Edmonton SPCA
12251 – 67 Street
Edmonton, Alberta
T5B 1M8
780-471-1774
Proposal for Animal Control Services
Provision of Animal Control Services to the City of Edmonton for interim period beginning January, 2000
February 4, 2000
Prepared by Craig W. Wilkinson, B.Sc., D.V.M.
7
Proposal for Animal Control Services
Provision of Animal Control Services by Edmonton SPCA for the interim period beginning January, 2000
Background
The Edmonton Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ESPCA) has been providing protection to animals since 1910. It has grown from small beginnings to a staff of 55 with an additional force of 400 volunteers, running an operation with a budget of $2.4M. In 1999, approximately 17,000 animals were admitted to our shelter facility.
Like all charitable organizations, the issues of funding and purpose are always front and center. Over the past year the ESPCA has been thoroughly re-examining its purpose, activity, funding, and operations for several reasons:
· The City of Edmonton has advised us that advancing development of the Yellowhead highway will force expropriation within the next few years.
· The current shelter has passed the point where it can meet the needs of a modern SPCA.
· Design and construction of a new shelter will take at least two years.
· The Animal Control contract with the City expired in 1997, and we have been operating without a contract since then.
· Animal control costs have risen over the past two decades. Analysis shows the ESPCA has heavily subsidized the City’s animal control responsibility for many years.
· We currently face Animal Control costs between $700,000 and $800,000 annually, with a fee from the city of only $153,000 in 1999.
Animal control, or the pickup, handling, housing and management of stray animals has always been a city responsibility, although the ESPCA has been doing it under contract for a number of years. The financial burden borne by the Edmonton SPCA for decades due to the lack of sufficient City funding has been enormous. The funding provided by the City of Edmonton has not come close to keeping up with inflation, not to speak of the cost of providing the higher standards of care and service that are now expected and required (Figure 1). In fact, funding levels are even now not much more than they were in the early 1980s, despite the vast improvements in the quality of care and much higher cost of providing services.
In November, 1999, the Edmonton SPCA’s Board of Directors announced a major change in the ESPCA’s direction. The decision was to discontinue providing animal control services for the City of Edmonton in the new facilities to be built in the next 2 years. The date of May 1, 2000 was announced as the date on which the ESPCA would relinquish these duties to the City unless an interim agreement is put in place for us to continue providing these services until the new shelter is constructed.
The Board decided to enter the new millennium with a clear focus. The Society will continue to advance its mission by increasing activities in three areas:
· animal welfare advocacy;
· education on animal adoption, pet overpopulation, and spay/neuter acceptance;
· helping the community to develop humane principles promoting responsible pet ownership.
The ESPCA will continue operating a shelter, admitting homeless and unwanted animals, investigating animal cruelty and suffering, and enforcing animal protection laws. Indeed, there will continue to be thousands of animals from Edmonton and the surrounding area each year who will require shelter for many reasons.
We are deeply concerned that all animals are treated humanely. We have offered our experience, research and expertise to the City as the Animal Control personnel begin to develop a comprehensive animal control program. We will be working to encourage a responsible approach including veterinary care, adoption and spay/neuter programs that are municipally directed and supported. Research across North America clearly indicates the proper path for any municipality doing animal control and we will be there to help. We will also be available to help the public gauge the City’s progress toward success in animal control.
Animal Control Services Provided by ESPCA
The range of services provided to the citizens of Edmonton and their pets by the Edmonton SPCA is large. People who are not intimately acquainted with the work done by the Edmonton SPCA are often astounded at the many facets of our work.
However, many of the elements of this work are actually part of the responsibilities that accompany Animal Control. The duties relating to strays will have to be performed by the City of Edmonton’s Animal Control Section in the future. Particularly, duties that must be assumed by the City will include transportation, kenneling, veterinary care, identification, lost and found services, return to owners, and euthanasia and cremation. The ESPCA provides these services seven days per week , except statutory holidays.
Lost and Found Services
The Edmonton SPCA Lost and Found Department receives 75 to 150 calls on an average day from citizens looking for lost animals or having found an animal. These calls take an average of 3 to 5 minutes each to process. We also receive another 50 to 100 general inquiries each day on a wide variety of topics including wildlife, barking dogs, and so on. We have 6 incoming phone lines on a rotary system. However, three separate Network Subscriber Studies done by Telus over the past several years have recommended that we need as many as twice that number to deal with the volume of incoming calls. They also recommend upgrading our equipment and substantially increasing our staff to handle the load. Our limited budget has prevented us from implementing these recommendations.
Our Lost and Found department keeps a registry of reported lost or found animals and searches the registry for a match each time someone phones looking for a lost pet. We maintain a database of all tattoo numbers issued by over 70 local veterinary clinics, with data going back more than 10 years. We also have access via telephone and internet to tattoos and microchips registered with the Canadian Kennel Club. We have access to all available data for microchips from both Canadian registries. At present, all of the lost and found and admitting processing functions are completed using a manual paper-based system. A major upgrade to computerize these systems is planned, but not currently budgeted.
Pick Up of Strays and Wildlife
The Edmonton SPCA’s Animal Rescue Vehicles pick up approximately 2400 strays, injured strays, and wildlife each year. For reference, the Regulations Pursuant to the Animal Protection Act allow a Humane Society to charge $30 per trip for transportation of dogs, cats and other small animals. Thus the pickups performed in the City of Edmonton would represent $72,000 in fees if charged. However, historically the public has generally been unwilling to pay this fee for a stray.
Kenneling of Strays
All strays are kenneled under the provisions of the Alberta Animal Protection Act. Animals with no identification are held for 3 full days, not including day of admission or the day they are placed up for adoption or euthanized. Animals with identification are held for 10 full days. Every stray is checked for a tag, tattoo or microchip, and if the animal has identification, our staff go to great lengths to trace the owners.
The Regulations Pursuant to the Animal Protection Act allow a Humane Society to charge $10 per day for animals under 20kg (cats and small dogs) and $20 per day for animals over 20 kg. We do attempt to recover fees from owners claiming animals, however when no claim is made we have no way to recover these charges, which total an estimated $180,000. Fees recovered from owners claiming animals only totaled $24,817 in 1999.
Health Care
Examination, vaccination and/or basic veterinary care is provided for every animal admitted. We employ three veterinarians who are in the shelter on a part-time basis to direct medical care including one who is employed full time by the Edmonton SPCA as Shelter Operations Manager. We have four full-time Animal Health Technologists who examine every animal at the time of admission to the shelter. They vaccinate as appropriate, and initiate supportive medical care for those requiring it. The cost of purchasing vaccines (at a greatly discounted price) for strays from the City of Edmonton is approximately $12,000 per year. The high proportion of injured and sick strays make handling these animals considerably more costly than handling animals admitted by owners. These animals are also more likely to be aggressive and cause staff injury.
Treatment of Strays at EVEC
Injured stray cats and dogs, and in inclement weather even healthy strays, are referred to the Edmonton Veterinarians’ Emergency Clinic (EVEC) after the ESPCA’s regular hours. These animals are taken to EVEC by the public, and by police officers and bylaw officers. The ESPCA picks up these animals by 8:30 a.m. the following day and transports them to the animal shelter. The ESPCA and Edmonton Association of Small Animal Veterinarians provide donated medical supplies, and EVEC charges minimal fees for services rendered. The ESPCA cremates at no charge any animals that are brought to EVEC and are dead on arrival, die or are euthanized there. Nevertheless, in 1999 the Edmonton SPCA was billed $12407.38 plus GST for the care of 278 animals at EVEC. Some of those charges are recovered if owners subsequently identify and claim the animal, but in many cases no recovery of fees can be made. In 1999, only 3487.88 plus GST was recovered.
Quarantine of Animals
Following a bite incident, the Capital Health Authority and Canadian Food Inspection Agency follow the Public Health Act and require that an animal whose rabies vaccine status is unknown must be quarantined until 10 days after the bite. In a one year period from April 1998 to March 1999 the Edmonton SPCA quarantined 86 cats and 106 dogs. These were either strays that had bitten someone, or animals turned in by their owners. While attempts are made to recover boarding costs from owners, we do not have the mechanism to follow up these cases if the owner refuses to pay the fee and threatens to release the animal. Based on the Regulations Pursuant to the Animal Protection Act, fees for kenneling these animals would be approximately $16,000.
Euthanasia and Cremation
Stray animals not claimed by owners are offered to the public for adoption. If they are injured and not able to be rehabilitated, are sick, old or have behaviour problems, they are euthanized and cremated. Animals that are not adopted are also euthanized and cremated. The process of euthanasia and cremation includes considerable staff time, animal tranquilizers and euthanasia solution, and crematorium operation and maintenance.
As a benchmark, the Edmonton Veterinarians Emergency Clinic charges the ESPCA $32 plus GST for each stray animal they must euthanize, and we do the cremation. Veterinarians (including EVEC) pay a private crematorium company $20 for each animal cremated. At those rates, the price of euthanasia and cremation of strays from Edmonton alone would total more than $160,000 plus GST.
(Assuming that the ratio of stray animals euthanized is similar to the ratio of euthanasias from the whole population admitted, about 62% of cats and 23% of dogs are euthanized. This represents 470 stray dogs and 2650 stray cats from within Edmonton that are euthanized.)
Adoption Services
The Edmonton SPCA has a comprehensive adoption program. A mandatory spay/neuter policy was initiated in 1989. Every customer who has adopted a pet since 1995 has paid a spay or neuter deposit to ensure that the animal will be sterilized. Our compliance rate has averaged 97% for the past 4 years. Every animal adopted since January 1995 has been implanted with a microchip. ESPCA staff spend considerable time with each adopter to try to match pets appropriately with suitable homes.
The significant cost and effort expended to ensure quality adoptions and spay/neuter compliance and to provide public education promoting responsible pet ownership and spaying and neutering is paying off. The number of dogs admitted by owners has decreased by 35% since 1989 and the number of cats has decreased by 33% (Figures 3 and 4). This is despite the population of the Edmonton area continuing to increase. It should be noted that the number of strays admitted has not changed significantly during the same period.
Investigation of Animal Abuse
Our Animal Protection Services department annually investigates an average of 1600 complaints regarding suspected inhumane treatment of animals within the City of Edmonton. Our Special Constables (three full-time and one part-time) receive hundreds of other inquiries. Some of these are referred to other agencies such as Alberta Family and Social Services. The Edmonton SPCA Animal Protection Services department has attained a high level of professional qualification and standards and have been audited and approved by the Edmonton Police Service to share in the police information systems. Our Special Constables also cooperate with RCMP “K” Division and Alberta Family and Social Services regarding animal and child/family abuse incidents. It has been estimated that for the Edmonton Police to provide this service, the budget would be several hundred thousand dollars annually.
Proposal for Interim Animal Control Service to the City of Edmonton
The Edmonton SPCA will not be providing Animal Control services from its new facilities, planned for commissioning in 2002. The City of Edmonton has expressed interest in having the ESPCA continue to provide services during the interim period.
The existing City Pound has the capacity to impound significantly more dogs than currently housed. However, there would be a requirement for a large number of upgrades and additions to the service currently offered. These must include increased hours of operation, upgraded lost and found services, significant improvements to animal health care, a comprehensive adoption program including a spay/neuter requirement, and euthanasia and cremation for animals not claimed or adopted.
The Edmonton SPCA feels that it would be most efficient and provide the best service to dog owners to have all stray dogs impounded in a single facility. However, our building is generally operating at maximum capacity most of the time, and could not accept a much greater load of stray dogs without increasing the euthanasia rate. We feel it would be much better for the City of Edmonton to quickly work toward upgrading its services at the Pound and to assume responsibility for Animal Control for all stray dogs as soon as possible.