Animal Services Found Local Dog Hoarder

The City of San Angelo's Animal Services identified a dog hoarding situation with over 80 dogs.  An officer returning two small dogs to the home found the disturbing situation.  

The officer found a situation that violated numerous city ordinances, unaltered dogs, no breeding permit for puppies/neonates, exceeding maximum of seven dogs, and no vaccinations (rabies state requirement).

The dogs needed flea treatments and vaccinations.  The following texts are from PAWS leadership.

Several needed medical care.  

Animal Services took the dogs to PAWS.  The parvo case was an adult dog.  Vaccinations would have prevented that dog from suffering inflicted by the parvo virus.  

News reports on the dog hoarding situation came from Concho Valley PAWS, which encouraged people to suspend judgement on the dog owners.  

The City of San Angelo passed numerous ordinances over the years to prevent such a situation.  Animal Services promised a year of community education after Council passed a mandatory spay-neuter ordinance in October 2015.  The shelter contracted out adoptions to Concho Valley PAWS in 2017 with the promise that staff time would be freed up to do enforcement.  

GoSanAngelo reported on 2-25-2017:

Right now, (PAWS Director Jenie) Wilson said, the city doesn’t have the resources to enforce the (mandatory spay/neuter) ordinance because it is also working on reducing euthanasia rates. 

“By bringing our resources together, maybe we can free up time for animal control so they can go out and enforce the ordinances, which may answer some of the problems of how animals get here in the beginning,” she said. 

In addition to enforcing the ordinance, high-volume spay/neuter clinics and adoption events help achieve the no-kill goals.

Fast forward to August 2022 when the City conducted an intensive review of unaltered dogs returned to owner from the Animal Shelter.  Nearly a year into that effort city staff reported to Council:

Owners claimed 956 cats and dogs in FY22, 282 of which were already spayed/neutered. 44 pet owners have since provided proof of spay/neuter. 24 provided proof of an exemption, such as moved outside city limits, pet is medically fragile, pet has died, etc. This leaves 606 pets still reporting as unaltered. We’ve cited or filed a complaint with municipal court for almost 400 animals and are moving through the remaining backlog.

That's a ten percent success rate in getting returned shelter pets fixed.  Leaving 90% unaltered and on San Angelo streets is a symptom of a multi-year problem.  

It's long past time to make the Animal Shelter bad owner proof.  That requires a combination of support programs, especially low cost spay-neuter, and enforcement of existing, longstanding ordinances.  

Thousands of animals have left city facilities with the rodeo ended.  Maybe the next roundup can be loose dogs on city streets.

Update 4-28-24:  PAWS has the resources and connections to share any portion of their involvement with this household it wishes via local media.   My intent was to show City Shelter actions which included the initial referral to PAWS.  

A PAWS board member noted the address is outside of city limits.  Fruitland Farm is right on the edge of city limits in an area being explored for a future interstate highway. 

Historically the shelter served the Concho Valley, then trimmed their service area to Tom Green County and then further restricted it to city limits.

 If the area is outside of city limits how did Animal Services become involved?