SOUTH BEND, IN -- Tabitha Palen arrived at the Animal Care & Control shelter on Olive Street about 11 a.m. Wednesday to search for her missing dog.
She was three hours too late.
She was three hours too late.
When she described her 3-year-old rat terrier, Ryno, to the shelter’s employees, she said, they exchanged a look and left the room briefly. When they returned, they asked to speak with her outside.
Ryno was euthanized at 8 o’clock that morning, the animal control employees told Palen. She was devastated. Her voice broke as she held back tears.
“He was my children’s best friend. He slept with them every night and then came to sleep with me and my husband,” she said. “I took him everywhere. Every errand I went on, when I dropped the kids off at school and picked them up, he came with me. Every day, for almost three years. And they took that away from me, and I can never get him back.”
Ryno went missing Sunday when he dug a hole under the backyard fence, Palen said. Animal Care & Control supervisor Kim Lucas said the shelter received the dog Saturday night, but the shelter never received a message Palen said she left early in the week.
“My husband, with several other family members, went out combing the streets, calling his name, knocking on doors and asking about him,” she said. “I called all the numbers for animal shelters I could find in the phone book. We made over 300 posters, posted around the entire neighborhood. ... People I didn’t even know were coming forward and taking the time out of their day to help search for Ryno.”
The search was in vain. When Ryno was still missing Wednesday morning, Palen drove to the animal control shelter on Olive Street. She said the shelter’s employees told her Ryno was euthanized because he was handicapped and no space remained for him in the shelter.
“His words exactly were, ‘We just don’t have room in this dump,’ ” she said.
Lucas said South Bend’s policy sets regulations on the shelter before an animal may be euthanized.
If an animal without any identification or tags arrives at the shelter, Lucas said, the shelter must wait 48 hours before the animal is euthanized. If the animal is an unclaimed family pet or has identification, she said, the holding period is 72 hours, but most are held for longer than that three-day period.
“If it has a contagious disease ... or is seriously injured, we would probably euthanize the animal before that holding period,” Lucas said.
If an animal does not have identification but appears to be a family pet, Lucas said, the shelter tries to hold it longer than the 48-hour period.
Sundays are not counted in an animal's holding period, so Ryno's 48 hours began Monday at 8 a.m.
The shelter was unaware of any of Palen’s attempts to find the dog before Ryno was euthanized, Lucas said. Palen said she had left a message at Animal Control and never heard back.
Ryno, blind in one eye, did not wear his ID tags or collar because he often crawled under the fence into the next yard to play with a neighbor’s dog in their backyard, Palen said, noting that she did not want his collar to be caught on the fence.
The shelter’s employees told her Ryno might have had a broken leg when he was found, but Palen said she was not sure of the details. She was sure, however, that Ryno should not have been euthanized after only 48 hours.
“This wasn’t an abandoned animal. He was clean, he was taken care of, he was groomed,” she said, crying. “He was my baby. ... He has such a big heart. He was the nicest dog in the world.”
Keri Roberts, director of All 4 Animals Rescue, a nonprofit in South Bend, said the volume of dogs dropped at shelters is often too much to manage.
“Shelters around here, I really think they try,” she said. “They need the support of the community.”
Abandoned and stray dogs often flood shelters and force their employees to euthanize dogs that might have otherwise been adopted or claimed by families, she said.
“(The shelters) do what they can,” she said.
Palen said her dog’s death would leave a hole in her family.
“I didn’t get his ashes, I didn’t get an ‘I’m sorry,’ ” she said. “It wasn’t a big deal to them, they just let it go. ... He just wasn’t compassionate at all when he told me, even with the children standing nearby. And there’s nothing that is going to bring (Ryno) back.”
(South Bend Tribune - June 23, 2011)
