Over On "Humane" Way

There is so much irony in the fact that the Jefferson Parish Animal Shelter, also known as JPAS for short, is located on 1 Humane Way in Harahan, Louisiana. A kill shelter, this poorly funded, poorly maintained, poorly staffed, and poorly run facility is perhaps one of the most disgusting and depressing places I've ever been to in my entire life.

When I adopted the love of my life, my little (well, he USED to be little) Lieutenant Baxter Bear, the situation at the JPAS was disgraceful. The floors were filthy, the water taps leaked, there was urine and feces in the corner of almost every kennel, the dogs were anxious and hungry, and in the dead heat of a New Orleans summer, there were only these big industrial fans to help cool the air within. These fans were aimed at the people walking down the narrow aisles, not the kennels. In the winter, there is no heat in the facility, the warmth of each suffering animal completely dependent on donations of blankets that the community would make.

By the time Boy and I decided that Little B would be the perfect addition to our household (as Wendy's, nonetheless ... it seems that a lot of the most monumental moments of Middle Country School District alum happen at a local Wendy's) and returned to the shelter, it was 3:15 PM. Or, as the staffer put it, too late since they stopped processing paperwork promptly at 3.

Now that would have been fine and dandy, if not for the fact that it took them about five minutes to notice us waiting for them to pay attention to us and that we had been listening to them chatting about nothing at all of importance, just gossip, for the past few minutes. Which means that we actually arrive a mere TEN MINUTES after they "stopped taking paperwork."

What made it even worse was that a) It was a Saturday and the shelter didn't reopen until Monday, b) Bax had just gotten fixed the day before and was suffering -- we didn't want him to recover on a cold cot in a dirty, unsupervised kennel, c) the lady hadn't even let us play with him at all to bond at this point, since she said "it's a Saturday and they don't do that on Saturdays." Yet we wanted him anyway.

So they couldn't take the two seconds to accept the completed forms we had in hand and give us the damn dog?!

Anyway, it proved a good thing that Boy went and got him first thing Monday morning before classes, since a major scandal rocked the boat just a few weeks later: an employee "accidentally" sprayed undiluted insecticide into the kennels and water dishes of the puppy/dog area and around 25 dogs met their ends.

This incident caused a great deal of publicity and attention began to be directed at the shelter's practices, and since the disgraced resignations of several key members of the organization, things seemed to get a little better since the public was demanding reform and a closer eye on it all. Unfortunately, things only changed on the surface and JPAS is again embroiled in scandal, with the prompt euthanization of a sick owner-surrendered lab. And by prompt, I mean a mere fifteen minutes. And one of the saddest points? The lab was given up for "escaping from the yard too often."

And here's a sad statistic, quoted directly from the piece the Times-Picayune ran about this most recent incident: "...the number of animals euthanized dropped 23 percent from 9,967 to 7,720 this past year."

So if you bought your pet, stop and consider that mind-boggling number and remember that you can get on lists for your desired breed, because this is still an astounding number of animals in just one shelter alone that were sentenced to die. How easily could your pet have been one of them?