Keeping them safe: ACPR works to help the four-legged residents of Adams County

OTHELLO — While there’s usually a full house at Adams County Pet Rescue, some days are fuller than others. May 12 turned out to be a very busy day.

“We got in 15 animals this morning,” ACPR employee Anita Plancarte said.

The intake included dogs reported running loose just outside Othello, out by the canal.

“We got a call about seven pups, and it ended up being a mom and six puppies. So we went out and caught them,” Plancarte said.

The first puppy was relatively easy to catch, staff said, but three of the puppies fell into the canal and ACPR employee Alonso Mariscal risked falling in to get two of them out - and he can’t swim.

The rescue required a return trip for the remaining puppies and momma dog. One puppy was corralled pretty quickly, but Mom and the last puppy were hiding in a dense stand of sagebrush. Kaitlyn Koehn crawled through the sagebrush and brought mom and puppy to safety.

The initial call about the puppies came in first thing in the morning. That was followed by the capture of strays within the Othello city limits.

“In-town animal control is also here,” Plancarte said, “So (ACPR staff) had to go follow that call. And some cats came in - kittens.”

May 18 was the day a dog dumped along the roadside finally allowed herself to be picked up and transported to the animal shelter. It took ACPR director Kyya Grant three days, but finally, the dog was willing to get into the crate for transport.

“It’s never the same. Every day is different for us,” Plancarte said.

ACPR is usually busy.

“It’s actually really weird when we don’t get anybody in on a day,” she said.

She estimated about 90% of the animals coming in are strays. Some show signs of having been dumped, like the momma dog and puppies by the canal. Some are left on the ACPR doorstep, like the momma cat and four kittens found on the outside cat toy May 18. Others appear to have run away from home and got lost.

Grant said dogs and cats actually are communicating when they come into contact with people attempting to help them. It’s just sometimes difficult to know what they’re saying.

“If you (approach) a puppy or a wild one, it’s scared, it’ll turn and snap and bite. So you have to know how to do it. You have to be able to read their language, know when to cut them off and when to retreat when to put pressure. There’s a lot to it,” Grant said.

“Sometimes catching them isn’t pretty,” she added.

Shelter employee Erika Salmeron said people have asked her about the technique of picking a dog or cat up by the skin on the back of its neck, called scruffing.

“People think we’re hurting them but we’re actually not,” Salmeron said.

Scruffing is how momma cats and dogs carry their young, but sometimes people misunderstand when they see a person picking up a frightened animal that way, Grant said.

“They’re terrified and they scream, and they will bite - Kaitlyn got bit today - because they’re scared,” Grant said.

Sometimes though, people can connect with wandering dogs and cats. Grant said she encourages people to bring animals to the shelter if they can be caught without risk.

There’s a procedure when dogs and cats arrive.

“If someone brings (the animal) in, we have them fill out a stray form, with information of where the dog was found and all that,” Plancarte said. “We get a weight on them, we deworm them, we give them vaccines, take their picture. We give them a name, and then we’ll post their pictures if we get pictures right away. Hopefully, somebody comes and gets them, and if not, after 72 hours they become ours.”

The animal is then placed on a list to get spayed or neutered, microchipped and brought up to date on vaccinations. Any animal older than four months will receive a rabies vaccination, she said.

Pet owners have a better chance of getting a lost or strayed animal back if it’s been licensed, Grant said. Thus, it’s important for pet owners to register their pets with the city they live in. Microchips also help get lost animals back home, as does a proper tag on the animal’s collar.

Adams County Pet Rescue is a no-kill shelter, so everybody that comes in the door ends up in a new home. The shelter is not limited to dogs and cats - ACPR has harbored birds, lizards, snakes and even a few wild birds awaiting transport to specialized care facilities.

“We had guinea pigs left on the side of the road on Christmas Eve that somebody picked up and brought in,” Grant said. “We’ve had potbellied pigs.”

Plancarte said she thought the strangest guests at the shelter were a set of rats.

The rats had been pets of a woman who was moving, and she was persuaded to bring them to the shelter rather than release them, Grant said.

The shelter has been home to almost every variety of dog and cat imaginable. There are, however, trends in pet ownership, and Grant said she would urge people to think about what they want before they get a new dog or cat.

“There’s something to be said about researching the breed you want,” she said.

She used German shepherds as an example.

“They want a guard dog,” she said. “They love the look.”

But shepherds do better when they get a lot of exercise and not every owner has room to let them roam. Shepherds were popular a few years ago, but eventually, many shepherds ended up at the shelter.

Grant said the shelter is helped by a network of people both inside and outside Adams County. There are local volunteers who take in dogs and cats as fosters, and ACPR gets donations of both supplies and money.

Volunteers with Cats of Lynwood act as foster families for some of ACPR’s cats and kittens, and Adams County animals are part of adoption events at PetSmart locations in Bellevue, Shoreline and Lynnwood, Grant said.

The shelter needs kitten formula and dog toys, she said, small fleece blankets for animals and potty training pads for puppies.

Puppy and dog food - both dry and canned - are top needs right now, staff said.

“We use (canned food) to give extra calories, and we also use it for feeding antibiotics and medicine,” she said.

Feeding the animals is only a part of the shelter’s mission though, staff said.

“The main thing is to get them to safety,” Grant said.

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