them back in.”
Witnessing alarming numbers of dogs running at loose, the animal shelter presented the Sedalia City Council with a request for another animal control officer to keep repeat offenders from letting dogs off leash when animal control is not on patrol.
“I think they're kind of working around letting their dogs go out because they know what the schedule is,” Battson said. “So an option that we've laid out there was adding an additional animal control officer.”
New ordinances passed by Sedalia make repeat fines from Animal Control get increasingly expensive for each subsequent offense – they'll basically go up $50 each time, then after three times, owners could possibly face jail time.
Battson said she hopes people will simply keep their pets at home for the holidays, and every day, to avoid shelter bottlenecks.
“We appreciate everybody being a good neighbor,” Battson said. “So let's keep our dogs at home, let's be responsible for them. We're doing the best we can at the shelter to take care of every single dog that comes through the doors and we're doing our to get them into a responsible, loving home.”
Chris Howell can be reached at 660 530-0146.
