Strays Heeled By Shortened Shelter Hours

Cutbacks to the City budget have many stray and abandoned pooches left out in the cold. In July, Mayor Michael Bloomberg cut funding for five city-funded animal shelters across the five boroughs, leaving Queens and the Bronxs Center for Animal Care and Control (CACC) open two days every week and cutting the previously overnight hours of Manhattan, Staten Island, and Brooklyns Centers to 12 hours per day from 24.
Queens CACC, at 92-29 Queens Blvd. in Rego Park is now open only Wednesday and Thursday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and other local shelters are bearing the brunt of the citys decision to scale back shelter funding, which came in the wake of a June city audit that cited the CACC for poor structure and operation.
"We get a lot of phone calls from people who are looking for a no-kill shelter," said Martha Favillo, a former CACC employee and assistant manager of Animal Haven in Flushing, a no-kill dog shelter.
Favillo quit her job in the Brooklyn CACC shelter in July after a series of embarrassing incidents at the Center, and believes the citys shelters are in poor shape.
"The cuts are devastating, because a lot of the time I worked at the shelter, animal rescue couldnt come from 9 to 5, or 10 to 6," said Favillo. "People often end up just tying dogs up outside."
Brigid Fitzgerald, a spokesperson for the ASPCA, said her NYPD officers tried to bring dogs to the ASPCA after the overnight shelters were closed, but were turned away.
"They have to bring the dogs to CACC the next day. They didnt know how to keep dogs overnight, so we gave them a class on how to hold them until the morning," Fitzgerald said.
More Criticism
Two incidents, Favillo said, led to her resignation and illustrate the dire straights the CACCs organization is now in.
The first was when CACC was audited by the city on June 6, exposing three major flaws in the Centers structure and practices.
The audits executive summary stated that "Animals are not always sheltered under humane conditions," "CACC has not made aggressive efforts to increase adoptions," "CACC compounds [its] problem of under-funding by failing to aggressively raise funds on its own and by failing to take sufficient advantage of volunteers," among other problems.
Favillo said she was horrified when the Center, in response to the second charge, started to give "as many adoptions as possible" to make it appear that adoptions were actually increasing.
"They would give a pet to anyone who walked in the door," said Favillo.
The second incident occurred days later, when Favillo, on the first of seven vacation days, came to the Center and picked up eight dogs scheduled for euthanasia and drove them to Goshen, NY, where a rescue group named Forgotten Friends took them in.
Instead of being applauded, Favillo was written up because two dogs had not been spayed or neutered. All had their medication and had passed respiratory tests.
She quit the next day.
Inside the CACC
Jody Jones, Director of Special Projects at the CACC, said the problems outlined in the audit are not news to her.
"These are things we were aware of, and things we all inherited. But progress takes time," she said.
Carolyn Daly, spokesperson for the CACC, admitted that "Budget cuts are a reality, but are affecting services."
The CACC is a private non-profit group, and took over as the citys funded shelter in 1995 when the ASPCA dropped the contract. As a result, the CACC must accept every animal that is brought to them, which strains the budget and nerves of the numerous employees and volunteers who oversee the 1200 animals in its three overnight shelters.
"The challenge is that even though the budget changes, the number of people and animals remain the same," she said.
To deal with the constant fluctuations in funding the CACC relies heavily on private funding and volunteers with an uncompromising goal: to give the animals the highest level of care possible before sending them, hopefully, to homes.
Jones said the CACC places 800 to 1000 animals per month with rescue operations or homes, but, naturally, gets overloaded with would-be pets and has to face "some tough choices" on a regular basis.
But the one tough choice that is made for her is the funding. Since the budget cuts took effect, there has been a slight drop in euthanizations but a larger drop in adoptions, which Jones said she hoped was a result of people not yet knowing the Centers hours. She also said that while police procedure on found dogs varies by precinct, the Brooklyn CACC shelter has always been the standby shelter for Queens Precincts if they have to unload a dog when the Rego Park CACC is closed.
Working Together
These are the problems inherent to the animal control industry. As a result, private shelters, city-funded private shelters, and civic organizations need to work in concert to help the stray dogs and cats of New York get a new home before its too late.
Fitzgerald estimated there were more than one million homeless animals in the five boroughs. "We would like to think that everybody is working together to help them," she said.
Jones called the animal-placement industry "one of the most proactive structures in the nation.
"We couldnt do that without being able to network. This is purely a group effect," she said.
Jones stressed to the Courier the importance of pet adoption, and asked for any help to bring attention to the thousands of animals ready to move in to a loving home on short notice. She also said that October is Adopt-A-Shelter-Dog month, and encouraged potential adopters to call or visit their local center.
Daly said that a little public attention to the problem usually results in ashort-term spike in adoptions, such as when, last week, a shelter dog appeared on the afternoon television show The View and her office was flooded with calls. She also reminded pet owners that spaying, neutering, and licensing their pets was of the utmost importance and gave the Centers hotline, 1-888-SPAY-NYC to those who seek to have the surgery performed.
Even Favillo admitted she had a soft spot for the Center, whom she works hand in hand with at her new job.
But she wont go back until theyre run correctly.
"I would take my CACC job back in a heartbeat," she said, "but when I worked there, they had two adoptions counselors. People would get angry because no one would get back to them when they wanted to adopt a pet, but there were only two of us. Now they have three, but its still crazy. They should have five."