# Is it possible to buy a county shelter?



## aegis (Jul 15, 2014)

This is a theoretical question. If you have the cash or resources, is it possible to simply buy out a failed county shelter and run it right? Own the place outright and turn it into a private shelter, rather than a government run one.

The reason why I ask is because of research on my new home. I'm a student in the Arlington area, and I've been researching on the shelter situation here. Everything was peachy for a while. This town is amazingly dog-friendly, with lots of caring and passionate people and groups such as Dallas Pets Alive!, the Humane Society, and adoption events en masse. 

Then I turned to the Dallas county shelter. In 2000 they had a 10% adoption rate; 90% didn't make it. For the past five summers they haven't had working air conditioning, temperatures up to 80 degrees, and, I hope this isn't true, they turned down a free offer to fix it.

People are trying to fix the situation. Dallas Animal Services is down to a 40% kill rate right now, which is way higher than other shelters. However, digging deeper, as I really shouldn't have, brought me very, very close to vomitting, after reading about an incident with a kitten, abuse allegations, and workers who were fired for dragging dogs to the euthanization lab.

These things can be fixed, but regulations get in the way. It would seem that, in 2007, the director was given hardly any power. The shelter still doesn't have clarity on its philosophy, and a simple shift in focus to do the damndest to rehome animals and to only put them to sleep when neccesary could provide the image they need.

What really sucks is that people might decide not to adopt from the shelter because of the situation there. For my part, I'm beating myself up trying to decide if I should volunteer--help is desperately needed, but how much good can a person do if he or she is brought to severe depression from the scope and context of the situation? Yet this does not defuse the need.

If county shelters were run in such a way that the city viewed the facility as a method of managing stray, surrendered, and abused pets--living animals, not data or objects--and set procedures in accordance, perhaps then the living beings in question can have a better chance of survival. That doesn't have a chance of happening any time soon, so it would be kind of nifty if a wealthy investor could win the support of several large coporations and buy the place, which would boost all of their images and offer plenty of tax deductions.

I guess the three biggest changes that need to be made right now are to have a system in place for euthanization, to waive any cost of adoption and make it an urgent case for fostering when a dog is on the list, and to fix the damn air conditoning.


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## parus (Apr 10, 2014)

Is there any other county service (courthouse, sheriff's office, county roads, etc.) that you can buy if they're doing a subpar job?


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## ireth0 (Feb 11, 2013)

parus said:


> Is there any other county service (courthouse, sheriff's office, county roads, etc.) that you can buy if they're doing a subpar job?


Well, in some situations yes. For example, the shelter I volunteer at is responsible for enforcing the local cruelty laws and looking after any animals that are seized due to cruelty/neglect, as opposed to a provincial entity doing it. The province pays THEM a nominal amount for the cost of this, though. (not nearly equal to the cost of doing it, but hey)

The main problem I'd see is that doing anything with a government involved takes SO LONG. Even if it was something they'd agree to do, you'd be tied up in paperwork and reviews and legal nonsense for a long time.


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## aegis (Jul 15, 2014)

Edit: I need to apologize for this thread. It's a hormonal, adolescent, angry rant. DAS has lots of hard-working and caring people who do love and care about animals, and conditions and events that go on there shouldn't in any way reflect badly on the people who are there because they love dogs.


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## Willowy (Dec 10, 2007)

Animal Control's job is not to help animals. Their job is to control animals and keep them from being an inconvenience to humans. Including disposing of them as quickly, efficiently, and tidily as possible, in as large of numbers as possible, keeping anybody from having to think of such distasteful things as unwanted pets :/. 

Anyway, no, you probably could not buy a government-run shelter. You could start a private shelter and try for the county animal-control contract. If you could do it cheaper than they could (or took a loss on the bid) they might go for it. Other than that. . .no. Corruption is rampant in municipal government. The shelter in the town my parents live in won't even accept food donations for the animals, even when they don't actually have enough food to feed them. They'll throw it away if anyone just leaves food for them without asking permission. They won't let anyone make repairs, and when some guys showed up without permission to try to make repairs, they threatened to arrest them. So, yeah, municipal shelters are frequently terrible. I don't even know what can be done in those situations.


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## parus (Apr 10, 2014)

ireth0 said:


> Well, in some situations yes. For example, the shelter I volunteer at is responsible for enforcing the local cruelty laws and looking after any animals that are seized due to cruelty/neglect, as opposed to a provincial entity doing it. The province pays THEM a nominal amount for the cost of this, though. (not nearly equal to the cost of doing it, but hey)


That's not buying an already extant county animal shelter. That's an extant private shelter doing a contract job, in lieu of a government agency providing the services.


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## parus (Apr 10, 2014)

Willowy said:


> Animal Control's job is not to help animals. Their job is to control animals and keep them from being an inconvenience to humans. Including disposing of them as quickly, efficiently, and tidily as possible, in as large of numbers as possible, keeping anybody from having to think of such distasteful things as unwanted pets :/


Our local animal control does an excellent job of pursuing neglect cases, and a high rate of placement of surrendered and stray animals. Their euthanasia rate for dogs in particular is extremely low, and it is unusual for them to put down a dog that is not seriously infirm or dangerous. They do not have a set maximum hold time. They also work with local rescues when animals require rehabilitation.


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## aegis (Jul 15, 2014)

parus said:


> Our local animal control does an excellent job of pursuing neglect cases, and a high rate of placement of surrendered and stray animals. Their euthanasia rate for dogs in particular is extremely low, and it is unusual for them to put down a dog that is not seriously infirm or dangerous. They do not have a set maximum hold time. They also work with local rescues when animals require rehabilitation.


I lost the link, but a county animal shelter in Virginia went from a 90% kill rate to less than ten percent, through a huge effort in raising awareness, finding fosters, and encouraging responsible pet ownership.

Also, Animal Control as an organization indeed exists to control nuisance animals. The county shelters are usually hidden in some corner somewhere, out of sight and out of mind, like all other public infrastructure, like the plumbing and gas lines. It can be thought of as an animal disposal system. That's the value society seems to attach to animals sometimes, zero. But the shelters also provide food, water, shelter, and exercise for the animals, and a humane death in a shelter is better than a slow and painful death on the streets or at the hands of a cruel owner. What I'm saying is that the people who work for the organization--the volunteers, paid workers, and third-party rescue workers--do a whole hell of a lot of thankless work to try and get those dogs adopted, and the way the shelter as an organization is run shouldn't reflect badly on the people there who do intensely love and care for animals.


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## ireth0 (Feb 11, 2013)

parus said:


> That's not buying an already extant county animal shelter. That's an extant private shelter doing a contract job, in lieu of a government agency providing the services.


Right, you asked if there was any other county service that you could buy. A service is a service, not just the physical building.


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