TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

Kern County Animal Control's efforts to reduce the rate at which shelter workers must kill unwanted animals stumbled in 2010, erasing progress recorded the previous year. It means that a decade of effort in this area has made only modest progress.

But animal control officials and supporters say the fight for solutions will continue by improving agency operations, community outreach, technology and the perpetual quest to promote spaying and neutering.

"The euthanasia part doesn't make anybody happy," said Judi Daunell, president of the nonprofit Friends of Kern County Animal Shelters Foundation. "I'm looking forward to these numbers going down and things working better."

BIG NUMBERS

In 2010, the county euthanized 9,343 dogs, 9,358 cats, 88 birds and 22 other animals -- 18,811 total creatures, according to new county numbers.

That overall number was down slightly from the year before.

But in proportion to the number of animals that left the shelter, the euthanasia rate was up from 2009 and virtually unchanged from five years ago despite efforts to promote spaying and neutering, educate the public on responsible pet ownership, impose new rules on pet sellers, crack down on animal abusers and enforce licensing laws.

The only bright point in Animal Control's latest figures was that county shelters handled 2,210 fewer cats -- helping reduce the number of felines put down.

But the shelter lethally injected 1,564 more dogs in 2010.

Overall, county shelters handled the fate of fewer animals in 2010. But the total number euthanized decreased by only 137, meaning kill rates climbed.

Kern County put down 61.5 percent of the animals it cared for in 2010, up from 58.9 percent the year before.

Cats faced a kill rate of 80.3 percent, up from 79.8 percent in 2009. A record low 43 percent of shelter dogs were put down in 2009; that rate climbed back above 50 percent in 2010.

Kern County Animal Control shelters handle animals from the unincorporated areas of Kern plus the city of Bakersfield. Other cities throughout the county run their own operations.

DISEASE

Kimberly Mullins, Kern County's new shelter manager, said the facility's constant struggle with diseases like parvo and distemper that run rampant in confined animal populations -- combined with high intake numbers -- helped drive up the kill rate.

"There's a massive amount of euthanasia because of the disease," Mullins said. "The overcrowding rolls into the disease."

She said staff has implemented new procedures to vaccinate animals on the animal control trucks that bring them to the shelter before they are introduced to other pets. They've also developed new shelter cleaning protocols.

If she can just get the animals healthy, Mullins said, their chances of being adopted increase.

SALVATION

Getting animals out of the shelter alive has also been a challenge.

And it's getting harder.

The number of adoptions in 2010 dropped by 983 -- or 26 percent. Transfers fell by 334 and animal owners picked up 107 fewer lost pets.

Mullins' boss, Kern County Public Health Director Matt Constantine, a former animal control boss himself, said the pressures of the falling economy have blunted the effect of those safety valves.

Daunell, who also rescues labrador retrievers, agreed.

"I walked into the shelter one day and they said, 'Here, you have to take this dog,'" she said.

The animal had just been dropped off by owners who lost their home and had to move.

"This was an American Kennel Club-registered, $500 dog these people had to turn in," Daunell said.

Constantine said it is rescue groups that keep making progress toward helping animals -- even sick and injured ones -- leave the shelter alive.

"Animal Control has not only become more accepting but reliant on rescue organizations," he said.

The numbers back that up. Animal rescue groups have saved more lives in each of the last five years, topping out at 4,990 rescues in 2010.

SOLUTIONS

But the long-term hope for Kern's animals is tied to a more difficult, long-range effort to change both the way county government handles and regulates animals and the way the community treats pets.

Constantine argued much has been done in past years to raise public awareness of what humans can do to help deal with the problem of unwanted animals.

Highly publicized cases of animal cruelty, hoarding and euthanization rates -- as well as debates that ended in rejection of new spay-neuter laws and strong county regulation of breeding -- have brought the issue into the forefront, he said.

"People are much more aware than they were years ago," Constantine said. "It's a change in culture."

The county has imposed some new regulation on people who advertise animals for sale and has aggressively pursued partnerships that help lower the cost of a spay or neuter surgery, he said.

But Daunell said her experience in the rescue world has convinced her that despite the pleasure she takes in saving individual animals' lives, nothing she can do to take animals out of the shelter will solve the root of the problem.

"It's not doing anything to stop the flood coming in," she said. "The whole thrust has to be spay and neuter."

Kern County must push to find money to build or remodel a permanent, low-cost spay and neuter clinic where people can alter their animals, she argued.

The clinic needs to be built as soon as possible, she said.

"It really needs to be last year," Daunell said. "Five years ago would have helped."