Are There Any Animal Shelters Open 24 Hours

Whatcom Humane Society nighttime drop-off kennels with surrender forms. (Beth Clifton)

Opened in mid-2013, the state-of-the-art Whatcom Humane Society shelter may be the newest in the U.S. to include a night drib-off facility

BELLINGHAM, KENAI––How far autonomously are the Whatcom Humane Society, of Bellingham, Washington, and the Kenai Animal Shelter, of Kenai, Alaska?

Both are merely five or ten minutes from airports. Measured in flight fourth dimension via Alaska Airlines, the altitude between them is vii hours, twenty minutes.

Both are open-access, both hold animal control housing contracts, and both are believed by humane professionals who know their work to exist moving in progressive directions.

But measured in 1 pregnant attribute of humane philosophy, the distance between them may take recently widened to centuries––and both have strong practical and historical arguments for moving in opposite directions.

Opened in mid-2013, the state-of-the-art Whatcom Humane Society shelter may be the newest in the U.S. to include a dark drib-off facility that allows people to anonymously relinquish establish strays and pets.

The Kenai Brute Shelter on Dec 31, 2014 permanently closed a dark drop-off facility that over the by x years had received more than iii,000 animals.

Foundling bicycle at the Church building of the Anunziata in Naples, Italy. (http://www.naplesldm.com/annunz.htm)

one,000 years of debate

"Drib boxes," equally they are well-nigh frequently called, especially by critics, are amongst the oldest controversies in humane work––and have been controversial for almost ane,000 years.

Horrified by the numbers of drowned infants discovered in the River Tiber, Pope Innocent III in 1198 ordered that the first known "drop boxes," then called foundling wheels, be installed at the Santo Spirito hospital serving Vatican City and at convents elsewhere throughout Italy.

Foundling wheels enabled mothers surrendering infants built-in out of wedlock to leave them anonymously in a manner that rotated them immediately from the common cold outdoors to warmth and security indoors. The motion of a foundling cycle would also band a bell to bring nuns to attend the surrendered child.

(From Catholic Online.)

St. Vincent de Paul

More than 400 years later. St. Vincent de Paul introduced foundling wheels to French republic. By the 18th century foundling wheels were common throughout western Europe and had been introduced to Brazil past Portuguese immigrants.

As humane work expanded from rescuing orphans and other indigent humans to rescuing animals, the equivalent of foundling wheels came to be standard equipment at animal shelters.

Much as Pope Innocent III saw foundling wheels to be far preferable to infants being drowned, humane fauna rescuers from the early 19th century to the present day argue that the alternative to assuasive animals to be anonymously surrendered tends to be that animals are drowned, clubbed, shot, or otherwise disposed of by whatever method the people abandoning the animals find convenient.

But even in Pope Innocent'southward time, foundling wheels and drib boxes were criticized for allegedly stimulating immoral and irresponsible conduct.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Public opinion and political momentum had already begun to turn against foundling wheels in 1811, when Napoleon Bonaparte felt compelled to expressly favor them by imperial decree. Many had already been taken out of service when in 1863 the globally influential Hôpital des Enfants-Trouvés in Paris replaced the foundling wheels at its facilities with the mid-19th century equivalent of today'south beast shelter surrender interviews.

Snowball, the domestic dog who thinks he is Napoleon. (Justin Page photo)

The Hôpital des Enfants-Trouvés anticipated, much as many brute shelters do today, that the surrender interview could become an opportunity to assistance go along children in homes, past enabling the staff to dispense communication, some material aid, and often considerable moral suasion, also known as shaming.

Past 1949, when Brazil abolished foundling wheels by law, they had fallen out of use in almost every society that considered itself progressive. Driblet-off facilities for animals gradually fell out of favor during the next xl years.

NACA manual

Recommendations for the structure and maintenance of such driblet-off facilities, with diagrams, appeared on folio 193 of the 1989 start edition of the National Animal Command Association Grooming Transmission, but were omitted completely from the 2001 second edition, after two 1999 episodes involving drop-off facilities were among the early on animal-related causes celebré of the online era.

First, Dale and Cheryl Brainard were each fined the maximum $750 and ordered to perform l hours of community service for leaving their starving and sick Great Dane in a drop-off pen outside the Medina Canton Animate being Shelter on the subfreezing night of February 25, 1999. The domestic dog died six days after.

The Brainards testified that they did non see leaflets warning that animals should not be left after hours in cold weather. Initial condemnation of the Brainards was somewhen tempered by questions as to why the Medina County Animal Shelter had facilities where animals might be left to freeze in the first place.

Rutherford County

Six months later, international online protest against drop-off facilities at Murfreesboro and Smyrna, in Rutherford County, Tennessee, led to a rally reportedly attended by 300 people at which an organisation called Volunteers for Animals presented 70,000 petition signatures to canton officials asking that the drop-off facilities be removed.
The Murfreesboro was demolished inside two weeks, while the Smyrna facility was airtight for renovation.

Somewhat overlooked amid the controversy was that both the Murfreesboro and Smyrna drop-off facilities were many miles from the fauna command agencies responsible for maintaining them. Lack of close supervision appeared to be the major issue associated with both facilities.

Nonetheless, past the stop of the 20th century "drop boxes" remained standard at animal shelters only in Japan, mostly for the same reasons that the Kenai Animal Shelter abolished them.

Kenai Animal Shelter

"Kenai animal command officer Stacie Mallette said that the kennels were originally intended as a last resort for when someone needed to put an brute in a kennel apace," reported Ian Foley of the Peninsula Clarion. "Still, she said that it has become an easy way for people to become rid of a pet. Mallette said that when people leave animals in the later on hour kennels, they rarely get out information about the pets, which makes adopting them out to a suitable family unit more than hard.

"When no information is provided," Foley wrote, "the shelter does non know if an animal is unwanted or a stray. If at that place is no information, the shelter brings the fauna in and keeps information technology at the facility it for 72 hours before adopting it out in case an possessor claims it.

"Another reason for the kennel'due south closure is to prevent animals being exposed to dangerous elements," Foley continued.
"Marianne Clark, an animate being control officeholder at Soldotna Animal Control, said the Soldotna facility used to have afterwards hours drop-off kennels," Foley added, "but closed them down many years ago. She said one of the reasons Soldotna no longer uses after hr kennels was considering children started playing in them and one time a kid was accidentally
locked inside a kennel. "Clark said that there are many reasons people use afterwards hour driblet-off kennels, but she believes ane of the biggest is to avert paying the fees associated with giving upward a pet."

New Humane Society of Elkhart County animal shelter. (Creative person's rendering.)

Elkhart County

The Humane Club of Elkhart County, in Bristol, Indiana, reportedly removed nine dark drop-off kennels in September 2010.

Executive director Anne Reel "referenced recent incidents of abuse related to the eolith boxes that contributed to their endmost, including a suffocated kitten and an abandoned group of dogs and cats who had been without food and care for at least a month," reported Rachel Terlep of the Elkhart Truth.

"People were dumping off animals at dark like garbage, with no business organization for their well-being," Humane Society of Elkhart County board president Stephanie Krol said.

Whatcom Humane Club drop-off facility. (Beth Clifton photograph)

"Along with dumping mistreated animals," Terlep connected, "an HSEC establish that people were dumping pets to avoid paying the $20 intake and care fee, using the deposit boxes for pets instead of strays, and dropping off animals from outside Elkhart Canton.

Concluded Reel, the drop-off kennels were "like a magnet that attracts people to do what is not right."

Ely, Nevada removed two drib-off kennels at well-nigh the same time in 2010, coincidental with opening a new city shelter. Part of the issue in Ely was that abandoning animals at the animal shelter was a misdemeanor, potentially punishable past fines up to $1,000.

The American SPCA in 2013 introduced a 60-minute webinar called Beyond the Box: Closing Subsequently-Hours Drop Boxes, urging shelters to get rid of them: http://www.aspcapro.org/webinar/2013-11-14/beyond-box-closing-after-hours-drop-boxes.

Whatcom Humane Social club goes the other way

But there is an opposite perspective, voiced and demonstrated by a shelter manager widely regarded as one of the all-time.

Whatcom Humane Guild executive director Laura Clark, while acknowledging the potential problems with drop-off facilities, views them much as Pope Innocent III viewed foundling wheels: as peradventure not the ideal solution to humane problems which would non exist in an ideal world, but preferable to animal abandonment, with no drawbacks that cannot be rectified through good design and good management.

Signage at Whatcom Humane Society drop-off facility. (Beth Clifton photograph)

The Whatcom Humane Social club driblet-off kennels, Clark told ANIMALS 24-seven , are used chiefly past police and fauna command officers on night duty who demand to leave animals somewhere safe while responding to other calls. The kennels may be used to temporarily business firm the animals of people who have been arrested, homeless people picked up off the street in subfreezing weather, victims of automobile accidents, and victims of pre-dawn fires.

Of form the Whatcom Humane Society drib-off kennels are also used by members of the public, including members of several of Bellingham's many ethnic communities who may feel inhibited about approaching humane club staff or animate being control officers.

But Clark does not believe the run a risk that pets may be abandoned or that the shelter may not collect surrender fees outweighs the take a chance that otherwise an creature in need may not come to the humane social club.

Doorway to the Whatcom Humane Society drop-off facility. (Beth Clifton photo)

Security cameras

The Whatcom Humane Society drop-off kennels are monitored continuously by security cameras. Plentiful signage explains how animals are to be left. Give up forms, with pens, are present on a lighted counter. Users are encouraged to fill them out, and to provide all of the information that can assist the Whatcom Humane Order to rehome an animate being.

There are separate kennels for dogs and cats. Once the doors are closed, the animals are deeply locked inside, with bedding and rut lamps.

Door of Hope

Foundling wheels, almost a forgotten technology, have come back into utilise in many parts of the world since July 1999, when Door of Hope Children's Mission pastor Cheryl Allen reintroduced the idea at her missionary church in Berea, S Africa. Though the foundling cycle may not be the perfect solution to preventing child abandonment and corruption, it provides a needed service in societies otherwise defective in support and tolerance for unwed mothers, or indigent parents, often sick, who simply cannot feed and look afterward their children.

Drop-off kennels for cats or small dogs at the Whatcom Humane Club. (Beth Clifton photo)

Drop-off kennels at animal shelters may make a like comeback.

Says Marian'due south Dream executive director Esther Mechler, who has founded or co-founded at least nine humane organizations in more than 40 years of involvement in animal work, "I certainly do not feel good about the idea of drop boxes at shelters – the fear the animals must feel – only think perhaps it is amend than merely dropping the animals off in some alley, the wood or a farm. Possibly they are not a bad thing? I just don't know plenty."

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Source: https://www.animals24-7.org/2015/01/19/should-animal-shelters-re-open-night-drop-off-kennels/

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