MILFORD – Yellowish eyes wide and fearful, Sage and Rosemary peer out from their pens at Milford Animal Control like new prison inmates, ducking down in litter boxes like foxholes when a noise stirs them.
Rosemary is a calico and white with streaks of butterscotch and a cute little pink nose, probably 1 ½ years old, and a little skinny compared to Sage. The tabby looks tougher and older, maybe 3 or 4, with a thick coat. When someone soothes them, both are far too nice to be feral. City Animal Control officers nabbed them on Dewey and Holly streets, a half-mile apart in the Devon and Walnut Beach areas earlier this week, said Sue LaFond, a clerk at the Milford Animal Control Office.
“We know Sage was somebody’s pet because she had already been spayed, so someone either didn’t want her anymore or somehow nobody’s asked or called here to look for her,” LaFond told CT Examiner. “It’s very sad because here she was outside not knowing what to do and not knowing how to live outside. She’s just really petrified. It’s hard to see them come in like that.”
Sage and Rosemary are abandoned pets. That makes them a tiny portion of a problem large enough that a group of animal control officers, animal shelter operators and veterinarians are meeting as volunteers next month to discuss pressing the State Legislature to declare a temporary moratorium on out-of-state imports of pets among other possible solutions, said Amanda Armstrong, owner and founder of Army’s Legacy Animal Rescue and Sanctuary, a nonprofit shelter in Westbrook.
Armstrong’s straw poll of 15 animal control officers around the state this month found that the control offices, shelters and veterinarians are staggered under a deluge of calls from people seeking to abandon their pets – typically cats and dogs. They get six to 20 calls a day, she said.
The control officers and other animal industry workers from Stamford, Milford, Shelton, Newington, Southington and Manchester are experiencing the deluge, Armstrong said.
“The way I’m seeing it, I guess the meeting is going to sound like reform. It’s pro-accountability, pro-animal, and pro-public safety,” said Armstrong, who is also a New Haven animal control officer.
“All of us are getting together and just trying to make a change. We’re drowning. We’re tired,” Armstrong added. “Mentally, it’s exhausting. It’s emotional. We’re turning people away for not being able to help.”
“It happens to me and us at the animal hospital all the time. Every day,” said Kathy Cavanagh, a certified veterinary tech at Central Hospital for Veterinary Medicine in North Haven. “I get 16 to 20 calls a day, if not more, that I have to turn away. The phone rings, it does not stop.”
Armstrong, Cavanagh and New Haven Assistant Animal Control Officer Nancy Perry are forming a group they are calling the Animal Welfare Task Force. It will be meeting at Central Hospital on Jan. 18 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Animal control officers, shelter operators, veterinarians and other animal-rights activists and volunteers are invited to attend.
The group has several ideas it wants to pursue with legislators and see become laws, said Armstrong, including:
- Mandatory pet identification and traceability to end anonymous abandonment and chronic repeat dumping of pets. That would include mandatory microchipping and registration for all owned dogs and cats, and required microchip checks at vet visits, shelters, rescues, and animal control intake facilities, with legal penalties for failure to microchip or update ownership information. And the creation of a centralized, accessible database for shelters, veterinarians, and law enforcement.
“If an animal can’t be traced, accountability disappears,” Armstrong said.
- Statewide spay-neuter expansion and breeding accountability laws formulated to reduce overpopulation at the source, with mandatory spay/neuter for non-breeding pets unless medically exempt.
- Breeder licensing, limits and inspections by animal control officers or other state or local law enforcement, with significant penalties for unlicensed or irresponsible breeding and state-supported low-cost spay-neuter programs in underserved areas.
“We cannot rescue our way out of overbreeding,” Armstrong said.
- State government pet importation and transfer oversight to stop the pet supply industry’s overload and disease risk, Armstrong said, including a temporary pause or strict regulation on out-of-state and international animal imports; health certification and quarantine standards enforced statewide; transparency requirements for rescues and transport groups; data tracking on intake sources and outcomes.
“Local animals should not be displaced by unregulated imports,” Armstrong said.
- Set universal veterinary, shelter and rescue collaboration standards to create a coordinated, ethical animal care system as exists for people.
That could include forming formal partnerships between veterinary hospitals, shelters, rescues, and municipalities; setting ethical intake limits to prevent hoarding under the guise of rescue; setting standardized medical, behavioral, and placement protocols; and creating laws that would mandate financial transparency and support mechanisms for veterinary partners.
“No single part of the system should collapse under the weight of the whole,” Armstrong said.
- Creating stronger laws, law enforcement standards and sentencing guidelines for first-time and repeat offenders to ensure that animal cruelty, neglect, abandonment, and repeat offenses have real consequences.
The task force is seeking legislators and attorneys who would be willing to meet with them and help them assess how feasible their plan is, Armstrong said.
“This is what I am trying to put together in addition to the concerns of many others in regard to the crisis,” Armstrong said. “Some of these issues can be handled on a lower scale collectively and collaboratively. Working together, other issues will take longer [and involve] working with legislation.”