City's massive stray problem despite no-kill goal success

In one neighborhood northwest of downtown, stray dogs roam the streets and chase bicyclists. On many South and West side roads, they often are seen trotting after cars, kids and joggers. And on the East Side, packs of strays have been a part of the landscape since before A.J. Kendricks moved there more than a dozen years ago.

Kendricks, 65, said he finds droppings on the front lawn of his home on Center Street every day and has to hose the waste away when it's scattered across his sidewalk. In the summer, when the temperature rises, the stench is overwhelming.

“Just like an outhouse,” he said.

A few miles away, Alfredo Luna, 67, said strays have taken over his neighborhood, just northwest of downtown.

Pointing to the nearby intersection of San Francisco Street and Michigan Avenue, Luna recalled where dogs attacked him last year as he rode his bike home. He said the pack tore a hole in his jeans and knocked him to the ground.

“The more you fight, the more they keep coming at you,” Luna said, adding that he now avoids the area.

According to Animal Care Services, an estimated 150,000 dogs and 187,000 cats roam the city's streets. And each day, an untold number of pets are dumped in and around San Antonio. Cases of cruelty to animals are all too familiar.

While ACS has been touting that it has averaged a live release rate of 79 percent since January — surpassing its no-kill goal of 70 percent by 2015 — the number reflects only the animals that make it to a shelter.

Hundreds of thousands remain on the streets, including many that have owners but are allowed to roam wild.

“It's kind of tragic that we don't have a stronger connection with our pets,” said Kathy Davis, ACS director. “They depend on us for everything. ... We ... should be protecting them.”

ACS and its rescue partners are tackling these issues by waging an education and prevention campaign, offering free and low-cost spay/neutering surgeries in targeted areas and filing more animal cruelty cases with the Bexar County district attorney's office.

Mayor Julián Castro said he's confident the community is moving in the right direction.

“The fact that we're knocking on the door of the no-kill goal is phenomenal,” Castro said. “At the same time, we still have too many folks who think animals are discardable. There's a lot of education that still needs to be done.”

Living with strays

Stray animals aren't just a nuisance and hygiene concern. All too often, loose dogs turn aggressive, threatening the safety of the city.

According to a United States Postal Service report in May, San Antonio tied with Seattle as having the second-highest number of dog bites in the country, behind Los Angeles.

According to ACS, so far in fiscal year 2013, there have been 2,924 animal bites, mostly by dogs.

Jesus Ramon, 51, still is recovering from a loose pit bull attack outside his home on the Northeast Side in 2011 that required 250 stitches and two skin graft surgeries.

He's lost a third of the range of motion in his right Achilles' tendon. Now when his ankle swells up, he takes medicine that eases the pain, but not his wariness of the many dogs that wander his neighborhood.

The dog that bit him had an owner.

“I believe people need to stop making excuses about their animals,” Ramon said. “It's just being careless. I don't know if anyone can do anything for their mindset. You don't understand until you've been there.”

Alice Barnett, 84, has been there. She was bitten in May by a shepherd mix while standing near her mailbox at her East Side home.

Barnett said she's been bitten five times over the past four years, including twice by the same shepherd mix. That dog was deemed dangerous by ACS, which cited the owner for the attacks. The owner now keeps the dog secured.

For the first bite, Barnett received seven stitches in her right ankle, and every bite after has been in the same place — the last wound had so much trouble healing she had to consult a bone specialist. “It got to the place where we had to call the police and everything else to keep the dogs from coming over here,” she said. “For so long I lived with these bites; I wasn't the only one.”

Lisa Norwood, spokeswoman for ACS, said it's difficult to fight an all-too-common mindset that it's OK to let pets wander the streets. But she said ASC hopes its education campaigns help significantly bring down the number of strays.

“One of the things we see here at ACS is animals that have collars, tags and some semblance of training,” Norwood said. “You have to wonder, why would they allow their animal to roam and take their chances on the street? How impactful would it be on the number of pets roaming the streets if owners kept them on their property?”

Thousands of animals, too, die on the streets and are collected by the city's solid waste department. Last fiscal year, the department said 34,107 animal remains were picked up, including nearly 16,000 dogs and nearly 12,000 cats.

Culture of disposability

On Sunday mornings, staff members at Missions Espada and San Juan often find animals dropped off outside their respective churches. The workers also report seeing occupants in cars every weekend toss out animals in plastic bags as they drive by at dusk.

Local animal experts said incidents of people dumping animals in and around the city are too numerous to track, and many more go unreported.

State and city laws prohibit the dumping or abandonment of animals. If caught, violators could face hefty fines and penalties, as well as a two-year stint in jail and up to a $10,000 fine.

Animal advocates estimate there are more than 60 area dumping sites, including city and rural parks.

“Any area that's rural, that's what people look for,” Norwood said. “I think there's a built-in shame. People know it's wrong, so they look for places to do it surreptitiously.”

In the face of overwhelming numbers, some residents who live near dump sites have created groups to deal with strays through spaying and neutering or fostering.

Two years ago, Amanda Evrard created a Facebook page, “The Cemetery Dogs,” to find homes for the packs that roam the San Jose Burial Park graveyard at 8235 Mission Road. Since then, the page has garnered 1,131 likes and a network of volunteers who post photos of stray dogs in need of homes.

In 2009, Christine Hetherly-Thigpen created Protecting Animals Within San Antonio when stray dogs started coming onto the Harlandale High School campus every week and she was concerned for the students' safety.

A former reading teacher, Hetherly-Thigpen wanted to promote responsible pet ownership among students and a more compassionate change of attitude toward animals.

The group works with students and the community to educate San Antonians about proper pet care and to provide veterinary care for animals without homes.

“It's tragic that people are so irresponsible that they see animals as just a piece of trash they don't want anymore,” Hetherly-Thigpen said. “It's an ongoing daily struggle.”

Hetherly-Thigpen said her club works with no-kill rescues such as Katie's Roadside Rescue and Roxy's K-9 Rescue to find new homes for strays.

“It's an unfortunate culture of disposability,” Norwood said. “That's kind of the thought, and sometimes people apply that to their animals.”

Norwood said that although ACS doesn't encourage such community groups because of safety concerns, it does partner with several groups to help with trapping services. And ultimately, what they do is a good thing.

“Any help is just that: help,” she said.

Acts of cruelty

High-profile animal cruelty stories have abounded this year and do not seem to be abating.

In May, a man surrendered his dog, Frank, to ACS after his neighbors reported the man for performing surgery on his pet. The injured dog had orange twine stitched through his wound, with silver duct tape covering the incision.

That same month, a witness called ACS about a man who chained Buddy, a pit bull puppy, to a highway guardrail at the Interstate 10 East access road at West Avenue. The chain was anchored to 35 pounds of barbell weights.

In June, George the duck, a longtime River Walk mascot, was strangled and killed by two men, receiving national coverage and outrage. A $15,000 reward is being offered by ACS and the Humane Society of the United States for information about the men's identities.

And earlier this month, ACS officers rescued two puppies found on a West Side curb, tied in garbage bags inside a cardboard box, and a pair of pups was found in the bed of a pickup at Woodlawn Lake Park. One died of heat exhaustion, and the other, named Ginger, was been taken in by a local foster family.

In fiscal year 2012, ACS recorded 1,144 cruelty calls and 7,452 neglect calls. From October 2012 through May 31, ACS has received 601 critical cruelty calls and 5,133 neglect claims — a pace that is on track to surpass last year's totals.

ACS cruelty investigator Audra Houghton said she believes the uptick is due in part to people being more alert and reporting more cases.

“I think it's just that people are more aware of how to report, who to report to and what the process is,” she said. “And that the outcome is someone might go to jail for what they did.”

The animal care ordinance was revamped and toughened in 2007, increasing the severity of animal abuse charges and their penalties.

When an animal cruelty or neglect call comes in, ASC investigators respond, calling police when needed.

If someone is charged, misdemeanor cases go to Judge Daniel Guerrero at Municipal Court No. 4 aka Animal Court. Higher-level misdemeanors and felonies go to the district attorney's office.

“The goal is compliance,” ACS Assistant Director Vincent Medley said. “Enforcement is the last resort. However, we are going to hold people accountable when those situations become so severe that the animal suffers and the law requires us to take action.”

In fiscal year 2012, ACS filed 18 cruelty investigation cases with the district attorney's office, including charges of cruel confinement, pitting one dog against another, torture and abandonment. Since January, ACS has filed more than 75 cases of animal cruelty with the district attorney's office.

First Assistant District Attorney, Cliff Herberg, said anyone who tortures animals will be prosecuted.

“We take these cases seriously,” Herberg said. “These are the kinds of cases that touch hearts. The public is rightly outraged about that kind of conduct.”

How to solve

When Cathy McCoy drives to work on the West Side, she scans the neighborhood for the strays on which she's keeping tabs. It's a welfare check of sorts for McCoy, executive director of SpaySA, located at 5357 W. Commerce St.

The nonprofit works with the San Antonio Humane Society, Animal Defense League of Texas and Poquita Paws Rescue to find homes for the dogs that come to their building, where veterinary staff perform 40 to 100 spay/neuter surgeries each day.

McCoy said she's excited to hear about the city's live release rate, but wishes other percentages would also increase.

“Wouldn't it be great to have a 90 percent no-kill rate and be 90 percent free of strays?” McCoy said. “Strays on the streets, (now) that's cruelty.”

Norwood said increasing spay/neuter operations is the solution to truly solving the stray animal issue in San Antonio.

“We will never be completely successful,” she said, “if we don't get a handle on the number of unintended litters born here everyday.”

A major part of the city's strategic plan hinges on a new $5 million multipurpose pet adoption center across from the San Antonio Zoo scheduled to open this fall. It will house both a clinic that's projected to provide an additional 7,000 spay/neuter operations by its third year and a pavilion for educational workshops and family gatherings.

The current ACS veterinary clinic performs an average of 60 spay/neuter operations a day and 1,400 a month. Recently, the clinic completed 115 operations in one day, a record for the department.

ACS also upgraded its dispatch system in June. The new $30,000 system outfitted each vehicle with a GPS unit so dispatchers know who the closest officer is to a new call. It also upgraded the call prioritization feature on each officer's laptop.

Officials say already they've seen an improvement in response time.

ACS Director Davis said the department, too, has a neighborhood sweep initiative to educate residents about the importance of keeping pets secure on their property.

Norwood said that last year, the department focused its campaign for responsible pet ownership by targeting neighborhoods in high-risk, high-bite areas with bilingual ads on billboards with messages such as “Leash 'em, Fix 'em and Love 'em,” and spots on radio and TV stations.

The initiative targets ZIP codes with high stray populations to spread the word about protecting animals and how to access free and low-cost spay/neuter surgeries.

Another component of the program is reaching out to children and their parents. For the past three years, ACS has held Animal Allies summer camp, where youths work with shelter pets and learn about responsible pet ownership.

“What you put in to them is what you get out,” Davis said. “It is a responsibility issue and education is the way through that.”