Fresno turning away healthy dogs, cats at city-owned shelter, amid overcrowding ‘crisis’

Within days of assuming control of operations of the Fresno Animal Center, the city took steps to stem the flow of dogs and cats into the critically overcrowded shelter, limiting the intake of healthy lost or stray dogs on a temporary basis.

The shelter, located near the Fresno Yosemite International Airport, opened in June 2022. Fresno Humane Animal Services operated the shelter under a contract with the city before discontinuing its services at the end of November. A newly created city Animal Services Department took over operations on Dec. 1.

By Dec. 7, however, Fresno City Manager Georgeanne White asked the City Council to approve a resolution to decrease the intake of animals at the shelter, citing capacity issues that “have created an urgent and immediate need to temporarily restrict the intake of animals … to ensure the proper running of the Animal Center and to safeguard the health and safety of the animals currently impounded.”

Deputy City Manager Alma Torres, who has spearheaded the transition of the animal center operations from Fresno Humane to the city, told the council that the shelter’s census included more than 600 animals – at least 500 dogs and more than 100 cats.

But the number of dogs outnumber available kennels by nearly four to one. The shelter has 128 kennels for dogs, not including an area where aggressive dogs are quarantined, as well as a separate area for cats, Torres said.

The bottom line: Under the resolution approved unanimously by the City Council on Dec. 7, the city-run shelter won’t be accepting drop-offs of healthy stray or lost dogs that are brought in by residents until the crowding crisis abates.

Under state law, the city has a legal mandate to provide animal control services. For years, the city contracted with the Central California SPCA. Over the past few years, that was taken over by Fresno Humane, but it now falls to the new city department, Torres said. That means the shelter must take animals that are sick or injured, as well as aggressive or vicious dogs in neighborhoods.

An unexpectedly difficult transition

The extent of the shelter’s overcrowding was not apparent to city leaders until mid-November, when Fresno Humane notified the city that its management team of about eight people at the shelter would not be transferring over to city employment. That left White and Torres scrambling for expertise to guide them in operating an animal shelter.

“That really left us in a lurch,” White told the City Council. “We don’t have expertise on staff” to run a shelter.

A team of shelter care experts from the University of California-Davis was among several organizations that the city called on for help taking over shelter operations on Dec. 1, White said. Within a day or two of their first visit to the center, “we got the call that we had a really serious situation on our hands.”

Concerns about the health of animals in the overcrowded conditions are compounded by the spread of a respiratory disease that is affecting dogs in a growing number of states across the country, including California.

“Our vet staff is telling us we have a crisis and the health of the animals is poor right now,” White said. “But even scarier is we are this close, with that many animals, to having disease blow right through that center, and that would be catastrophic.”

Additionally, the animal center simply does not have enough staff, White and Torres said. The city’s budget allowed for 77 permanent positions at the shelter, but as of Dec. 7, there were only seven permanent employees who had transitioned from the Fresno Humane staff, along with several dozen temporary workers and members of a youth job-preparation program, Torres said.

“The biggest concern really is in the animal-care section,” Torres said. “We have about 24 (people who are) caring for the animals seven days a week.”

White said that hiring new staff for city positions has been slowed because of civil-service testing and other requirements to make the temporary workers full-time, permanent employees.

Animal overpopulation is a root cause

A decline in pet owners spaying and neutering animals during the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with an increase in the number of healthy pets being surrendered by their owners and fewer adoptions, are all contributing factors to the shelter’s overcrowding.

Animal advocates complained that closing the doors to healthy animals could force people to simply leave those dogs and cats on the streets. Torres said the city is trying to reduce that potential by providing resources to people who arrive at the shelter with healthy animals.

“We have been asking them if they can keep them in their home,” Torres said. “We are providing them with crates when available. We are providing them with vaccines. We are providing them with food if necessary.”

Besides the animals housed at the shelter, Torres estimated that another 900 pets, divided about equally between dogs and cats, are in foster care in the community while they await permanent homes.

In the meantime, however, the City Council last week (Dec. 14) granted White broader spending authority to work with local veterinarians to contract for public spaying and neutering, as well as developing a program in which the city could provide vouchers that the shelter could offer to cover the cost of spaying or neutering dogs and cats that people bring to the animal center.

The city is also working to get more pets microchipped, a process in which a tiny transponder is implanted under the skin of a dog or cat. The chip contains unique information that, when read by an electronic scanner, can identify the owner of a lost pet and enable a rapid reunion.

But microchipping and spaying and neutering, White said, “does not solve the crisis we have right now.”

“I know none of us like to talk about euthanasia because that was one of the things that people were so critical about the SPCA, their high euthanasia rates,” she added. “But if we have a mass outbreak of something that is devastating at the center, that’s what we’ll be looking at.”

White and Torres are expected to return to the City Council by mid-February, if not sooner, to provide an update on progress in reducing the overcrowding, packaging a spay/neuter program, and hiring permanent staff for the animal center.