Niagara County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has competition in the animal sheltering business.

The Lockport Common Council will decide this week whether to extend its sheltering agreement with SPCA or try out the services of a new, not-for-profit animal rescue organization.

Eastern Niagara Animal Welfare Alliance, headed up by Willow Street resident Bobbie Mael, is challenging SPCA’s status as the official guardian of stray dogs and cats.

Meal strongly believes that SPCA euthanizes too many strays. If ENAWA lands the city’s business, she pledges it will devote the contract fee to realizing more humane, “progressive” models of animal care and control.

In addition to sheltering strays and finding homes for them, ENAWA is devoted to educating residents about animal care and population control. The group works at making low-cost spay/neuter services available to pet owners, and it aspires to one day offer a range of progressive rescue programs, from mobile stray collection to continuing foster care for animals with behavioral problems that make them unadoptable.

"We all know you can’t save all the animals, but we also know what happens (at the SPCA). It’s sickening to know that’s their solution,” Mael said. “We’re trying to raise the bar here, have better services, save the plight of the animals. ... All we need is to get in place. We need the support of the community and funds from the municipalities.”

Sheltering: Fee-for-service business

The city pays SPCA about $26,000 per year to shelter seized dogs and resident-surrendered cats, and oversee their adoption or euthanasia and disposal. Their 3-year contract expires Dec. 31 and SPCA has offered to hold its 2009 price, $26,280.74, for one more year.

ENAWA has submitted a proposal to provide all the same services as SPCA for about $800 less in 2010.

The group’s deal includes sheltering of stray dogs and cats at Transit Valley Animal Hospital, owned and operated by veterinarian Louis Budik, an ENAWA board member. Meanwhile the group is working on acquiring property in the city or in the town to open a shelter for stray cats next year.

Mael said ENAWA’s contract offers several “enhancements” over the SPCA standard, including:

n Written agreement to keep a veterinary technician and Budik “on call” to handle injured animals at night.

SPCA’s contract does not contain this language, although SPCA interim director Neil Nolf said the agency contracts with a Grand Island veterinary hospital for emergency overnight animal care. Joanie Black, the city’s part-time dog control officer, said in the event she has to handle an injured dog after hours, protocol is for her to take the dog directly to the Grand Island facility.

n Written agreement to accept pregnant cats and nursing cats with their kittens. Mael said SPCA typically refers these special-needs cats to other animal welfare groups including ENAWA and Save-A-Pet.

n Slightly more, and different, operating hours than SPCA’s Rainbow Shelter for the purpose of showing animals for adoption. Transit Valley Animal Hospital is about 8 miles from Lockport, compared with 16 miles to the Rainbow Shelter.

What’s the city paying for?

Mael pitches a case for ENAWA as a more responsible investment by the city than SPCA, both financially and morally.

Financially, she said her group is a better buy because it’s tackling the bigger-picture problems of animal neglect and overpopulation.

As an entity with no public funding, ENAWA has lined up deals with Budik and Ellicottville-based veterinarian Timothy O’Leary to provide low-cost spay/neuter clinics for individual pet owners. ENAWA and Save-A-Pet also recently obtained and distributed to the public a supply of state-funded vouchers for animal sterilization service.

SPCA secures a low-cost spay/neuter deal for the animals in its care, but it does not broker deals for or assist pet owners, according to Nolf.

Regarding shelter/adoption services, both organizations claim they’ll shelter “adoptable” animals indefinitely. Both also acknowledge they have “unadoptable” animals euthanized.

SPCA Agent Bob Schildhauer said unadoptable animals are those that are “too sickly or too aggressive.”

Mael agrees with that description — to a point. Where she and Schildhauer might find disagreement is in the meaning of “too sickly.”

Animal rescue activists are critical of SPCA’s decision to euthanize more than 50 cats taken from a condemned house in Cambria last month.

Schildhauer said the cats were signed over to SPCA by the homeowners, were examined and were found to be “all unhealthy.”

When the owners signed the cats over to SPCA, the cats became the agency’s property. Their new owner saw a risk they could “contaminate” the rest of the shelter population, Schildhauer said.

"It would have cost tons and tons of money to save them,” he said.

“Among all those cats, there weren’t even five that could be saved? Come on,” Mael responds. “Many cats are afflicted with an upper respiratory infection that’s very common in shelter situations. For (ENAWA), Dr. Budik will treat that infection at cost; it’s $4 for a 10-day course of antibiotics. ... Even if the infection is not treated, it usually clears up on its own within a few weeks of the animal leaving the shelter.”

Mael questions the rate at which stray dogs are euthanized by SPCA. She obtained dog control records for the City of Lockport covering 15 months between January 2008 and May 2009 and found that of 42 dogs seized by Black, the dog control officer, 11 were redeemed by their owners, three were adopted and 22 were euthanized.

The records indicate all but a few of the dogs were unidentified, unlicensed and ran at large.

The euthanasia rate in that period, half of the dogs seized, underscores the extent of animal neglect in the community, Mael suggested.

ENAWA advocates for a multi-pronged response to the problem, with elements including: stepped-up enforcement of dog licensing law; wider availability of low-cost spay/neuter programs; more aggressive outreach to the public to get healthy strays into adoptive homes; vaccination and sterilization of feral cats; special outreaches to the elderly and rural residents to help them care for pets; and pairing of at-risk youths with abused animals to teach more humane handling of the animals. ENAWA is pursuing grants from private charitable foundations, including Maddie’s Fund, to finance these outreaches.

Mael is challenging the city to make a conscious choice which shelter provider it prefers to do business with: One whose contractual obligation is simply to deal with strays/surrenders; or one that handles strays while also working to address animal overpopulation and neglect. They’re problems she lays partly at the feet of SPCA, which has dominated the animal welfare “business” for many years.

“There’s no public education, no assistance with (animal sterilization),” she said. “The cat population has exploded because of a lack of programs. ... It preaches ‘starve the animal.’ That’s a 15-year-old model that doesn’t work. The public deserves better, and the poor animals certainly deserve better, than a death camp.”

SPCA defenders speak up

Addressing animal overpopulation isn’t SPCA’s mission, according to Schildhauer.

“Our main job is to investigate animal cruelty,” he said. “We do not drive around picking up (stray) animals. They are brought to us.”

Shelter contracts are a revenue stream for the agency, which lives off donations and contract/service fees alone, Nolf said. Niagara County SPCA does not receive a penny from Niagara County, he said.

Schildhauer, who’s worked for the SPCA for more than 30 years, insists euthanasia is not the agency’s primary or preferred means of processing animals.

Space and money are issues, however, when it comes to determining which ones will be kept beyond the legal five-day holding period, he acknowledged.

Rainbow Shelter has cage space for 80 dogs and about 100 cats, plus some portable cages that can be loaned to residents or used by the shelter in a pinch. Residents who want to surrender an animal are asked to call ahead and be sure there is cage space. When there’s not, Schildhauer said, “we tell people on the phone: we may euthanize. ...

“We do what we can, but people have to understand we do have limits. If it’s healthy and adoptable, it’s up for adoption, no time limit.”

Nolf, the interim director who took over for embattled former SPCA director Albert Chille on Oct. 1, said he’s seen staff and volunteers take sometimes-extraordinary measures to work with the animals in its care. He spoke of watching one who spent a half-hour coaxing a cat to eat — and said he’s seen no evidence of apathy toward the animals as SPCA’s critics charge.

Nolf told the council last week that SPCA does have some work ahead to repair its image. He pledged to “work more closely” with Erie County SPCA, which has complained about the number of animals that Niagara County residents are bringing to its “no-kill” shelter rather than Rainbow Shelter. He said he’d like to “reach out to the local rescue groups and encourage their work.”

Nolf also is considering having SPCA lower its cat adoption fee from $150, even though the agency might take a financial loss, to encourage more adoptions.

Black told the council that she has an “excellent” relationship with Niagara County SPCA and would like to see it continued.

Her boss, City Clerk Richard Mullaney, urged the council to keep in mind what the city’s obligations are in terms of animal control and sheltering. The city has jurisdiction over dogs only. Its duties are to enforce state dog licensing law and local leash laws. The state does not allow the city to regulate or attempt control of cats in any way currently.

As the council considers the SPCA contract extension, Black’s opinion is carrying weight with aldermen including John Lombardi, council president and a former ENAWA board member.

SPCA officials “answered all my questions. I’m satisfied,” Lombardi said. “I believe Bobbie has a good program going on, but at this point I think we have to take Joanie’s opinion into account.”

Mayor Michael Tucker said pretty much the same.

“I’m more comfortable with SPCA. I’m familiar with their track record,” he said. “Joanie feels very comfortable with them. They fill our needs. ... And I think we need to be clear: They’re a shelter, and Bobbie’s group wants to be more. I don’t think we’re ready.”