PERRY: Dog daze —Aurora animal shelter overdue for reinforcements, even costly ones

After four decades in the news business, I still, regularly, tell people this is the greatest job in the world.

I’ve had the opportunity to talk with some of the most intriguing people on the planet, and ask just about anyone and everyone any question that comes to mind.

I’ve driven a police car at close to 100 mph on a training track, sirens blaring, much to the chagrin of the newspaper photographer in the front seat next to me.

I’ve flown in all kinds of planes, from antique bi-planes to fighter jets that go so fast you can feel your internal organs pressing against your spine.

I’ve spent the night in Super Max prison with former Gov. Roy Romer, who talked all night about Colorado History.

Many of the stories have been equally as horrific, though.

I still have nightmares about the family of Aurora theater shooting victims, desperate to know something about their sons, daughters and friends, only to get the worst news possible in real time.

Nothing is more raw than talking to the family and friends of people shot dead or run down in the street.

Some of the ocean of stories come at you as both touching and repulsive.

The Aurora animal shelter, formerly Aurora Animal Care, was one of those stories.

I was still a young reporter when I was sent there to take a long look at the shelter in 1990. My reporting lasted several days. The impact of what I saw has lasted several decades.

All those memories came back while I was editing reporter Cassandra Ballard’s story last week about the culmination of a years-long push for an expanded or new animal shelter.

Plans for the new one, tentatively approved by city council, won’t come cheap. The price tag is about $51 million.

The city really does desperately need bigger and more modern facilities to handle the thousands of pets each year who run away, get left behind, get born to houses filled with animal horrors, struck down by cars, or just mysteriously appear somewhere in this city of 400,000 people and lots of animals.

Aurora’s current animal shelter has room for about 65 dogs,  large and small, and about a couple dozen cats. City records show it’s at near capacity just about all the time. Strays and abandonments are then sent elsewhere in the metroplex, usually just about as full.

Since I was very young, dogs, cats and even farm animals have always taken an interest in me, being remarkably friendly and affectionate. I think it’s because I smell like food. Good food.

My first day at the shelter was spent learning the stories behind all the dogs and cats at the shelter. The vast majority were either brought in as strays or dropped off by a pet owner. Without pet identification, most never found their original home, if they had one.

I couldn’t imagine having to deal all day, every day, with scared or unhappy animals, shut into a pen they abhor. It wore on me just after a few hours. I can’t imagine years like that.

I found out that most of the people who worked there were like me, they liked animals. Animals liked them. What keeps them going are those moments when the owner rushes in to get their dog or cat, and the happy reunion is like a satisfying Hallmark Christmas movie. Same for when someone comes in looking for new family members to adopt, long before they called them “rescues.”

Those were relatively few and far between. Mostly, the days were filled with feeding anxious dogs and cats, trying to track down owners, helping injured animals mend and tending to the endless chores of giving the animals a brief respite from the cages or cleaning them up from a life on the streets.

The worst duty was going through the list of those whose time was up for staying at the shelter, with no one to go home to and no one interested in taking them home.

On those days, the dogs and cats were coaxed or dragged into a separate room for a dose of “liquid blue.” It’s a solution of pentobarbital sodium used to inject into the animals that causes rapid death. It’s not instant.

For the dogs, a shelter employee lifts them up onto a table for the procedure. Large or very panicked dogs got their dose of blue on the floor. The workers used a special IV-syringe. One employee would stroke and soothe the dog. The other would insert the IV needle into a leg vein and push the plunger. The dog would look confused for a second or two, and then drop dead from heart failure.

Someone would then carry the dead dog across the room and into a walk-in cooler, where they were stored until it was time to cremate them out back of the shelter.

The process itself didn’t appear remarkably painful. But the fear and angst from the animals as they were pushed or pulled through the process was ghastly.

Cats were the worst. They wouldn’t stand for someone trying to stick anything into their legs or paws. So they were placed in what looked like a cage-wire press. The two sides of the press closed tightly, keeping the standing cat from being able to move at all. The several cats who underwent blue that day each freaked out. The employee then put the hypodermic needle directly into the cat’s heart and injected it. Death was fast and came with an echoing silence.

Previously, when writing about unwanted dogs or cats, I went along with using euphemisms like “put down” or “put to sleep.”

After I witnessed what was happening, I called the process what it is. They destroy the animal. 

They’re not cruel. Far from it. These shelter workers are amazing people.

But the reality is, Aurora, and the rest of the world, is filled with far less amazing people who acquire pets as if they were things and not animals, carelessly allowing them to breed, run away or purposely get let loose so the owner doesn’t have to deal with it. 

The problem is, their problem becomes all our problems and especially a problem at the shelter.

$51 million is a lot of money. But a new shelter will allow for more pets to stay longer, remain healthier, and get a better chance of going to a home where they’re wanted and properly cared for. 

I’m from a rural part of Colorado and learned very young that animals are not people. But I also learned, as I got older, that part of living in a community of people includes being responsible for the entire community. If you don’t like taxes going to cops, paved streets and city employees who coax loose dogs out of Parker Road, the solitary life out toward Limon is the life for you.

But in Aurora, we need to support this critical program and do more to keep animals who go there from making it their final destination.

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