Amid distemper outbreak, groups say animal shelter too slow to vaccinate dogs

Not all animals were vaccinated upon arrival until recently, critics say, allowing distemper to spread more easily.
By Mary Ann Roser AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF



After losing their dog of 16 years in March 2009, the Torpey family of Austin went to the Town Lake Animal Center to adopt another pet six weeks ago. They saw Ivan, a 3-month-old German shepherd/Labrador puppy, on March 30 and fell in love.
But less than 36 hours after they took him home, Ivan was lethargic and sneezing, said Leanne Torpey, 43. She took him to the vet, and Ivan was hospitalized. He later went home, but when he did not improve, Torpey took him back, and the vet diagnosed two infections, parvovirus and giardia. Ivan had lost five of his 18 pounds. In late April, he also was diagnosed with distemper, a highly contagious respiratory illness that can kill.
Torpey thinks Ivan caught the disease at the shelter, which has struggled this year to overcome a canine distemper outbreak. Shelter records show that staff delayed neutering Ivan for two weeks, until March 29, because he was lethargic and had a "heavy green" discharge from his eyes and nose, adding fuel to Torpey's belief that Ivan contracted distemper at the shelter.
Shelter officials, including Executive Director Dorinda Pulliam and veterinarian Dr. Linda Czisny, have insisted for weeks that all animals are vaccinated when they come into the shelter. That is a policy the shelter has followed for nine years, they said, with one key exception being when animals arrive too late in the day. Then they are vaccinated the next day, they said.
"We've been very committed to our vaccination protocol for a long time," said Pulliam, who is leaving the shelter for another job in the department . "It's been very effective, and we're very pleased with the result."
But others say the shelter has been too lax in vaccinating animals this year, leading to unnecessary deaths.
Larry Tucker, chairman of the Animal Advisory Commission, which advises the Austin City Council on animal welfare, said the shelter caused needless suffering and deaths because staff did not vaccinate all animals upon arrival, a standard practice at shelters. Dr. Ellen Jefferson, a veterinarian and president of Austin Pets Alive, a nonprofit that rescues animals from the shelter that are deemed unadoptable and slated to be euthanized, said last month that her organization took in 70 dogs in March and April that showed signs of respiratory illness and possible distemper.
"This issue at the shelter is, in my opinion, a crisis that must be addressed immediately," Tucker wrote in an e-mail to Travis County Judge Sam Biscoe. "Vaccinations are NOT being given immediately upon intake."
The Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the shelter, said it has tested 16 dogs for distemper this year, and of those, nine tests came back positive, five were negative and two results are pending. The first confirmed cases came in early April, Czisny said.
Sick animals come into the shelter and spread distemper, sometimes before symptoms appear, shelter officials said. Shelter staff members isolate sick animals, but they don't often test for distemper because of the cost: $69.25 per test, according to Carole Barasch, spokeswoman for the department.
The shelter can house as many as 650 animals during peak season, which starts about now, Pulliam said. Barasch provided a list of vaccination dates for animals now housed at the shelter, which shows that some of the animals were not inoculated upon arrival.
Though dogs and cats that have been there since mid-April generally were vaccinated the day they arrived, that was not the case for those that arrived in February, March and early April. Most of those animals were vaccinated at least a day later, and a few were vaccinated many days later. For example, a dog brought in March 26 wasn't vaccinated until May 4; another dog waited from March 24 to April 18 to be inoculated. One cat went unvaccinated from Feb. 25 to May 2.
"There's going to be times when something happens," Pulliam said, such as when 50 animals come in at once as part of an animal cruelty investigation.
Of the animals now at the shelter, Czisny said that the shelter vaccinated 99 percent of dogs and 95 percent of cats upon intake and that the animals that were not vaccinated either were too young, arrived after hours or had health issues. She said that in the recent past, animals that were deemed unsafe were not vaccinated, "but as of April 1, two people were assigned to vaccinate, and that has allowed them to work as a team to vaccinate the unsafe/scared animals."
Czisny also said in an e-mail that during the first three months of the year, animals sometimes were vaccinated after they were placed with other animals, a condition that experts say allows diseases to spread more easily.
Tucker said he has repeatedly asked for detailed records showing when animals were vaccinated at the shelter but has been ignored.
Jefferson, the Austin Pets Alive president, provided a report from her nonprofit organization showing that of the 55 animals it received from the shelter between March 31 and April 19, 60 percent had received vaccines the same day, 29 percent had received them late and 11 percent had not been vaccinated. Between Jan. 1 and April 19, her organization treated 63 dogs for distemper and lost 13 to the disease, Jefferson's report says.
"It looks like they started doing (vaccinations of every animal) on the 29th of April," Jefferson said. "I think they're getting it under control, but we could have done that at the beginning of March."
Czisny said Jefferson's statistics "only reflect the at-risk population that APA pulls. It does not reflect the entire population during those dates — the overall population would have a much higher percentage of animals vaccinated."
Shelter officials said they also isolate sick animals to reduce the spread of disease. "Dogs with more complicated respiratory infections are generally tested to confirm that they are not shedding distemper (virus) before being placed back in to adoption," Czisny said. "Dogs may also be adopted out while under treatment for respiratory infection if the adopter chooses to take them, and therefore they would not be tested."
Torpey said her family spent $4,500 trying to keep Ivan alive. She said her daughters, Robyn, 18, and Lindsey, 16, tried to comfort the dog in late April when he cried and howled by holding him and keeping him in a dark room. But on May 3, when he foamed at the mouth, they took him back to the vet.
"Everyone was crying, the vet team, everyone," Leanne Torpey said. "They loved him, too."
She went back to the shelter to let them know Ivan was dead.
"Town Lake's response to me was they don't test (dogs for distemper) until they show they are really sick. I slapped a picture of Ivan in front of them," she said. "I said it's cruel and abusive what they do to animals there."
Her family is adopting a new dog, she said, but not from the shelter.
maroser@statesman.com; 445-3619