S.T.A.R. (Saving The Animals of Rowan)
Morehead, KY

The Strange, Sad Story of the Local Animal Rescue

Good Intentions

Sue Wells, a former neonatal intensive care nurse at Athens Regional Medical Center, started a small rescue out of her Eastside home in 1999. Eventually, the no-kill operation got too big for town, so she and Rowe bought the land in Dewy Rose. With more land, the number of dogs they housed grew. Volunteers helped with the tasks of running the place, and donations helped buy food and veterinary care. They even accepted dogs, Wells says, from their friend Spanky Reed, then an Animal Control officer for Elbert County. Eventually, according to Wells, Reed turned against the couple. She accompanied state agriculture officials on their routine inspections, and soon they were cited by the state agriculture department’s Animal Protection section. The record of state law violations goes back to February of 2004, according to Venessa Sims-Green, a manager in Animal Protection. Sims-Green says the shelter’s violations have had mainly to do with cleanliness: feces piling up in the dog pens and cat urine inside the house. The grass was too high, too, she says, the dogs’ water not fresh enough nor their food always plentiful enough, and some of the dogs had developed a pack mentality for lack of sufficient human interaction. The heart of the problem: there were too many dogs, and from the state’s perspective, Wells and Rowe were having a hard time adequately taking care of them all. Reed gives the same assessment, saying she’s never doubted the good intentions of her one-time friends. But, like many observers, she says the operation was getting too big for just two women to handle.

Around the same time, the couple had two successive house guests, each of whom came to their home terminally ill, and each of whom passed away after a short stay there. One was Wells’ mother, and the other was a close friend who left her own 12 dogs behind when she died.

As the number of dogs increased and the state recorded violations, Wells and Rowe saw drop-offs in volunteer help and in charitable contributions. Wells takes time to adopt dogs out to the right people. She looks for a good match in temperament. As her supply of help dwindled, she found less time to adopt dogs out of the shelter. The number of dogs continued to grow and the state kept citing the shelter; Canine Angels had nearly 250 dogs last summer.

Battle Lines Drawn

For her part, Wells doesn’t deny that the rescue reached a low point after the deaths of her mother and her friend. She doesn’t deny the violations recorded by state officials. But she doesn’t understand the Department of Agriculture’s continued aggressiveness against her shelter, given the improvements she and Rowe have made. The number of dogs is now near 150, and they all appear well-fed, well-cared for, and well enough socialized. In late May and in the first week of June of this year, many of the dogs’ coats looked ragged, as they hadn’t all been groomed and trimmed for summer. But none of the dogs were thin (some were a little fat), their pens were all clean, and they mostly looked happy.

By then, however, people on both sides of the fight over the dogs had already dug in their heels. In spite of the May 9 consent order, Canine Angels and its supporters still want desperately to avoid giving any dogs over to the state. The state’s plan has simply been to adopt the dogs out to other shelter agencies in Georgia - but there’s no commitment those would be no-kill shelters, and the ultimate fate of the dogs is the crux of the issue.

On the no-kill side, support for Wells and Rowe runs deep. Several months ago, Angie Allison, an aide to Governor Sonny Perdue (Allison’s area of expertise is in education), went to Canine Angels hoping to adopt a dog she’d seen on the shelter’s website. The dog was a little bigger than she’d hoped for, she says, and she found a pet somewhere else. This spring, however, she couldn’t help but get involved in the shelter’s dealings with the state, albeit in what she calls an “accidental” fashion. “I took it personally,” she says. Allison brought the matter to the governor’s attention, and in early May his office negotiated an extension (to the June 3 deadline, which didn’t hold in the end) with Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin.

The politics don’t end there: it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the Canine Angels saga will be used as a political tool this election year. Commissioner Irvin, a Democrat who’s held his post since 1969, is facing his first real electoral challenge in years from a slew of younger Republican candidates, including state Senator Brian Kemp of Athens. Gary Black of Commerce, an early front runner in the Republican primary race whose background is in agriculture, posted a platform plank about a new Companion Animal Initiative on his campaign website May 11. An excerpt from it: “Those people who dedicate their time and energy in the rescue community know the changes that government needs to make to better the lives of companion animals across the state.”

Many in that “rescue community,” including Jim Willis, see fundamental flaws in having a state agency that deals mostly with food safety and livestock transport governing companion animals - a problem not just in Georgia, but nationwide. In a strange echo of the recent debate over immigration (where one question is how humanely we treat other people), some even suggest that the federal government needs to step in with a policy on companion animals. But even under current Georgia rules, Canine Angels has been something of an anomaly: while many might see value in a large piece of rural land where a good number of dogs can stay for extended periods of time, perhaps never being adopted, state law doesn’t provide a classification for that kind of set-up. If it’s not a small, high-turnover shelter or a temporary foster home, it’s a “hoarding” situation, and charges of animal cruelty result.

In any case, there seem to be problems that go beyond the structural or administrative characteristics of state government. It’s difficult to determine the significance in this story of Wells and Rowe being a lesbian couple. In particular, although Spanky Reed - who’s since been fired from her job with Elbert County Animal Control - seems to have been their worst enemy these past two years, it’s hard to point to homophobia as a motivation for her actions when Reed herself is also openly gay. And if state officials have strong “ personality differences” with Wells and Rowe, as one observer put it, should those not be attributed simply to fundamental differences of opinion about the matter at hand - about the question of what should happen to the Canine Angels dogs?

A Last Chance?

On Tuesday, June 6, Jim Willis - as the new owner of all the dogs - negotiated a two-week extension from Commissioner Irvin. As of this writing, the state has not officially responded to Willis’ statements on that extension. It’s a fair guess, though, that the Department of Agriculture likely won’t budge any more - indeed, it would be odd for the state even to officially accept the June 20 date, given the terms of Wells’ consent order (though it may yet happen). For all practical purposes, by June 20 there should be only 15 dogs on the property.

Both sides have said they can adopt out all of the dogs if given the time. A May 31 press release from Commissioner Irvin offered dogs to the public on an “as-is” basis, free of charge. Willis is optimistic that his international network of no-kill rescuers will provide enough good, approved homes for the dogs. The state and the volunteers have different approaches to “saving” the Canine Angels dogs, to say the least. The volunteers now have a last chance to make their way work. To contact Sue Wells about adopting a dog, visit www.negacanineangels.com or call 706-213-9001.

See News article and pictures here:
http://flagpole.com/News/CanineAngels/2006-06-14


Response to this article:

Dogs Not Angels

Considering all the threats and horrors facing mankind, the fuss over "Canine Angels Rescue" ["Canine Angels," June 14] is ignorant and inappropriate.

First, there is the deceptive name; An "Angel" is a spiritually pure being, fully devoted to God, enacting compassion. But Jesus stated, "Do not give what is holy unto dogs, for at first they will praise you, and then turn and tear you to pieces!" He was referring to dog-like humans, of course, but the metaphor is also appropriate here, as it means: "Don't waste compassion on beings who are not compassionate themselves, or God-interested." Though some are worse than others, dogs are, basically, vicious predators only interested in their physical appetites. They can be placated with food, displaying behaviors mistaken as "love" and "devotion" by their "owners," but that is only while they are being fed. Stop feeding them, and they quickly revert to their original state. Remember the packs of small dogs, left by students, attacking mothers with strollers on Milledge Avenue? I do. Given the chance, they would have eaten those babies, and the mothers, too! A child is hospitalized with a dog bite in the United States every 32 seconds. My extremely gentle and sweet baby sister was mauled by a neighbor's "friendly" dog, requiring reconstructive surgery on her face. I was there, and guarantee that she did absolutely nothing to taunt it.

So dogs certainly aren't "angels," and neither are those running this operation. An angel wouldn't, with all the threats and horrors facing mankind, devote themselves to rescuing vicious, not-God-interested predators. And also because, unless the dogs are fed vegan chow (it exists), they are being fed the remains of slaughtered cows, sheep and other, far more gentle, creatures. If you kill one creature to feed another, you rate a big fat "zero" on the compassion scale. That's not angelic! If you kill a gentle creature, like a cow, to feed a vicious predator, you rate even lower. And that's even less angelic!

It is reprehensible to re-define terms, and abuse important spiritual concepts, to serve one's personal agenda. This is what the operators of "Canine Angel Rescue" do: coaxing people to devote their valuable compassion, money and energy to this "cause" (their desire to be surrounded by dogs) which should be assigned to far more worthy issues like homeless children, environmental degradation, world peace, spiritual enlightenment.

When the Indian Guru, Srila Prabhupada, first visited this nation, he observed; "In America, they do not worship God. They worship dog!" The current calamities facing America are certainly not a result of too much devotion to our Creator! If Americans wish to survive them, I very strongly recommend that they do some serious self-examining, and re-setting of their priorities.

As God Himself put it, in the 10 Commandments, "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me." People rescuing dogs, instead of starving children, do just that.

Gordon Lee Stelter

Athens

URL to this Letter: http://flagpole.com/News/Letters/2006-06-21

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