Is Brownsville-animal-regulation-care-center a Kill Center

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

I used to be a vocal advocate of the Brownsville Animal Regulation and Control Center (BARCC), ever since the new facility off FM 511 was constructed in 2005.

I was thrilled.

Imagine, the beautiful 12,000 sq. foot shelter was hailed as a "modern pet shelter" costing more than $2 million dollars set on 17 acres that cost nearly $300,000, with a dog park and a medical clinic staffed with a full time licensed veterinarian.

I always told people, "Call the shelter about the stray you found, they will find her owner and/or get her adopted."

Not anymore.

I found out the hard way that taking an animal to Brownsville Animal Regulation and Control Center  (BARCC) (it has no moral right to appropriate the word "shelter") is a death sentence. Case in point:

I adopted a beautiful puppy, ID# A100831, from the Brownsville Animal Regulation and Control Center in Olmito, Texas (BARCC) on Monday, July 9, 2018. It was love at first sight, she stole my heart.

BARCC told me she was 5 months old, healthy, and was given the green light to undergo a spaying operation that same day. "#A100831" was operated on that afternoon by the City veterinarian. I picked her up at 5 p.m. the same day, took her home, and followed post-surgical directions.

But, the next morning, she coughed a few times. I took her to a private veterinarian to have her checked out. (By this time, her name was Little Bit.) The vet said she had a highly elevated temperature of 103.8 along with the cough and was treated for kennel cough, although the private vet cautioned me that distemper has similar symptoms.

Long story short, Little Bit got worse and was euthanized on Friday, July 13, less than 4 days after I adopted her from BARCC because she was deteriorating and had all the early signs of distemper, for which there is no cure.

When you adopt a pet at BARCC, you must sign a contract in which it states in part: "…there is always a chance that an animal has a disease that is incubating inside at the time of admission (my emphasis) and doesn't show any symptoms of the disease. (italics theirs.)"

I do not take issue with this agreement as life itself is a gamble, and I certainly don't want my money back. But the phrases "at the time of admission" and "incubating inside" are the pertinent language with which I have major issues:

"At the time of admission" :

Little Bit was brought into BARCC by Brownsville Animal Control on June 22, 2018 as a stray and given a clean bill of health on June 24 and again on July 9 by a BARCC Supervisor and then again by the part time City veterinarian on duty, who both agreed this puppy was healthy and able to undergo major surgery that same day.

She didn't show any signs of distress until July 10, 2018, the day after I adopted her and the day after her surgery, when she developed a slight cough. That was nearly three weeks after she was apprehended and taken to BARCC. T

he incubation period for distemper in puppies her age, weight and overall condition is 7 – 14 days from exposure. There is no question that Little Bit was brought in as a healthy puppy and was infected by the distemper virus at the Brownsville Animal Regulation and Care Center.

"Incubating inside":

Is this language "legalese" in order to confuse the public and/or protect the City? Do they mean "inside" the animal, or do they mean "inside the BARCC facility"?

The prevention and control of distemper is easy: First, new animals introduced into the shelter must be segregated in order to prevent the spread of disease. And secondly, the shelter needs to be simply clean. All it takes is basic "elbow grease" and bleach.

Imagine taking your family member to a hospital where the bed sheets had not been changed since the last patient slept there, or was placed in a room with a highly contagious roommate. This is the situation at BARCC.

BARCC seems to depend solely on what they call "volunteers" which are, for the most part, criminal/civil offenders who are court-mandated into doing community service as part of their probation.

I spoke with one of these "volunteers" who told me he was given no training nor supervision. He said, "The "shirts" just sit in their offices on their Facebook and don't care as long as we sign in and sign out."

On that particular Monday at noon, dogs were fighting, sleeping in their feces and even the "meet and greet room" was smelly and littered with feces, urine and trash, and volunteers had signed out. This was the hour when BARCC opens its doors to the public. What did it look like before they deemed themselves "presentable"?

Meanwhile, I saw not one BARCC employee anywhere near the animals.

The oddest thing is that, according to the 2016 budget, there appear to be two "supervisors" and only six "worker bees", including the dogcatchers.

This brings to mind "too many chiefs and…" Even more curious, one supervisor was rehired recently at BARCC (leaving a BARCC position as a vet tech a couple years ago) after a brief stint as Program Director at Palm Valley Animal Center in Edinburg, right before the shelter which hit the national news in March of this year when it was revealed that they had had a chronic and deliberately under-reported distemper epidemic for several years.

Only after Austin Pets Alive stepped in March of 2018 did the situation get remedied. This individual who was responsible for supervising and reporting outbreaks at Palm Valley seems to have jumped ship there to become a (as I said, yet another) BARCC Supervisor just before the proverbial you-know-what hit the fan.

Little Bit lived a short life that ended in an absolutely avoidable tragedy, but if her story can make a change, then her existence was not in vain.

(P.S. I was warned by several people from Brownsville not to send this story to the press. Since BARCC is now under the Brownsville Police Department, they told me that I would be targeted and harassed. Let's see.)

Is Brownsville-animal-regulation-care-center a Kill Center

Source: https://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/2018/07/barcc-sounds-benign-on-paper-but-deadly.html

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