MASON -- The Ingham County Animal Control seized 70 dogs from a Mason-area kennel Monday, in what officials are calling the largest seizure in the agency's history.

Most of the dogs are Australian Shepherd dogs and were living in conditions one deputy described as "atrocious."

"Some were living in mud and water," said David Wilcox, deputy director of the Ingham County Animal Control. "One of the pens outside was completely covered with approximately 3 to 4 inches of water where the animals had no way to get out of the water."

Other dogs were housed in kennels inside a garage-like structure attached to the owner's home, Wilcox said.

"The kennels all had several inches of feces in them ... it looked like they were just throwing wood chips on top of them to cover it up," he said.

The seizure began Monday morning when an Animal Control deputy received an anonymous tip alleging poor conditions at the kennel.

Animal Control Deputy Glenn Turcotte was first to arrive at the kennel at around 11 a.m. Monday to investigate.

"We felt that they were being neglected by the owner," said Turcotte.

"The conditions were atrocious at that kennel."

Several dogs had feces impacted in their paws, and others were "just covered, caked in mud," Wilcox said.

All will be bathed and examined by veterinarians, he said.

The owner of the kennel has not been identified, and the address of the kennel was not provided.

The owner did sign over ownership of the dogs to animal control deputies.

Wilcox said Animal Control is continuing its investigation into the case and will present its findings to the Ingham County Prosecutor's Office to determine if the owner will face charges.

In the meantime, the large influx of dogs has the Animal Control's shelter over its approximately 110-dog capacity. Before Monday's seizure, the shelter had about 70 dogs, Wilcox said. Now the shelter is housing about 150 dogs.

Animal Control Director Jamie McAloon Lampman said that the dogs seized Monday will not be adopted out or euthanized until at least Friday because they are part of the county's investigation. Some of the seized dogs will be available later in the week, but the majority will likely be available next week.

The agency is hoping members of the public will adopt as many dogs a possible that were in the shelter before the seizure.

"Eventually, if we can't get some of these adopted out, then unfortunately we'll have to euthanize some of our animals," Wilcox said.

Tony the Tiger resides in a truck stop/roadside attraction in Grosse Tete, LA in a concrete cage that is overrun with feces and overwhelmed by fumes from 18-wheelers. Louisiana state wildlife officials have given the owner 30 days to find Tony a new home.

Big Cat Rescue, the world's largest accredited sanctuary, is willing to commit to the lifetime care of Tony, providing him clean conditions to live in, proper veterinary care, and an appropriate diet. As supporters of Big Cat Rescue, we need your help to ensure that Tony is allowed to come to our sanctuary. Please take a moment to send the following letter, and if you are able, follow up with a phone call or fax to the Iberville Parish Council. The Council meets on Tuesday, December 16th, so time is of the essence. The Iberville Parish Council meets Tuesday, December 16th at 6:00 p.m. at the Iberville Parish Courthouse, 2ND Floor, 58050 Meriam Street, Plaquemine, LA Phone: 225-687-3257 Fax: (225) 687-5250

You can see more about Tony here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg4GFewIycM If you reside in Louisiana, and are able to attend, please contact us. If you received this as an email and your Take Action link isn't working, you can paste this URL into your browser to send your letter:

http://capwiz.com/bigcatrescue/issues/alert/?alertid=12310506&type=CU

Can We Help You Help Them?

The dogs prefer classical music to pop or dance, staff said

An RSCPA rescue centre has installed a £2,000 sound system to play soothing classical music to stressed dogs.

Staff at the kennels in West Hatch, near Taunton, Somerset, said they now hear Bach rather than barks.

The animals are said to respond well to the strains of Beethoven and Mozart, but are not fans of pop or dance music.

Deputy manager Anita Clarke said: "It's a very stressful environment for the dogs to be in here, so anything that can help is worth a go."

'Calming effect'

The cost of the music system was met through fundraising by the Friends of West Hatch.

Whale sounds and panpipes are also played and sometimes radio output so the animals get used to hearing people talking.

Ms Clarke said: "Music is proven to have a calming effect on both animals and people.

"It definitely works. It's quieter in the kennels now because if one dog barks when it's quiet they all start but if music's playing they don't."

Lesson from Katrina: Include pets in disaster plan

By WILLIAM WAN

The Washington Post

Jason Wesley has always considered herself a sensible woman, the kind who keeps flashlights and bottled water handy — just in case. But she never thought that instinct would one day lead her to the floor of a veterinarian’s office, giving mouth-to-mouth to a fake dog.

That’s where she ended up after Hurricane Katrina, enrolled in a pet first aid class. Thinking of her puppy at home, she put her mouth to the plastic snout and began to blow.

This is the emerging field of disaster planning for pets, filled with doomsday scenarios, four-legged victims and people who love them.

For years, despite an estimated 69 million U.S. households with a pet, animal advocates have been relegated to the fringes of emergency planning. After Katrina, however, and the sight of people in New Orleans refusing to evacuate and in some cases dying with their pets, emergency officials are starting to take animal rescue seriously.

By saving the pets, advocates said, owners can be saved as well.

On Capitol Hill, five representatives have proposed making pet disaster planning mandatory by tying it to federal funds. Meanwhile, many pet owners have begun to make plans.

“People are finally realizing that this is a serious issue,” said Lynne Bettinger, a Red Cross-certified instructor in pet first aid.

The concept is as old as Noah’s Ark, but modern pet disaster planning didn’t truly begin, U.S. experts said, until after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. When Andrew tore through South Florida, it killed more than 100 animals in the Miami Metrozoo. Hundreds of others, including baboons, antelope and 500-pound Galapagos tortoises, wandered off through the rubble. Escaped horses drowned in canals.

“For the first time, people saw this happening on TV,” said Oliver Davidson, senior disaster adviser for the Humane Society of the United States. “It was like the launching pad for awareness of the issue.”

After Andrew, the federal government created Veterinary Medical Assistance Teams, to be deployed wherever animal-threatening disasters hit. The 1992 hurricane also prompted the Humane Society to establish a department devoted to disaster planning and rescue.

Davidson was one of the people the Humane Society recruited. For 20 years he had coordinated U.S. assistance after foreign catastrophes. But after working 320 disasters, he left his federal post to address what he saw as a gaping hole in the field.

“When I first started this job, I would take my brochures and planning documents to all the emergency management meetings,” Davidson said. Some attendees listened politely, a few made jokes and most dismissed his work as trivial. “They would say, ‘Well, we know it’s a possible problem, but frankly, the threat is not that high.’ ”

Until Hurricane Katrina.

Gulf Coast toll

Katrina killed more than 1,000 people in the Gulf region. It is unknown how many animals died, state and local officials said. Also unknown, they said, is the number of people who died because they stayed with their pets.

TV coverage showed residents who had stayed with their pets stranded on rooftops. Many said they stayed because shelters, including those operated by the Red Cross, didn’t allow pets because of health and safety reasons. Federal and state rescuers, whose focus was on saving humans, forced residents to leave behind their animals.

“But people refused to be rescued without their pets,” said Terry Kane, a veterinarian deployed to New Orleans by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “It created a disaster within a disaster.”

New Orleans’ animal control and rescue groups set up a staging area at the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center near Gonzales, La., where they handled about 8,500 rescued animals. Louisiana State University also opened a shelter where evacuees could leave pets at its coliseum in Baton Rouge.

“There was a plan, but not for something on this level,” said David Senior, head of LSU’s veterinary clinical sciences. “It was a pretty steep learning curve.”

FEMA activated all four of its veterinary units, making it what the agency called the largest simultaneous deployment of veterinary relief in U.S. history — more than 200 veterinarians.

But the veterinary teams were ill-equipped because of FEMA’s policies, team members said. FEMA forbids veterinarians from using their own equipment, accepting donations or buying supplies. In the end, many teams said they had to break FEMA’s rules to save animals.

Winds of change

In the following months, animal groups were inundated with requests for preparedness guides and seminars. The Humane Society’s list of volunteers for disasters swelled from about 200 before Katrina into the thousands. The nonprofit organization raised more than $23 million in hurricane relief and used it to send teams to the Gulf region with new laptops, satellite phones and trailers.

“Katrina has changed things like nothing else,” Davidson said. “It’s pushed the issue to a level we’ve never seen, even with Hurricane Andrew.”

Weeks after Katrina, as Hurricane Rita approached Texas, officials suspended rules that banned pets from shelters, saying they had learned from Katrina. Texas’ homeland security chief and Galveston’s mayor urged people to evacuate with their pets.

Several states, including New York and Pennsylvania, have since begun revising their evacuation plans to include pets. In two Maryland counties, Calvert and Montgomery, planners are trying to establish emergency pet shelters alongside those for humans.

Animal groups from across the country will gather in Crystal City, Va., near Washington, this spring for a national disaster planning summit. Many plan to lobby for a bill, proposed recently in the House, that would require state and local emergency agencies to establish pet policies to qualify for FEMA grants.

With all the sudden attention, such longtime disaster planners as Davidson say people are starting to treat animal advocates less as jokes and more like partners.

But in a field devoted to worst-case scenarios, a little pessimism — even now, as pet disaster planning reaches new heights — is inevitable. “We’re trying very hard to push now, while people still remember,” Davidson said. “But the thing about disasters is there’s always another one around the corner, and then after a few years, the memory fades. It’s human nature.”