Dog Painting St Louis

Guest commentary: St. Louis needs a dog pound

St. Louis' Animal Control needs to get back to the business of controlling animals. There are serious public safety issues that are not being addressed by the city animal control department. St. Louis' ordinances are clear about the city's mandate regarding animals running at large, dangerous animals and rabies and disease control. The first priority of a governmental animal control department is public safety. In a number of ways the city is abrogating responsibilities.

The city Health Department's unilateral decisions, without the collaboration or approval of the Aldermanic Health Committee, to close the Gasconade Street animal shelter, instruct animal control field officers to stop apprehending dogs running at large and referring complaints to private animal groups was detrimental to the safety of the city's residents.

The city needs to have an animal shelter that can respond to its needs, including having an open-door policy that accepts all animals found by city residents or apprehended by animal control officers. This is not the case now. There needs to be a kenneling provision for city police and residents to drop-off animals they have found at any hour.

Animal control field tasks need to be performed by trained, professional animal control officers who are capable of interacting with residents while responding to animal complaints, apprehending animals running at large and rescuing sick and injured animals and who also have the capability of enforcing the animal ordinances by issuing citations and fines on the spot.

There are numerous letters and complaints from residents about dangerous dogs running at large and sick animals not being tended to in a timely matter. Some residents feel unsafe walking outside their house — with or without their pets.

A city shelter should have the capacity to kennel all the animals that are the responsibility of the city. It should provide humane care as required by the Missouri Department of Agriculture.

Some cities outsource animal shelter responsibilities. Kansas City officials report that they are extremely pleased with outsourcing their shelter. Besides being managed better, it has saved them nearly $200,000 per year.

Some cities have moved their animal control departments from the health department to their public safety or community service departments or to the police. Because animal control's priority is public safety, it makes sense for St. Louis to move animal control to the Public Safety Department.

Stray thoughts: Tails of two cities | ohmidog!

What Fayetteville, North Carolina, sees as a scourge, St. Louis, Missouri, sees as art.

I’m over-stating, and over-generalizing, but it’s interesting to me — and indicative of our collective schizophrenia when it comes to dogs — to compare what’s going on in the two cities when it comes to strays.

Fayetteville is making plans to round them up. The city council is considering contracting with a private outfit out of Texas that will send four “hunters” to track them down, shoot them with tranquilizer darts and turn them over to the county animal control office, where, most likely, they will be euthanized.

St. Louis is having an art exhibit.

Stray Rescue of St. Louis , an organization that rescues and adopts out dogs that have been abandoned, abused or found wandering the streets (all, amazingly, without the aid of tranquilizer guns), is holding it’s second installment of “Urban Wanderers,” a fundraising exhibition in which area artists paint, photograph and sculpt images of dogs in its care.

In conjunction with the Saint Louis University Museum of Art, the exhibit opened July 15 and runs through August 28.

The focus of this year’s exhibit is the bully breeds, and the misconceptions surrounding them.

“Urban Wanderers will showcase pit bulls’ many positive characteristics, such as gentleness, loyalty, attentiveness, and athleticism, and attempt to dispel the false perception that the pit bull is born aggressive and dangerous. The pit bull is proof that dogs thrust into dog fighting and other deplorable conditions are victims of human callousness and cruelty.”

The artworks include the painting above, by Michelle Streiff, of Pietra, a dog who was found abandoned in the backyard of a vacant house at the age of six months.

Despite being on her own, living as a stray, in the wild, she’s “outgoing, playful, friendly, loving and just an all around wonderful girl,” according to the staff of Stray Rescue’s shelter, where she’s available for adoption.

(You can find and bid on all the featured artwork — including some by the dogs themselves — via this page .)

The art displayed in the exhibition, at Saint Louis University Museum of Art, can be bid on until August 28.  All proceeds will benefit Stray Rescue of St. Louis, funding its efforts to pull dogs off the streets, socialize them and find them new homes.

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