NC ANIMAL NEWS

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Published: May 13, 2008 05:32 PM
Modified: May 13, 2008 05:32 PM


Record number of pets adopted



By Sarah McNeil, Staff Reporter

Johnston County — It was love at first sight for Heather Combs.

For months, Combs and her three daughters had been looking for a companion for their two dogs, Milo and Jesse. Their search ended at the Johnston County Animal Shelter, where they spotted Jackie, a 2-year-old Husky mix.

Jackie and her two puppies had been surrendered to the shelter. The puppies were quickly adopted, but Jackie sat in a lonely cage for two weeks before Combs came along.

“Every other dog in the whole place was barking and [Jackie] just sat there, just as pretty as can be,” said Combs, of the Cleveland community. “I said, ‘We are not going to leave her, so let’s take her home.’”

Jackie was one of 127 animals adopted from the shelter in March. Director Ernie Wilkinson said it was the highest number of animals ever adopted from the shelter in one month. On average, about 30 pets a month find a new home, he said.

But thanks to the media, dedicated staff and the help of more than 25 foster and rescue groups, more people are adopting from the shelter, Wilkinson said. “This is where we have been working to be for three years,” he said. “We are finally beginning to get there.”

Coming to a new home has been an adjustment for Jackie. She can still be mischievous, digging holes in the yard, eating rental-movie cases and hogging the bed. The feisty dog enjoys watching television and appliances, such as the fan, in motion. Jackie was the first dog the Combs adopted from a shelter, but she certainly won’t be the last.

“Now I tell everybody ‘You need to go to one of the shelters and get a dog,’” Combs said.

“I would definitely say if you have room in your home and in your heart, definitely go to the shelter and give a dog a second chance. I don’t think we could have picked a better dog from the shelter.”

Another dog, Girly Girl, has been a comfort to Liz Parrish of Four Oaks and her daughter, Morgan, since their Golden retriever Champ died unexpectedly in March. Girly Girl, originally named Harley, was found wandering on Brodgen Road near Smithfield and carried to the shelter.

Parrish and her daughter were impressed with Girly Girl’s quiet demeanor. “It was something about her...it was almost like her eyes were smiling at you,” Parrish said

As Parrish took a closer look, she noticed the American bull and boxer mix had scars on her back, hip and face. The scars made Parrish think the dog’s former owner had abused her.

“I can’t stand to see an abused animal,” she said. “There is no point to it. They can’t defend themselves. There are so many out there that need homes just like we need homes.”

Girly Girl fits in with the family perfectly. She loves to look out the window, eat sandals and chew on squeaky toys. The 1-year-old dog enjoys sitting on laps and having her tummy rubbed when she is not playing outside in the yard. “It’s like she’s always been here,” Parrish said.

Girly Girl might not be the only pet for much longer.

“We are thinking of fostering or getting another dog,” Parrish said. “People need to be more aware of the animal shelter, and they do have the best animals, period.”

http://www.theherald-nc.com/front/story/8173.html

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Video of Alleged Animal Abuse by Trooper Played in Court

 

Posted: Apr. 28, 2008
Updated: Today at 2:28 p.m.

Raleigh, N.C. — A court hearing began Monday to decide whether a state trooper fired for alleged animal abuse will get his job back.

Former Sgt. Charles Jones, a 12-year veteran in charge of K-9 training for the Highway Patrol, was fired in September after another trooper turned over two 15-second video clips of him allegedly abusing his K-9 partner, Ricoh.

(Caution: Contents of the video may disturb some viewers.)

The Office of Administrative Hearings – a quasi-judicial agency – began proceedings Monday in a lawsuit that Jones filed against the state in December, alleging that procedures were violated when he was fired. The hearing will reconvene on Tuesday.

Monday's proceedings focused on the video clips that Trooper Ray Herndon recorded on his cell phone after he saw Jones using what he thought might be abusive techniques at a training exercise in Garner last summer.

"I was torn; I didn't know what to do. Should I go stop him?" Herndon, a 21-year-veteran of the force, testified Monday. "So I did what I thought was right at the time."

Court documents say the incident began when Ricoh refused to release a chew reward. One video shows Jones tying the dog's leash to a high railing so that only his hind legs touched the ground. He then kicked the dog's leg four times.

"Then he'd pull him back up a good distance off the ground, using the lead in an attempt to get the dog to lech the toy or let the toy go," Herndon said. He added that he did not think Jones was intentionally trying to harm or abuse Ricoh.

The second video clip shows Jones apparently leaving the dog alone, hanging upright from its leash and collar.

Jones' lawyer, Jack O'Hale, claimed that the video clips show Jones using training techniques that he had been taught by the Highway Patrol. Ricoh was a particularly aggressive dog that required extra training, the attorney said.

"Sgt. Jones acted in the manner in which he was trained, even though it was an ugly manner," O'Hale said.

The Highway Patrol's manual does not specify any dog-training methods that are banned or allowed, O'Hale said. He described commonly used methods, such as swinging a dog around by the neck or wrestling it to the ground and holding its jaws open, that could be considered abusive.

Capt. Ken Castelloe, head of the patrol's internal affairs office, testified that the first video clip was ordinary, but not the second. Castelloe said he was disturbed that Jones had left Ricoh after the dog dropped the toy.

Bryan Beatty, secretary of the state Department of Crime Control and Public Safety, testified that Jones was fired only after a careful review.

"I concluded that that was not a technique that anyone had seen," Beatty said. "It was not a technique that was acceptable within Highway Patrol policy."

O'Hale repeated charged that the Governor's Press Office pressured the Highway Patrol to fire Jones without due process. In a deposition last week, Lt. Col. Cecil Lockley said that "unlawful political intervention" forced him to fire Jones.

Beatty and the Highway Patrol made public their intentions to fire Jones a day before his pre-dismissal hearing, O'Hale said.

The assistant district attorney argued that the video itself provided enough evidence to justify Jones' firing, and the state did not act inappropriately.

In court documents, the Highway Patrol said that Beatty, not Lockley, made the final decision to fire Jones.

O'Hale argued that Jones became a victim of the Highway Patrol's efforts to clean up after a series of embarrassing misconduct allegations were laid against troopers. The incident also occurred during the height of the dog-fighting scandal surrounding Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, the attorney said.

Gov. Mike Easley ordered the Highway Patrol to hire a consultant to review its procedures, including the hiring, training and promotion of troopers. The consultant's findings are expected in the next few weeks.

A veterinarian examined Ricoh and found that he was OK shortly after the training exercise. The Highway Patrol removed Ricoh from Jones' care, and the dog is no longer actively working on the force.

• Reporter: Erin Coleman
• Photographer: Edward Wilson
• Web Editor: Anne Johnson

 

 http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/2803389

Article of the week from North Carolina Lawyers Weekly:

Animals first in new firm

By DIANA SMITH, Staff Writer

A little girl scrambles along the edge of a swimming pool at a Wisconsin resort, her eyes fixed upon a chipmunk flailing in the aqua water.

Her parents, escorting her to dinner, assure her that the furry creature will paddle its way to safety. But on the family's return trip, it was still struggling.

Before anyone can stop her, the youngster seizes the animal, and it scurries to safety but not before thanking her with a farewell bite.

That was Raleigh attorney Calley Gerber at age six, a compassionate child with a love for two things animals and how to protect them.

"It's always been that way," she said. "Animals first."

Now, Gerber is applying that sentiment to her profession. Today, she opens her own practice Gerber Animal Law Center which will focus exclusively on animal issues.

It's the first of its kind in North Carolina, according to Bill Reppy, who heads Duke University's Animal Law Project. Other lawyers might handle a handful of cases involving animals cruelty, dog bites, custody issues but very few strike out into such territory on their own. Reppy knows of just two attorneys who have created self-sustaining animal law practices, one in Illinois and the other in Washington state.

That makes Gerber's new firm a groundbreaking, but risky, venture. And she knows it.

"I decided to open an animal law firm, which some people which all people say you can't make a living at," Gerber said. "If it's meant to be, it's meant to be. I've done a lot of things people told me I couldn't do."

But increased attention to animal abuse in recent years, both in the Carolinas and nationally, may mean that the tides have turned in Gerber's favor. North Carolina is the only state in the nation with a statute that allows private litigants to bring civil charges against violators of animal cruelty laws.

Other positive examples: In the past three years, laws were passed in both Carolinas that upgraded cockfighting to felonies. In 2006, South Carolina became the fourth state in the nation to ban "hog dog" fighting, where trained attack dogs fight trapped feral pigs.

Still, North Carolina placed in the bottom tier for the comprehensiveness of its state animal protection laws in 2007, according to an Animal Legal Defense Fund study. South Carolina fared slightly better, ranked in the middle tier.

A lifelong animal lover, Apex attorney Marianna Burt felt that she would be unable to make a living with an animal-only practice when she graduated from UNC in 1989. Today, she relies on her indigent criminal defense work as her bread and butter, but devotes 50 percent of her time to animal law cases. However, 60-70 percent of that animal work is pro bono, she said.

But winds of change appear to be blowing. Ninety-six of the 196 ABA-accredited law schools in the United States now offer courses in animal law, up from nine that offered them in 2000.

"This is probably the right time for someone to be doing this full-time," said Burt. "Certain practices that are more lucrative, such as veterinary malpractice and custody issues, are really taking the field. You didn't see that a few years ago."

'SAVE THE WORLD'

Gerber's decision to open her animal law firm did not come easily. She spent her first five years after law school as a prosecutor in Colorado a dream come true for the woman who wanted to use her position to promote legal reform.

"But then my student loans came out of deferment, and I realized that I couldn't live on that," she said. "I was taking a pack of Saltines and a can of peas for lunch. I literally lost two sizes in one month. I finally had to say, 'If I'm going to starve to death to prosecute, I probably should do something else.'"

Gerber moved to North Carolina and joined Wakefield Development as in-house counsel. But after eight years, she felt increasingly unfulfilled. She just didn't love her work.

"I've always had that 'save the world' pull. I think that's why I wanted to prosecute," she said. "But I told myself to be grateful that I had a job that allowed me to pay my debts."

With her two dogs, Presley and Justice, at her side, she sought happiness through increased activity with Great Dane rescue and other animal organizations.

But spending 40 or more hours of the business week doing unrewarding work took its toll. Gerber began to doubt if she was even meant to be an attorney a terrifying thought for a woman who told her mother at age 12 that she was going to be a lawyer.

So she hired a life coach.

A battery of tests revealed two things: Gerber was born to be a lawyer. But she would never be happy in corporate law.

"The next day, I quit," she said.

She gave Wakefield three months notice. It was not an acrimonious breakup. Before her departure, the company even created a temporary Web page for Gerber to advertise her new endeavor.

Doubt inevitably crept in.

"The reality of quitting feels good for the first five minutes, and then there's this 'Oh, my God, how am I going to pay my bills?' sensation," she said.

"Then I decided fear is not a positive emotion and that I had to let the bad stuff go so that good things could come in."

And so Gerber Animal Law Center was born.

DREAM BIG

Gerber's life coach posed a hypothetical question: "You're on the cover of a national publication. What's the magazine and what's the story?"

"It was the easiest question for me to answer," she said. "I'm on the cover of Time magazine, and I've stopped factory farming."

Indeed, the treatment of farm animals is one of the issues that Gerber hopes to tackle as she develops her animal law practice. One exemption to the criminal statutes for animal abuse N.C. G.S. Sect. 14-360 precludes prosecution for cruelty to animals raised for food and agribusiness.

"The abandonment of the North Carolina legislature about the treatment of farm animals is shocking," said Reppy, from Duke. "It's so irrational that it's unconstitutional."

That's why Reppy is "simply delighted" that Gerber is willing to be an animal law pioneer. He envisions collaboration between Duke's animal law clinic and Gerber's new practice.

"We'll be able to help Calley by getting the students in our clinic to work with her and do research," Reppy said.

And while Gerber has her dream projects like the creation of more humane livestock laws, teaching at area law schools and amending the law that treats animals as property she is adamant that she is a realist, not an extremist.

"I'm not saying that animals need to have the status of human beings, but at the same time, if someone intentionally kills your animal, they shouldn't only recover just the actual cost of property," she said.

"If your dog is a mutt, you get zero damages under the market value test in most states. It just isn't clear where North Carolina stands on that," Reppy said.

In the past few weeks, publicity and word-of-mouth has led more than a dozen people to call Gerber with animal law questions. One woman wanted to know what actions she could take against a neighbor who shot and killed her dog as it ran away from him.

"A lot of people just want someone to listen to them," said Gerber. "Granted, that doesn't make any money or make the firm go, but in the early stages that's what I've been doing."

The sad reality is that some of those callers will have to be turned away.

"To sue is costly, and the remedy is limited in these cases, so there's a decision to make," Gerber said. "I know a lot of these cases will be take-it-and-lose, take-it-and-lose, take-it-and lose. But at the same time, that's how the laws get changed."

FOCUS AND PRIORITIES

Exactly what will Gerber Animal Law Center do?

It's a work in progress, Gerber said.

While she would never shy away from prosecuting, one of the major focuses of Gerber's firm will be preventive measures that protect animals.

Included in that category is the establishment of pet trusts and estates. According to the 2007-2008 National Pet Owners Survey, 63 percent of American households now own pets. But very few owners have set up protections for them when they die.

"Five hundred thousand animals are euthanized each year because owners haven't made provisions for them," said Gerber.

Gerber also wants to use her legal expertise to help people in animal-related professions such as dog groomers and dog-walkers set up businesses and draft contracts. Also falling under the umbrella could be veterinary malpractice cases. She'd even be happy to do special prosecution if the D.A.'s office was overburdened, she said.

One of Gerber's grand visions is to see a rescue organization hold a fundraiser that would give it the money to retain her services to go after someone accused of cruelty, such as dog-fighters.

"I don't know if this is something I can live on," she said. "I've been told that it's been tried before and that it's very, very hard, depressing work. Because the protections aren't there, you're constantly faced with not being able to get the right thing done. You have to tell people that the law isn't there yet. I know that people won't necessarily be calling me because they're happy. Usually something bad has happened.

"Maybe I've read too many of those books: Follow your passion and everything else will fall into place. I've been in practice 12 years. If I fall on my face, I can get another job. But if I never try, how will I know?

"You achieve what you believe, and I very much believe that."

Questions or comments may be directed to diana.smith@nc.lawyersweekly.com.

ANIMAL LAW EDUCATION

A look at what law schools in North Carolina offer in animal law courses and related student organizations:

Duke University

- Home to the Animal Law Project, which offers courses and a clinic.

- Has the student Animal Law Society.

Wake Forest University

- First offered an animal law course in Fall 2004.

- Established a Student Animal Legal Defense Fund chapter this year.

http://www.nclawyersweekly.com

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Adkins Pet Center Now Open!

The Adkins Pet Center is a state-of-the-art pet care facility.  We provide a unique combination of pet care services such as Boarding, Grooming, a Low Cost Spay/Neuter Clinic, and Pet Supplies & Gifts. We also house the Project Halo Adoption Center. Project Halo is a non-profit, no-kill rescue organization.

The Adkins Pet Center was built by a foundation set up by businessmen & brothers Mark & Will Adkins, along with Marks fiancée Janet Robinson.  Animal lovers since they were children, Mark & Will have always wanted to create a place to help animals.

The Adkins Pet Center is dedicated to helping as many animals as possible. Through community education and awareness programs we teach proper pet care and requirements, breed discrimination and the importance of eliminating pet overpopulation and cruelty.  We offer an orientation/pet education class to new adopters and provide resources or counseling to families with behavior issues.  

The Adkins Pet Center is 15,000 square feet on over 6.5 acres. The combined outside play areas are larger than a football field and are covered with Astroturf.  The dogs have lots of toys to play with and climb on.  In the warmer months they can cool off in one of the play pools.  In the event of bad weather, we also have a large inside playroom.

The Adkins Pet Center is inspected and licensed by the State of North Carolina, a member of the American Boarding Kennel Association and the Lincolnton & Mecklenburg Chambers of Commerce.

http://www.adkinspetcenter.net/

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Introducing the Triangles' ONLY mall pet adoption center!

www.animall.org

AniMall is a 4,000 square-foot non-profit pet adoption center located in the Morrisville Outlet Mall. (I-40, exit 284A.) AniMall sells pet-related merchandise (including Marley tents), consignment items for rescues, and also offers obedience training with Sylvie of K-9 Solutions. AniMall, however, does not, nor will it ever SELL animals of ANY kind. (Petsmart and Petco STILL sell reptiles, birds and small mammals - ALL of whom show up in shelters year after year in increasing numbers.)

AniMall started as an alternative to petstores that still sell animals and/or offer little space for rescues to bring their adoptables. AniMall provides space, advertising and we even do ALL the clean-up. As a rescue all you do is provide the animals!

You can sign up for any shift that suits you M-F (10am-5:30pm) or Saturday 10am-9pm and Sunday Noon-6pm. Our volunteers can also scheduled to be on hand to help you hold leashes or talk to would-be adopters.

We charge a small $10 fee per rescue per shift; however, if you hold more than one adoption event within a given week - then you are charged only ONE fee! The more you come, the cheaper it is, as we also offer monthly discounts as well! Come four weekends in a row and we will only charge you for TWO!

You also get a table and chairs at AniMall, a tablecloth and free sodas/ bottled water for you, your volunteers and your animals (well, they get tap water, but you get the gist).

Are you a cat rescuer? AniMall has 7 cat condos that can hold 2-3 adult cats and several kittens in ONE condo. Our two story condos are a great way for adopters to see cats, PLUS we have an enclosed room JUST for cats to interact with adopters. Dogs have a fenced "greeting" area as well as easy access to an outdoor walk and potty spot.

Do you have a cat or dog that does not "interview well"? Maybe he or she is very timid and often gets overlooked because of that?

Bring him or her to AniMall during the week and we can guarantee that she/he will get noticed! The best part is during the week, animals that are shy don't get so stressed because they there is less traffic and noise. PLUS - we have had LOTS of adoptions happen during the weekday.

Yes, it is true that the Outlet Mall does not get as much traffic as say, Southpoint Mall or even the flea market; however, here are some numbers to chew on:

Average weekend number of visitors to AniMall: 300

Average daily weekday number of visitors: 75

Total number of adoptions at AniMall: More than 200!

(this number is only a modest estimate, we are certain that there are more we have not accounted for!)

So, what are you waiting for? Contact Jenn below and bring your cuties to animal and let's join together in 2007 to find some wonderful pets some great forever homes!

Contact Jenn Binkley  jenn@animall.org

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