Animal Control Officer Mark Bailey drags a stray dog into the Augusta-Richmond County Animal Control Shelter after picking the dog up from the streets. JEFF JANOWSKI/STAFF

Pets crowd animal shelter

Web posted August 1, 1999

By Sylvia Cooper
Staff Writer

There are many sad stories at Richmond County Animal Control. But the saddest is this: Last year, 10,620 neglected, abused, sick, injured, vicious or unwanted dogs and cats were put to death there.

An additional 220 were sold to Medical College of Georgia and the University of Georgia for medical research.

On average, about 41 dogs and cats are destroyed by lethal injection each working day in the Richmond County facility, where the only rescue lies in being reclaimed by an owner or chosen for adoption. Only a small percentage are so lucky.

Most have to be killed because there is no room for them, said Jim Larmer, director of the facility. The grisly business cost Augusta taxpayers $437,263 last year.

Most of those deaths and the costs to taxpayers could be prevented, animal control officials say, if people would neuter their pets.

``Having to put animals to sleep is no joy by any means,'' Mr. Larmer said. ``None of my personnel enjoy having to do that, but people not keeping their animals spayed and neutered and letting them just reproduce and reproduce causes these kinds of problems, so we end up having to be the bad guy.

``Now we try not to put an animal to sleep unless it's sick or injured. But we don't have the facilities to hold every animal that comes in here.''

THE SMELLY -- no disinfectant can hide the odor -- 30-year-old shelter, really a collection of ramshackle, concrete-block buildings, is usually running over with dogs and cats and kittens and puppies panting in the heat or shivering in the cold.

And the humans there don't fare much better. Last week, the offices were sweltering even though the old air conditioner was working overtime. Mr. Larmer's office floor is bare concrete because the carpet got wet one time too many when a heavy rain washed in under the door and flooded the office. The smell finally got to be too much, he said.

Click on graphic to view a larger image. STAFF

This was the year the city was to have built a $500,000 shelter with a penny sales tax, but that plan has been shelved for at least a year. There is no sewer service along Tobacco Road that the Mack Lane facility can tap onto, and it will be next year before work to lay a line begins.

Spending money on the old shelter when construction on a new one should start within two years would be ``throwing good money after bad,'' said City Administrator Randy Oliver.

ANIMAL CONTROL traditionally has been a low priority for Richmond County elected officials, even though the county has one of the highest rates of stray and abandoned animals in the state.

For example, in 1997, Richmond County destroyed more animals than any of the 20 counties around metro Atlanta, except Fulton County, which has a far greater population.

And last year, in consolidated Columbus-Muscogee County with a population similar to Augusta's at 187,000, animal control destroyed 6,568 dogs and cats -- more than 4,000 fewer than at the Richmond County center, according to Sylvia Baxley, chief of administration for special enforcement and animal control.

Columbus-Muscogee has an aggressive enforcement program and took 2,107 cases to court last year. It requires pet owners to buy $5 tags for neutered animals annually and $20 for those that are not.

In Chatham County, with a population of 244,000, only a third of the number euthanized in Richmond County last year were destroyed by animal control. In Chatham, 3,408 dogs and cats were destroyed last year, said Capt. Tom Tracy, administrator of Emergency Management Services and Animal Control.

In DeKalb County, with a population three times that of Augusta, animal control euthanized 9,625 animals last year, according to Frank Boldoe, DeKalb's deputy director of Public Safety for Animal Control.

THAT'S ALMOST a thousand fewer than at the Richmond County facility.

DeKalb County also has a $3 tag fee for neutered pets and a $10 fee for ones that are not, Mr. Boldoe said. The county cited 2,125 violators last year, he said.

By comparison, Richmond County wrote 123 citations last year, issued 1,148 warning tickets and prosecuted 146 cases in court. One of the cases was against a dog owner who let the dog starve to death in the yard, Mr. Larmer said.

Pet owners who allow their animals to run wild are usually given a verbal warning on the first offense, a written warning on the second and a court citation on the third, Mr. Larmer said.

Animal control officers are not required to give warnings. And, if the pet owner is hostile or uncooperative, they can cite the owner on the first offense.

Only two of Augusta's 10 commissioners have ever visited the facility to find out what goes on there. One of those, Commissioner Freddie Handy, went after The Augusta Chronicle's story about the facility and its use of an outdated gas chamber created public outrage last year.

THE CITY SUBSEQUENTLY did away with the gas chamber and started destroying animals by lethal injection.

Mr. Handy, chairman of the committee overseeing animal control, said he was determined last year to do something about the problem of stray animals. He proposed requiring pet owners to buy tags, but other commissioners rejected the proposal.

Many people, especially those ticketed for letting animals run loose, heap abuse on animal control workers, but the workers are not the villains, said Mayor Bob Young.

``We created that problem by not spaying and neutering our pets, being irresponsible pet owners'' Mr. Young said. ``It's a shame, but we are responsible for that carnage out there. It's just a shame the little animals have to suffer.''

Sylvia Cooper covers Richmond County government for The Augusta Chronicle. She can be reached at (706) 823-3228 or sylviaco@augustachronicle.com.