Economy impacts animals also

Times are tough across the board whether you have two legs or four. Bare cupboards and bank foreclosures are taking their toll on Orange County’s residents and their pets.
“We’re seeing a lot [of abandoned animals] right now,“ Orange County Animal Control Officer Patricia Dahl said. “If it’s a choice between a tank of gas so you can get to work, or a bag of kibble, that can be a hard decision.“
Orange County Animal Shelter Director Beth Hamilton said people losing their homes to foreclosure are losing their ability to care for pets, too. What she’s seeing is a tsunami of abandoned and unwanted animals arriving at the shelter.
“We’re seeing tons of cases come in,“ Hamilton said. “They just brought two dogs in from a foreclosure this morning and someone brought six cats in yesterday.“
Dahl said the majority of the calls she responds to concern household pets who simply aren’t getting what they need. Dahl sees dogs whose collars have become embedded in their necks, she said, and a great deal of abandoned pets-especially lately. The reason, she speculated, is that people just don’t have the money to care for their animals.
Frequently, Hamilton explained, folks who lose their house to foreclosure are forced to move in with friends, relatives, or smaller quarters with no room for a pet. That pet ends up in the shelter. Hamilton said the best case scenario is a voluntary forfeiture of a pet. A dog owner, on his way to the homeless shelter, dropped his pet off at the animal shelter recently, Hamilton said. In worse scenarios, people move out and leave their animals abandoned-sometimes chained in the yard, sometimes locked in the dwelling-without food, water or care.
Sometimes though, when an animal is suffering because of inadequate care, it can be hard to sympathize with the owner.
“My first animal control case, back when I started as an animal control officer in 2003, was a case where someone literally starved his dogs to death,“ Dahl remembered.
When she responded to the call, Dahl said she saw the carcasses of a number of dogs covered in snow, their chains still attached to their collars. The owner casually admitted to underfeeding them, Dahl said.
“His statement was that he guessed he just didn’t feed them enough,“ she said. The man was charged and ultimately served time in jail.
But in Orange, discovering a backyard full of frozen, starved dogs was an extreme example of the types of calls that usually come in to animal control officers.
“It’s not like on “Animal Cops” on the Animal Planet channel,“ Dahl said. Most of her work is performing welfare checks and educating owners. And thankfully, most of the animal owners she visits are receptive to the information she gives them, and “a lot of times, it’s correctable right then and there,“ she said.
But if issues aren’t corrected-like failure to provide fresh water, failure to provide adequate shelter, or allowing a dog to run at large-Dahl, as a deputy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, has the authority to issue warnings, summonses, or even make an arrest.
Meanwhile, at the animal shelter, Hamilton and her staff are gearing up for the holidays-not because it’s a special, cheerful season, but because there will be a tide of unwanted pets that were inappropriately given as gifts.
Hamilton warns against giving dogs, cats-or any animals as gifts “for Christmas, birthdays or any other occasion.“
Hamilton explained the deluge of dogs and cats who are surrendered to the shelter after the holidays come in because amid the gift-giving spirit, people don’t consider that recipients may be unable to care for that cute puppy under the Christmas tree. Renters may be subject to restrictions on animal weight or breed that are part of the rental agreement, Hamilton explained. Some landlords only permit a certain number of pets and some prohibit pets, she added. And other landlords might permit a poodle, but not a pit bull.
“A lot of places have breed restrictions, where you can’t have so-called ‘aggressive’ breeds,“ Hamilton said.
Some of the animals who end up in the shelter following the holidays are brought there because their temperaments didn’t suit the household-something a person presenting a pet as a gift may not have anticipated. Pets are brought to the shelter, Hamilton said, when family members discover the animal isn’t compatible with children or with other pets.
And frequently, the reason for surrendering an animal is financial. Hamilton said once the holiday glow fades, new pet owners realize they don’t have the resources to care for that Christmas puppy.
“You don’t know when you give somebody a pet of you’re going to be creating a hardship for them,“ Hamilton said.