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Preparing for health and disease issues related to long-distance animal transfer
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| © Stuart Armstrong |
Most people participating in animal transfer programs get involved out of a desire to save lives. With all that empty kennel space, they wonder, why not bring in a few hard-luck cases and help them find homes? And the harder the luck, the more tempting the animals are to many soft-hearted shelter workers; the living conditions for stray dogs on the streets of Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Taiwan are enough to make anyone look for the quickest way to bring those animals to a more welcoming environment.
But those harboring such good intentions and high hopes find it doubly heartbreaking when a transfer goes awry and results in more euthanasia, not less. It’s a scenario most likely to occur when animals are coming from a place so distant—geographically or culturally—that they bring along daunting diseases scary enough to be featured on horror movie posters.
It’s a catch-22 for agencies that want to help animals in poor areas of the world where veterinary care is spotty at best: sometimes, the dire circumstances these animals are plucked from don’t all get left behind; they can cling like bad luck. And it’s not just the street dogs living in subtropical foreign climates who can import disease; it’s also the animals coming from poor American shelters where outdated physical facilities—like those plagued with broken-down floors, poor air management, and lack of isolation areas for sick animals—make disease prevention all but impossible.
Sharon Harmon, executive director of the Oregon Humane Society, learned this the hard way a few years back when her group tried to help a community in Mexico by flying in some of its animals. “I was a sucker,” Harmon says ruefully.
The disease that broke out at the Portland shelter in the wake of the transfer was almost unimaginable. “It was just viral and upper-respiratory like we had never seen and cats here had never been exposed to,” says Harmon. “We only did one litter from Mexico, and it had such huge implications. [It took] probably nine months and I don’t know how many hundreds of cats we had to euthanize to get control of the disease.”
The humane society still participates in transfers—bringing in animals from 27 other shelters around the state—but after the nightmare episode the organization has limited itself to animals closer to home. Harmon has developed a theory about animal transferring: while it’s generally safe to transfer animals from organizations on similar latitudes, she says, transporting them up and down longitudes increases disease risk due to the variations in climate. Different strains of virus and hardy microorganisms specific to one area may be able to flourish under new conditions, and native animals will have no natural resistance. All some bugs need to infect new shelter populations is a free ride.
What’s at risk can be more than just the health of native shelter animals; for example, a dog coming in may be healthy but may have a kind of tick the receiving area hasn’t dealt with before, says Gary Patronek, VMD, PhD, director of Tufts University’s Center for Animals and Public Policy. Current theory on the West Nile virus holds the disease hitched a ride inside a crow’s parasite; animals coming in from other parts of the country or the world may be the unknowing bearers of other microorganisms that can present potentially serious public health hazards. Several of the major diseases currently on the public scare-o-meter—including bovine encephalitis, monkeypox, and SARS—are animal-borne. Those illnesses, combined with worries about bio-terrorism, have made zoonotic disease a major national concern.
No one is arguing that the next West Nile is brewing in shelters. But on the other hand, no one is saying it isn’t, either. Systematic tracking of the health problems in shelters is nonexistent, so reports on disease risks involved in animal transfer are anecdotal at best.
Under New Scrutiny
Animal protection organizations have tried for years to convince their communities that homeless animals aren’t all sick or injured, while at the same time struggling with the herd-maintenance side of disease control. “Shelters have been working for a long time to develop good procedures and get health problems under control,” says Patronek. “Bringing in animals from other areas of the country opens up a whole new issue.”
It’s an issue that regulators are starting to worry about. Many groups engaged in animal transfer do enough initial screening to be confident of the health of transported animals; even so, it’s better to be safe and know what’s required—especially when finding out is usually as simple as a search on the Internet or a call to the state’s agriculture department or veterinarian.
It’s one more layer of paperwork, but it can be an important one, says Anne Lindsay, public relations and special projects director of the Northeast Animal Shelter in Salem, Massachusetts. Like regulators in other states Lindsay has worked with, Virginia officials were serious about controlling potential health problems when Northeast wanted to transfer puppies from the southern state back up North. “They won’t let puppies leave until they check out Massachusetts, check out our shelter,” says Lindsay. “So they have to get our state’s veterinarian to come to Northeast Animal Shelter to sign off and say Northeast is okay.”
While regulatory oversight of animal transport varies from state to state, more regulations are beginning to crop up nationwide and transporting groups need to be aware of them. It’s possible for groups and individuals to transport animals across state lines for years without lawmakers noticing that they’re not crossing their “t”s and dotting their “i”s. But if they do finally take note and realize there are few checks in place, transferring groups can expect some serious scrutiny; over the past few months, several state veterinarians in New England have started looking into how well transporting groups are guarding against potential health problems, and some of them aren’t happy about what they’re finding.
“Most regulators aren’t interested in the ethical reasons behind what you’re doing, so they won’t differentiate between what a puppy mill and an animal shelter do with transfer and shipping,” says Patronek. “They’re interested in what’s being done, not the reasons behind it.” By gaining compliance from the beginning, transferring groups will lessen the chances of having their programs nixed later over a failure to meet some obscure but simple requirement.
Complying with the regulations of each state isn’t enough, though, says Patronek. Any group bringing in animals needs to have reliable veterinary support to help with any potential outbreaks. Receiving shelters have to be able to isolate and quarantine incoming animals, and their cleaning and disinfection procedures must be superior; they also should require basic vaccinations prior to transfer. While such requirements could preclude poorer shelters from participation, some have found that the better-funded organizations receiving their animals are willing to help defray the costs associated with medical care and disease prevention.
Some organizations flat-out refuse to bring in animals from groups operating in outdated, less sanitary facilities, but others have coped with this issue by using foster care for animals prior to transfer. After the animals intended for shipment are vaccinated, the originating organization places them with foster homes; experienced fosterers can help get little stressed-out bodies into good condition, ensuring the animals’ good health before sending them on to the receiving organization. Animals who are going on the road need to be healthy for the trip—for their own sake as well as their future shelter mates’.
If both organizations continue to feel that the arrangement is working, then problems can be worked out, says Anne Irwin, executive director of the Bucks County SPCA in Pennsylvania. It’s just a matter of keeping the program flexible enough that neither organization feels overwhelmed by it. Not every transfer is going to be 100 percent successful, Irwin says, and staff should be prepared for problems. “Because of the stress of moving animals, and not being able to check out everything in advance, you may have some health problems crop up,” she says. “We’ve had a couple of times when we [transferred] puppies in where we had a case of parvo, but that doesn’t mean we should scrap the whole program. If we got more puppies in locally we’d have parvo from time to time—the only reason we don’t see parvo is because we don’t see puppies.”
No matter how well each agency is doing its work, problems are inevitable. It’s not possible to prevent every outbreak, and coping with unusual or large-scale health problems can be emotionally difficult for shelter staff unaccustomed to them.
Partnering organizations need to agree up front about what constitutes behavioral and physical adoptability and come to an understanding about what will happen to an animal if the receiving group deems him unadoptable. Where a good, trusting relationship exists, there should be no need for back-and-forth transfers of animals; if a group sending animals trusts its partner to house and place animals, it should also trust the receiving organization’s decisions to euthanize when necessary.
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