The People Of HSHC

We all have a responsibility to take care of each other. The Harford County Animal Shelter is the place our lost, unwanted, found, and in need animals go to if there isn't a pet parent to advocate for them. If you have ever spent time in a place that doesn't have a local shelter you understand why these places are integral to the kindness towards animals. They are the best example of why compassion matters. They house the most vulnerable. The most desperate, and it is an immense responsibility. With these come difficult scenarios, challenges and obstacles. No one argues this. When the shelter is a part of a community that cares deeply about their pets the shelter has to be a reflection of the communities expectations. The good, the bad, everything in between. 

Leadership, ethos, and all that these include have to be the guiding principles.

Our local middle school made posters for shelter awareness

Preface; This was written in response to the parvovirus outbreak at the Harford County Humane Society in early March 2025. The videos I posted have been moved to my YouTube channel. They sparked a discussion so impactful it caused ripple effects I had not foreseen. This is one part of a many part series. This is what happens when you ask for answers and get obstacles, excuses, silence, and an emergence of a throng of others who all have been previously where you are with no avail. 

This is the letter I wrote to bring voices out into the open. To acknowledge the courage of so many trying to help the animals they care about. To shed light on a place we all want to succeed. To speak for those who cannot. 

Here goes opening the can of worms...

I am struggling with where to go from here. What to do with the stories, statements, suffering I have been hearing. 

There are many common threads. People feel exhausted from trying to improve the care of the animals at the shelter. People feel beaten up, afraid. I hear "retaliation" and "bullying" over and over. Many people tried to improve things via the chain of command. Started with their manager. Kept forcing the issue up the ranks. Finally, asked for a meeting with the Board and have never been given the dignity of an acknowledgment. Just silence. It makes you feel so insignificant you question your own motives, thoughts, intentions. 

In the end, and just as in the beginning, this place is supposed to be a safe place. A halfway house for those who need a second chance. A place where everything is centered around compassion and love. Pets are love. The purest form mankind will ever have. We have failed them, failed those who care about them. This is the communities responsibility. We all hold a fragment of that. None of us should need a shelter, but all of the animals do. Let’s get back to there.

 

My mom and Templeton. Her rescue from the HCHS

Preface; much of this was forwarded to me by previous employees who wanted to present these to the Board. They were never given an opportunity to share them. The Board has a position of not allowing people their time.

"Since my employment, before my promotion into management, I have been under constant harassment and verbal abuse from certain members of all departments. It was possibly one of the most toxic work environments I have ever been a part of, so toxic that it bled and intruded into my personal life as well as my professional life. I took a lot of this on the chin without retaliation, I did this because I loved the animals and my job and was not going to allow that to deter me and I knew it was unjustifiable for this treatment towards me.",, "I expressed how I have "compassion fatigue" and how I'm working on things from home often without compensation because I care so much and love this place, but I'm not getting anything back and I am being ghosted and I'm wearing myself down. I had a lot of frustration built up because of everything that transpired, I feel this was known that something was deeply bothering me and no one cared or wanted to give me the time to talk about it.." ,, "this is truly unfair and has ruined me mentally with these games that have been played with me and the rough treatment towards me. Silencing me and removing me has now cost me my position in a job I excel at and have nothing but love and passion for, and has ruined my life after how much I have given to this organization and the animals"

 The above was provided in a letter to the HCHS Board early 2024 after termination. Employee is seeking justification and explanation for termination.

A letter from a volunteer;

".. I don't believe the dogs are getting the best care.. I have been told that the dogs are supposed to go out for walks or at least out of their kennels twice a day and for the majority of the time I am at the shelter, that is not happening. I would even wager to say, on the days I am there, there are dogs that are not even taken out once. I know this because there is a board that lists the dogs and AM and PM walks and there are always many openings to show the dog has not been walked. I am there until 4 pm."

",, the junior staff,, they don't really care about the animals. It is just a job to them. The turnover rate is (high)."

Another volunteers thoughts;

"I have not been going to the shelter as much.  It has been depressing. We used to be able to let one cat out at a time to get exercise. Under new management, that was stopped.  The morale has not been the best. They work short staffed on certain days; also are overworked.  They got rid of a guy XX  because he advocated for the barn animals. XX. This burns the staff out covering animal care and the barn animals. Dogs in kennels are lying in feces;  sometimes they walk in it. Therefore it is all over the run.  I was shocked when I heard XXX left. She cared so much for the animals.  She was their best advocate.  They micromanaged her like no tomorrow.  She was the best investment they had. There used to be an abundance of adult cats where there were overflows.  I am not seeing a lot of cats. Not sure what is going on. Even the tech room was filled with them. There was a cat in isolation that someone had fostered. Thankfully that cat was adopted ASAP. With the money missing, not sure why the board and treasury weren’t overseeing the funds.  They also have a bookkeeper.  None of this adds up. Now they had to halt construction on finishing up the new building to lack of funds.  The board could care less. They are in it for their own status and gains. They make bad decisions. They allowed  bullying , harassing, and toxic environment with staff members. It was so bad that XXXX went to lunch and didn’t return . They did not like her because she was friends with someone the staff didn’t like. XXXX was amazing! They treated her so bad.  Meanwhile , they kept some of the bullies.  At first, I wasn’t going to adopt from there. I had a bad experience with the adoption director. XXXX is the reason why I adopted. She fostered and adopted the cats that were special needs or difficult. She was extremely dedicated and gave her life to the shelter! I feel like the board has no interest in the shelter because they have no shelter experience. Then they have a dog trainer on the board.  They have clients bringing their dogs to the shelter and training  the grounds and in the training room. So then the shelter animals do not have a meet and greet.  Who is not to say that one of their puppies could be shedding the Parvo virus.  It is so political. I feel sorry for the new executive director being thrown into a bad situation with no experience.  I am sure she is frustrated."

Excerpts from other employees/former employees; left within the last year.

"The shelter was often at full capacity with dogs, ,, management would bring in puppies from high-kill shelters down south to take to adoption events like the car show at the Baltimore Convention Center to make money. The shelter brought in 3 litters of puppies from Texas for one auto show when the shelter was already full of dogs who deserved the chance to go to events for exposure. However, every year the long-timers got left behind because the puppies generate more money for the shelter and attracted a lot of publicity. In addition all the puppies had to be housed at the shelter for several days/weeks and were often kept in small airline crates and left in offices overnight because we had no open kennels.An urgent plea was often sent out asking for fosters because we were already out of space before bringing in the puppies, however, dogs that were already under the microscope for euthanasia were then euthanized to open space for the puppies."

* note from me; this story is disturbing on a few levels;

The response from the HCHS on why the parvo puppies were not able to be attempted to be saved/treated was because they couldn't quarantine, or had no space to do so. And, they do not have “the financial luxury of gold standard of care.” My response was to remind them that all we offered was free. There seems to be some doubt in our genuine intent. Perhaps another defensive deflective tactic? Further, it is described previously, on multiple occasions that animals spill over into other areas of the shelter for care when needed. I believe that there is also a building halfway completed, but funds ran out? Previous puppies who needed quarantine time (prev vet tried to save a puppy who needed rabies quarantine, although it was her professional opinion that the puppy did not have rabies) were euthanized by management, after she told them she would take the puppy for the quarantine period (ask me I have done it with my kittens, it can be done), that the puppy was best euthanized then kept in a crate. It is possible to quarantine in a room inside a room. The vets puppy would have had a better life than their car show puppies.

"Staff would be terminated or forced out of their position if they spoke up on behalf of the animals, (*note; I have heard this repeatedly). It was made known that "Maryland is an at-will state" and staff could be terminated for any reason. 

Let me go off on the idea of "terminating volunteers."  If any organization is lucky enough to have a volunteer you embrace them whole-heartedly. People are reluctant to step into a shelter, (too depressing, sad, etc), and you are going to threaten to fire them? Or fire them? (PS late entry, I heard two others were recently terminated from volunteering). How many is this in total?

"The animals were being fed twice a day, however, the decision was made by "leadership" to reduce feeding the animals to only once daily to save money. The dogs were only fed in the morning and it was obvious that they were hungry and underweight. Some dogs that were extremely underweight were requested to be twice daily by the staff. Because of the decrease in feeding, dogs were exhibiting signs of food aggression and those that already food aggression got worse and were ultimately euthanized."

Dogs, burn calories at very high rates when they are stressed. Any animal, or anyone in any unfamiliar environment, is going to require a higher caloric intake due to their body having to meet the incredible number of stressors they face. Being in survival mode burns calories at a rate higher than anything else.

"Funds were spent on staff parties and the dogs went hungry. These dogs are stressed out all day. They jump at the door. They run in circles. They run on adrenaline and need extra calories (among a lot of other things)."

Another employee who left last year;

"We had dogs surrendered to us with known health issues that they didn't examine and just threw in kennels to where xx staff found them collapsing and dying because they weren't receiving the care they needed. The dogs in the tech kennels would never have water and would be covered in feces and urine. They thought it was beneath them to care for the dogs....."

"I could go on for days about how poorly they treat the animals. ,,, I appreciate you taking the time to read this. I still have screenshots of emails from my time there, I still have names and dates of the animals that passed away. ,,,, I wish things could get better they need to make a change."

Here's what strikes me as strange. No one in any of the letters complains about the inherent nature of the shelter. No one even mentions any of the things a regular person would. Things like; people left healthy animals there to adopt a younger one. Animals were surrendered that had no evidence of being ... well, whatever (too old, too loud, too hyper). No one ever complains about any of the things that keep adopters from entering a shelter. The stigma of a shelter. The inherent sad, depressing reality that shelters need to exist. With all of the hard realities of a shelter these people accepted them and still felt purpose and belonging within them. They still wanted to be a part of the shelter, for all of its difficulty, just to be there with the animals who needed them too. To hear they are punished, discriminated against, because of this? That’s ludicrous and perhaps grounds for their compensation/retaliation?

92% placement?
What does that even mean?

These are people of trauma. People who live with despair and heart ache. These people all were there because they care about animals. They deserve to have their voices heard. They asked to have their voices heard. They deserve a thank you and a place of gratitude and compassion for trying to help the animals of our community. The shelter is an incredibly hard place to be, the people and animals there deserve nothing but compassion and support. 

There is more to this. More stories. I have to read them in small amounts. Then call/email the author to say, "I'm sorry. Thank you for all you did. It made all the difference for those animals. They needed you and you were there for them. It is the most generous, kindest form of love. You are amazing. Someone needs to tell you that. Someone should have told you that before me."

Multiple people have spoken about the dog with the pyometra surgery who was “found dead with her intestines hanging out” the next morning when her family came to adopt her. The cause of death provided was given as “complications related to surgery.”

The stories go on. The grief goes on. We have to do better.

The 33 Parvo Puppies of Ukraine.

It's Wednesday morning. I am drinking coffee like its an Egyptian reincarnation elixir. Smooth, strong, bold. I close my eyes, grip the cup firmly. Sit back and breathe hoping that some magic vapor of it will infuse my body and reignite its desire to go on. There are remnants of the ashes of me left to try to re-assemble into a human being once again. Feel alive. Get up. Just move forward. For just one more day. If I can make it to Thursday I think it will be ok.... I think...  I hope. I breathe. I sip,,,

My mom,, she loved her coffee

It is the same every week. The long, endless days of too many people with too many sick patients and never enough money to allow them passage anywhere else. This is my life now. Arduous and yet so fulfilling I cannot remove myself from the pride shadowing the exhaustion.  Breathe. Sip.

I love mine too

I remember being in the Ukraine. The exhaustion I existed within there. That place, those memories. It is my litmus test for measuring grit, determination, and life. It is my pivot point. The inflection marker. The spot in my timeline that has become the yardstick for everything else. All of life before, and after, can be boiled down and reduced to that. That survival for all you know, and how hard you will fight. How hard you will push your body because your mind is so determined to make this existence not become your life-long reality. Nothing will measure up against Ukraine. Nothing ever could. 

Ukraine. Our compound cat

Ukraine was an ominous, looming feeling more than a place. Equal parts haunting, cruel, and inspiring. Mankind is always at their most impressive when its at its lowest, most desperate place. I remember driving for hours. There is no airport inside. The trains are few and far between. In a war the infrastructure gets hit first. It cripples the country. Cuts them off from the outside. Choke holds are strategic. You see mountains of fortified make-shift guard posts along the roadside. Whole town's blown to pieces. Detritus of shambled foundations with jagged edges and displaced lives beside them. As if still staking claim to a place they used to belong to. Elderly people staring off as if entranced or paralyzed. That despondent despair is pervasive, catatonic, sad married to depressing. People are lost, afraid. The air raids go off all day and night. The constant reminder that Russia has sent another weapon into their home. There are no middle class residents left. They all bailed in the beginning. The teenagers were all drafted via the fast track into soldiers. Alert, swarmed, clustered in groups, heavily armed, chatting like teenagers do, giggling and yet not looking at each other. Always scanning their surroundings in a reverse football huddle. Army green fatigues obviously new to them, but already worn out from the accelerated training they were thrown into. A visual reminder that these kids were forced to grow up too fast. Around them barricades of sandbags 2 stories high. Always smoking. People looking at death within months smoke, and get pregnant. The only place a teenager is not glued to their phone is a war zone. I rarely left the compound, hours deep into the country, but when I did I always traveled with a translator. A Ukrainian resident who made my passage, as limited as it was, safe. I never spoke in public. I never gave myself away. I recorded everything in photos and a journal. It seemed too unreal to be believed later without current proof that it had all happened. The indelibility of it all put to paper and video. Photos of the 500 plus dogs at the Droog shelter hidden away in the middle of a blown apart country.

Droog shelter. 500 dogs crowded and trapped

One of the many byproducts of war

So many things stir inside from that time. The oddity of not seeing my feet for weeks. (You never change your socks if it is cold, wet and you have no access to laundry. As long as my feet were warm and dry I just had to believe the toes still lay beneath). The degree of dirty your hair gets in a dark compound full of dogs and cats and a kerosene heater. The walking the dogs all day, trip after trip. Some mad carousel with no destination. Walking the dogs was my only escape. They loved it more than I did, and I can tell you I cherished it. An abandoned parking lot around some dilapidated warehouses with few areas of grass. The few grassy knolls we could find were littered with broken glass and needles. Another reminder that peace would not come easy. The hardness and grief that sticks and stays. You cannot ever get away from it. It owns you, worse than fear, more suffocating that despair. It is loss, and fear, and mercy, wrapped in hope with shards.

I went to Ukraine for reasons that will never be fully explainable. I have written and admitted to most of these before. 

The reasons I left have not been disclosed. Not fully. 

In the last days of my well-intentioned-visit I realized the full extent of the naivety of the self-inflated avaricious goons, (mostly American, Canadian and Bulgarian), I was housed as a guest with showed its true colors. These chain-smoking tatted hooligans were so broken and medicated that their intentions to rescue and protect the animals stuck in the middle of this war zone were never completely thought out, nor discussed. They went on these secret middle of the night raids to "save" animals and rarely understood, nor planned the consequences of these decisions. They had recruited me to be the vet for these rescues, yet they never asked for their experts perspective or advice on anything. I was a credential expert expected to be quiet and clean excrement. Cleaning cages and commiserating with the caged rescues was at least a purpose. These rescue trip charades, their testosterone fueled mid-night escapades, brought horrors of epic proportions. I was the only one who saw and prepared for the inevitable consequences of pillaging and hoarding animals in a war torn country without rails. I was brought into Ukraine to help the animals. I was recruited into the country by the ringmaster of said gang by urging me that I just wouldn't be any help outside the borders of Ukraine. (He was right about that). Getting anything out of Ukraine was ridiculously muddled and therefore impossible with ever changing policies, people and paperwork. Getting in, well, that was easy. Ukraine took anyone willing to step across three zones of barbed wire, an Army of assault weapons, tanks, and air so stale it felt suffocating. Nothing on this planet can describe the transition zones of a country at war and their geographically free neighbors. They met you at the border with open arms, and a smarmy shadow of lost boys trying to negotiate anything to be permitted the chance at being smuggled out (anyone between 14 and 60 was drafted and required to stay). There is a cafe, just inside Ukraine at the border entrance that stays dimly light, serving never ending cups of rancid coffee, 24/7. It is the gas station you fill up at as you wait the days it might take to get wherever you think you can alive in. This is the dead zone. Dead to those trying to leave. Dead to those weary of wandering in. 12 hours into the country by car the compound with the rescued animals I was supposed to care for sat. A cement barracks so dark you couldn't do anything without a flashlight we were warned to use with caution, or waiting for daybreak. Everything was done while the sun was up. A dozen dogs and cats caged to keep safe for some unknown break in a war so they could resume a life. It was long days and a bleak existence. I might have been recruited to be a veterinarian in a place that needed one desperately, but, I was not permitted to actually practice what I had been trained to do. 

A fridge of vaccines sat quietly hooked to the only generator we had. It was the only thing that was kept cold outside of a cooler used for the long car rides the boys had to go rescue some pet somewhere when the Ghostbuster phone rang.

 It is all a muddled dream of mankind's worst and humanities intentions. All gone awry in between. 

More on Ukraine here

Two weeks in to my stay and the moral in the compound was low. This team existed on the next adrenaline fix and the tank was low. One early morning, (the gang always left after midnight), they took the trucks and rolled out. When they returned that afternoon, the boys showed up with 33 puppies in 5 cages. They marched into the compound full smiles.Lumbering in like Santa with a gravid sack of new presents. They legitimately thought that they had "rescued" them to have them be better off with us. I had witnessed them before buying the animals as some kidnapping meets hijacking ransom. They had paid for the bear, the wolf, the diabetic dog. They had cash from their viral videos and they had no problem buying an animals "freedom." I knew the second that I saw these puppies that they were all likely to die. I still believe that these puppies were props for social media fodder and fundraising. The rest of the volunteers spilled them out like candy. They spent the rest of the day in bouncing, baby, bitey-kissey puppy piles. The kids with their Christmas toys. All new and excited. I left the next day. Over the next weeks all but 3 died. The veterinarian who remained, (also recruited), and two others worked all day and night for 14 days to save them. This is not just the outcome of war, this is the outcome of power plays and idiots deciding how to manage infectious disease. I heard that three of the other older dogs also died. Three of the dozen that the "head vet tech" wouldn't let me vaccinate. I was told I couldn't vaccinate because I wasn't a Ukrainian vet. The dogs and cats didn't care who vaccinated them, but most of them died because no one vaccinated them. I left because I was part of some guys mistaken altruism. I left because I knew I wasn't helping animals I was harboring infectious disease agar. I left because I can help the pets of my community in a real way. There is parvo in my own backyard. There are unvaccinated dogs in my own backyard.

Poe. Our parvo puppy. Story here

This plays out to this day. The local shelter is stuck in a save face powerplay that is just costing pets their lives. Infectious disease is going to find a way to survive in the weakest, smallest and most vulnerable. It is an inherent, omni-present reality of too many lives in too small an enclosed space. It is the cost of mixing populations. Housing the lost, surrendered without previous adequate medical care, and just plain old bad luck fate. I purchased the parvo treatment on my own dime to save the lives here I can try to save. I offered it for free, and any supplies that would be needed, to save the 30 puppies I couldn't in Ukraine. The shelter had an outbreak. These are inevitable in large populations of animals. When it happened I offered care immediately. I was dismissed and the puppies were euthanized without a chance at recovery, and to my knowledge without veterinary oversight. A tragedy yet again, and this time in my own backyard. 

More on our parvo outbreak here. 

There are a lot of layers to this tragedy. A lot of people who are responsible and want to make excuses as to why this is acceptable. I will fight for these three puppies (there were 4 that died in total), and hope that it makes the next outbreak allow some survivors. There is no chance when euthanasia is the only option provided. There HAS TO BE A veterinarian at the forefront of medical cases. There has to be a group effort to save them and not just try to eradicate the disease that they are afflicted with as collateral consequence. The common thread is that you have to have credentialled experts leading the decisions. If you don't it will cost lives. If you don't the responsibility for those lives is on the hands of the leaders behind the decisions. That is called accountability. It's the collateral damage to being in charge.

There is a treatment in a bottle that offers help. As soon as it came on the market I bought it. It stays in the freezer at the clinic with the hope that it might save one puppy I couldn't save in Ukraine. I give it away as some small way to pay it forward. There will always be that vial in my freezer and that hole from those 30 puppies in my heart.

Watching a dog die, always a puppy, from parvovirus is wrenching. Knowing it died when it was preventable, infuriating. If needed I would give that vaccine away too if it meant I never had to endure watching that suffering.

My puppies. Rescued from shelters.

Did we talk about the shelter buying/transporting from high kill states down south puppies for adoption events at the Motor Show at the Baltimore Convention Center? Why bring your own dogs when you can import puppies? More on that soon. (Deja vu, right? except wrong continent).