The “no kill” policy instituted at the Assisi Center animal shelter in Jersey City is finally catching up with the towns that depend on the shelter to pick up their stray dogs, officials say.
The shelter, which also serves Weehawken, Hoboken and Secaucus, introduced this policy in September 2000 amidst protests by many activist groups, as well as from one other shelter and from some Jersey City officials.
However, West New York officials did not anticipate the severe effect that this policy would have on their town. At the town’s June Board of Commissioners meeting, Mayor Albio Sires was introduced to the problem for the first time, although West New York Health Officer Vincent Rivelli said that some steps have since been taken to address the situation.
At the meeting, a small group of West New York residents addressed the mayor and commissioners about dogs that they had found tied up in the Department of Public Works garage, where the city has been caging animals while it waits for a new place to put them.
The residents said that the city has been adopting out animals from the garage without keeping records, and that the conditions were not adequate.
“These dogs were tied up,” said West New York resident Priscilla Carrasquillo, who adopted one of the dogs in the garage recently. “There was no water for the dogs, no ventilation and no food.”
Rivelli said that in the past month, new health regulations have been put into place to protect these animals, and that one official was hired to make sure that the dogs held in the garage are fed, bathed and walked regularly.
Where are these dogs going?
Carrasquillo said that when she walked in to the garage more than a month ago, she couldn’t help but bring home one of the dogs being kept there.
“I walked in and started crying,” said Carrasquillo, who adopted Max, an 8-pound poodle, that day. “I walked out with a dog.”
Another West New York resident Edward Baumann, along with his wife Lisa, began taking care of one other dog in the garage that seemed to disappear overnight.
“I walked one of the dogs on a Saturday,” said Edward Baumann. “I went back on Sunday morning [to walk the dog again] and it was gone.”
Since the city has not been keeping records on dogs that are found and brought in, the Baumanns have no way of knowing whether the dog was brought to the SPCA or adopted out.
“The sad thing is that we wanted to adopt that dog,” said his wife, Lisa Baumann.
Carrasquillo said that when she adopted Max, the shelter did not take her name and number. They simply gave her the dog.
“The question is, where are these dogs going?” said Nancy VanOossanen, the president of the Jersey City-based activist group Animals Need You. “You can’t just take an animal away without getting the person’s information. What if the owner came to retrieve that animal?”
Although Carrassquillo was able to adopt Max with little trouble, Rivelli said that the town is not licensed to perform adoption services for the dogs.
“We really hope that it is the owner that picks up the dogs [from the garage],” said Rivelli, acknowledging that this wasn’t the case with Carrassquillo.
Caught off guard
According to Rivelli, the DPW garage is the site where stray dogs are held until they are picked up by the animal shelters. Rivelli said that the stray dogs were usually picked up within one or two hours.
However, with the Assisi Center in Jersey City filled to its capacity in the past month or two, no one has been able to pick up the stray dogs held in the garage as quickly.
Diana Jeffrey, the paid director of a statewide association of animal shelters, said in a past Reporter article that the Assisi Center, which can hold 155 animals at one time, has reported taking in 3,000 animals per year. There has to be somewhere for stray animals to be brought, she said.
Rivelli said that now it is not uncommon for West New York to hold dogs for up to three weeks before the shelter is able to pick the dog up, sometimes longer.
Unfortunately West New York and other towns were not equipped to take care of the dogs during their extended stay.
The delay became a larger problem in the spring, when the town has more strays.
“Usually in the spring, for some reason, we have a large number of dogs,” said Rivelli, adding that most of the dogs they find do not have identification tags and therefore the dogs’ owners cannot be notified.
Rivelli said that the town is currently looking into contracting with more than one shelter to avoid any problems in the future. The Newark Associated Humane Societies shelter, which currently does not have a ‘no kill’ policy in place, is one of the shelters that the town is considering. That shelter is used by area towns like Kearny and North Bergen.