By Fred Lambert
When Zeus was first admitted to Orange County Animal Services, kennel officer William Farrell was impressed.
The
95-pound American Staffordshire was large, even for his breed, but his
behavior was what truly stood out. “What a great dog he was,” Will
recalls. “I mean, temperament: perfect. Walked spectacular on a leash.
He never pulled, nothing. [Around] other animals: no problem. This guy
was just an all-around great dog. He could have been like one of those
dogs on TV -- like an ambassador for the pit bulls.”
Zeus
was quickly adopted, and Will remembers feeling contented -- relieved,
even, and for good reason. Many dogs that enter Animal Services are not
so lucky.
A
large, red-haired man, Will moves with the purpose of a time-sensitive,
hard worker. “Yeah, it doesn’t get any easier,” he mutters,
thoughtfully, while passing through a room with a table hinged to the
wall. He walks into a small, roofed area outside and takes the cover off
of a plastic bin. Inside are four lifeless dogs stacked upon one
another. The stench of excrement wafts out; fresh dung is smudged on
some of the animals’ coats of fur. Frothy saliva sticks to the lips of
one, covering a slack jaw exposing teeth. The eyelids of another are
still slightly open.
Will lifts the dog that’s on top. Its legs and head awkwardly loll to the side.
“See, this one was a good dog, perfectly healthy,” he says. “But nobody came to adopt him, so this is what happened.”
The
bin sits in front of a large incinerator with a smokestack colored as
black as its purpose. Soon the dogs will be unloaded into the machine to
be cremated. Smeared bodily fluids trail to the bin’s opening where the
corpses slide out.
In
the room with the hinged table, a puddle of urine stagnates on the
floor below where the table extends and the animals spend their final
moments of life. A splotch of bright blood gleams in the corner.
“Some
of them were injured,” Will explains. “Sometimes they’ve been hit by
cars; sometimes they’ve been attacked by other dogs. If the dog is
suffering, we’re going to euthanize it right then and there.”
Today
was slow, he says: only eight dogs euthanized. An average day yields at
least 10 to 15 of these procedures. Altogether, Animal Services
euthanized 10,811 animals in fiscal 2012.
There
are several ways an animal can end up stacked near the incinerator.
Dogs involved in bite attacks are quarantined for 10 days. If they don’t
die of rabies in that time, the owner is consulted and legal
considerations are weighed. If the owner doesn’t claim it, and the
animal is passive toward humans, it may be adopted at the discretion of
kennel officers. If still violent, fate places it next to the black
incinerator.
Friendly
strays spend a shorter time at the facility. If no owner-identifying
microchip is found, they go into general population. If not adopted,
claimed by owners, or saved by a rescue shelter in five business days,
then because of overcrowding their time at Animal Services ends in the
plastic bin. Overcrowding – the cause of 1,242 euthanizing procedures at
the Orlando clinic in 2012 -- is the third biggest killer here, behind
medical and temperamental reasons.
If
a dog’s fate does lead it into the euthanasia room, the operation is standard. One kennel officer holds and
pets the dog while another administers the injections.
The
first injection is an anesthetic cocktail of telezol, ketamine and
xylazine (TKX). In a healthy dog, this dosage takes about one minute to
kick in, painlessly sedating the animal. The second injection is a death
blow from a substance known as Fatal-Plus. Its main ingredient, a
barbiturate called sodium pentobarbital, takes another minute to shut
down the animal’s brain and put it to sleep forever. This process is
complicated by heartworms, Will says, which can prolong the dog’s death
by three to four minutes.
After
that the animal’s bowels let loose, adding to the urine and feces on
the floor from earlier procedures. Then it’s off to the plastic
incinerator bin.
This
macabre task was not always Will’s lot in life. After completing an
enlistment as a Marine infantryman, he ended up back in the civilian
workforce and grew restless. Chance put him behind an Animal Services
truck with the organization’s website printed on the back. He applied
online and was quickly hired.
That
was six years ago. Now the 43-year-old is seasoned. Besides euthanizing
procedures, his duties include cleaning (mostly of excrement), feeding,
providing basic medical care and running temperament assessments.
One
day, Will put about 80 dogs to sleep. “I was sitting here for like
eight hours,” he recalls. The pitch in his voice drops, and he adds,
“You just keep doing it.”
He
says that over-breeding is the main problem. Professional breeders want
well-behaved, genetically healthy canines, and they sell off
aggressive, over-hyper dogs. Unschooled backyard breeders use these
animals to breed their own puppies to sell to local mills. “So now you
have a bunch of not-well-bred dogs everywhere,” Will says. “Of course,
the new owners don’t spay and neuter their dogs, and they want the same
thing. Everybody wants to say, ‘My dog is great, my dog is perfect, I
need to breed my dog at least once.’ Or multiple times, if they make
enough money.”
Will
has seen female dogs come in with breasts scraping the floor. Some have
had their uteruses turned inside out. “Once the mom is done, they’ll
move to one of the daughters,” he says. “They’ll breed father with
daughter, son with mother, brother with sister -- they don’t care. As
long as people see puppies, they will buy them. It’s a profit.”
Many
of these ill-bred dogs end up in the kennels of Animal Services. Will
points out that spaying and neutering is covered under Medicaid plans,
and even paying to neuter an animal at the clinic is relatively cheap,
but that it doesn’t seem to matter.
“People
are going to be people. It’s just the way it is,” he says. Adoption is
$55 and includes rabies shots, a microchip and spaying and neutering,
but some patrons ask if they can keep the animal fertile. “They’ll
actually offer to pay more for that,” Will says, “because they’ll make a
ton more money off of the puppies than what they’re going to pay for
the dog.”
A
year-and-a-half after Zeus was adopted, a stray with a familiar color
pattern was brought in. “I knew I knew this dog from somewhere,” Will
says. He scanned its microchip, and sure enough, it was Zeus. Now Zeus
weighed about 50 pounds. His face and neck were shredded with
dog-fighting scars. “Now he was so animal aggressive,” Will says. “He
just wanted to kill anything that came near him.”
Will
stops his story for a moment, and then slowly continues with a knot in
his throat: “Of course, nobody claimed him. There was no contact with
the owner. And it was just a matter of days before we had to euthanize
him. I made sure I was there. I wanted to do it myself, because I loved
him so much. He was such a great dog. And it’s not the dog’s fault. It’s
not my fault. It’s the damn people that keep over-breeding their dogs.”
Will
also blames dog-fighters, but to him over-breeding is the main issue in
a complex, layered problem. He says dogs are worth more than the
profits they bring to amateur breeders.
“How
many humans do you know that would give their life up for you?” he
asks. “If you care for a dog, that dog will die for you.”
Such
a noble death seems romantic, however, given the day-to-day reality
that Will faces. It lives in the blood and urine that coat the floor of
the euthanasia room. It hides in the stench from a plastic bin next to an
incinerator. And in the end, it is trumpeted by a long, ever-active
smokestack that sticks up like a dark monument in the back corner of
Orange County Animal Services.
