After being witness to the last two animal control meetings, I can't help but feel a bit sick to my stomach when hearing about this dysfunction between the Blytheville Humane Society and the Blytheville Animal Control. Ever since I've worked at the paper it has seems that the two groups have been unable or unwilling to work together for various reasons and I think that it is time for that to end.
On Monday, an animal control meeting was held, however, after some confusion over rescheduling the meeting, Assistant Chief Ricky Jefferson left the meeting and could not return after being gone for only a few minutes due to a what was described as a code enforcement emergency. During that meeting, a young woman from Jonesboro who adopted a dog through the shelter gave her account of what adopting an animal through the city was like. She also spoke, on the verge of tears, about the conditions that the shelter was in. It was truly disheartening.
On Tuesday, Jefferson and his animal control officers luckily had no emergency to attend to and were able to tell their version of events with no real dispute.
I have not been in the shelter recently, so I cannot personally speak to its conditions, but to hear others speak of it makes one sick. I feel inclined to believe those who speak on the shelter's conditions, particularly when they are someone who has no stake in the matter.
The saddest part of all of this dysfunction is the effect it has on the animals. Equally upsetting is that it would appear the humane society is willing to work with animal control, however, the reverse cannot be said. Jefferson said in the second meeting that the reason the humane society and animal control did not have an agreement for spaying/neutering animals was due to the humane society not signing the agreement. I find that hard to believe whenever the humane society was the one presenting the potential for handling spay/neuter to animal control.
Why is it that animal control always seems so defensive? Why is the city shelter, according to representatives from the humane society, always locked? How often do the dogs in the shelter get fed? How often are they exercised? What do the animal control officers do during their shifts? Why do we not see more adoptions out of the city shelter when the humane society is adopting out around so many animals every year? These are all questions that we need to have answers to.
I know that Blytheville has a lot of problems and some of you may think that dogs and cats are the least of our worries, but that kind of mindset is cruel and misguided. We do have a lot of problems in our city, many of which we can do nothing about, this is not one of them. If the people who are in charge of these conditions are brought to task and held accountable something will change. I encourage anyone who cares anything at all about animals in this city or neighboring cities to try and visit Blytheville's shelter. If things are as bad as some have said we need to know and if they aren't then we need to know that too.