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Animal control has long been a thorny issue in the Rio Grande Valley.
High numbers of strays, shelter overcrowding which inevitably leads to increased euthanasia rates, as well as a scarcity of public funds to pay for animal control operations are just a few of the perennial problems officials have to contend with.
But the city of McAllen is looking for ways to change its approach to animal control with the hope of reducing the strain on public resources while improving outcomes for the Valley’s pets.
To that end, during a workshop on Monday, the McAllen City Commission heard a presentation from a national expert on animal control — Dr. Sara Pizano, a consultant for Team Shelter USA.
Pizano, a veterinarian who previously served as the director of animal services for Miami-Dade County, Florida, began by saying she has three decades of experience in animal welfare, and that the ideas she would be presenting to the city were things she wouldn’t have considered early in her career.
“I am thrilled and honored to be able to talk to you today and say things that I certainly was not saying the ’90s, or even maybe 2005, when I was a public shelter director,” Pizano said.
Indeed, in 2011, Pizano resigned from her position in Miami-Dade County after a series of controversies within the department led to outcry from animal rights activists, according to CBS News.
Since then, however, Pizano’s approach to animal control has evolved toward strategies that can reduce animal mortality while making use of existing resources.
“I ask that everybody just have an open mind. Because, as we move forward, we see other programs that are more successful than ours,” Pizano said.
Of the approximately 180 million pets in the U.S., some 3% end up in animal shelters. But once they’re there, the likelihood of them being reunited with their owners is low.
Nationally, less than 2% of cats that wind up in shelters will be reunited with their owners.
For dogs, the figures are a little higher at 22%.
But in the Valley, just 13% of shelter dogs are reunited with their families, Pizano said.
“Now the burden of placement — another placement when the dog already had a home — is now on Palm Valley (Animal Society),” Pizano said.
The habit of relying on animal control officers to pick up wandering animals and transporting them to a shelter comes from more than a century of outdated animal welfare policy, the veterinarian said.
“(It) is a system that was created 150 years ago to round up dangerous dogs and warehouse them until they were inhumanely euthanized,” Pizano said.
But that practice ignores a modern-day reality.
One where about half of cat owners allow their cats to have outdoor access. And one where dogs — which many people keep as indoor-only pets — sometimes do get outside, but never stray far from home.
If the animal does not appear sick or violent, then the best practices recommendations today involve leaving the animal where it was sighted.
“That’s why the recommendation is for nonenforcement. Non-emergency dogs and cats, do not pick them up,” Pizano said.
But that policy may leave people wondering about another consequence of letting animals roam freely — unwanted litters.
“I can promise you that many of the calls that you’re receiving for enforcement are, in fact, a lack of access to veterinary care,” Pizano said.
A dearth of veterinarians, combined with socioeconomic factors, means that there are fewer opportunities for pet owners to get their pets spayed or neutered affordably.
To help solve that, Pizano recommends working collaboratively with other communities and nonprofits to conduct “targeted” spay and neuter programs that focus primarily on cats, and large breed dogs because of their capacity to give birth to larger litters than small breed dogs.
“Cats … we want them to bypass the shelter, go to spay/neuter, and (then) go to where they were picked up,” Pizano said of the practice, which is often referred to as “trap, neuter, release.”
She said it’s a recommendation she herself didn’t agree with in 2005 because she had allowed her biases to cloud her objectivity on the idea.
Her mind changed, however, when she had a dream that featured a large cat incredulously asking her if he looked malnourished.
That’s when the lightbulb went off. Many stray cats look to be in good condition and at healthy weights.
That’s often due to people within a community taking joint care of such animals, Pizano said.
And it was a realization that was reinforced during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many animal shelters were forced to close or reduce their services.
“What we saw was communities taking care of communities, which we had been recommending all along,” Pizano said.
Ultimately, the key to changing outcomes in animal control is by shifting perspective.
“We’re looking at field services to have more of a community approach, rather than a punitive approach that has never really worked,” Pizano said.
Doing that has started to pay dividends across the country, regardless of how big or small the community.
“In 18 of those shelters, with no additional budget, staffing or building size, there were 47,000 less euthanasias,” Pizano said.
