Workers: Animal deaths needless

• By DEBRA LEMOINE
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: Aug 7, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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HAMMOND — When Besty Pittman walked into the Tangipahoa Parish Animal Shelter on Tuesday morning, she was struck by the silence.

The day before, on her day off, all of its scores of cats and dogs had been euthanized because of what parish officials described as an unknown, highly contagious, airborne virus.

“It was devastating,” Pittman said Wednesday evening. “There were no animals anywhere.”

After a sleepless night and many tears, Pittman, an euthanasia technician, said she turned in her resignation Wednesday over what she described as the senseless putting down of all 170 animals at the shelter.

“I’ve been crying off and on all day,” Pittman said. “I feel like I’m giving up on the animals.”

Pittman is not alone in her assessment. The former director, Jay Callais, and three other employees also said Wednesday evening that they, too, don’t think all of the animals needed to be killed.

Rebecca Caballero, a kennel attendant for 5 1/2 years, said she also resigned on Tuesday over the decision to destroy all the animals.

Caballero and Pittman said that they did not see any signs of a contagious virus the previous week. Pittman, who worked on Saturday, said there were a few sick cats and some sick puppies she had to put down, but nothing beyond the ordinary illnesses that are seen in a shelter.

Callais and the workers said they don’t know what led to the destruction of all the animals, but they said the explanations offered by officials of the parish government don’t make sense.

Typically, when an outbreak occurs at a shelter, either the cats are sick or the dogs are, Pittman and Callais said. Rarely, do both dogs and cats contract the same strains of viruses, they said.

The suggestion by parish officials on Tuesday that the virus might be the canine coronavirus also did not make sense because coronavirus is not airborne and is treatable, Callais said. And, the same strains of the virus typically do not infect both cats and dogs.

Callais, a former police officer who was director from 2004 to 2007, said he handled a major virus outbreak among the dogs during his time as director.

He said he separated the sick dogs from the healthy dogs and inspected every one of them. The ones that seemed to have a chance to recover were not destroyed, Callais said.