Dogs Hurt While in Pound, Owners Say

as published 01/08/04
The Daily News
By Sarah Viren

When Jennifer and Chip Meyerhoff picked up their two border collies at the county pound last week, the normally rambunctious dogs were weak and sickly. Wisp, a 3-year-old collie, was foaming at the mouth; Lulu had what looked like burns on her tongue, paws and belly, Jennifer Meyerhoff said.

An immediate trip to the veterinarian couldn’t save Wisp, who died on Jan. 2. He was originally diagnosed with canine distemper, but doctors now say chemicals could have caused his symptoms.

Jennifer Meyerhoff is one of two pet owners claiming their dogs were exposed to some sort of chemical while staying at the county’s animal control kennel in Texas City over the New Year’s holidays.

Carmen Cisneros says her 14-year-old golden retriever named Sandy also returned from the pound weak and covered with burns. Sandy survived but not before racking up a $540 vet bill.

Kennel officials say they have no idea what could have caused the sudden illnesses.

“Until we get more information we prefer not to guess,” said Martin Entringer, director of environmental and consumer health for the county. “If the vet or pet owners provide us with a toxicology report that might help us to proceed.”

Meyerhoff and Cisneros have filed a complaint with the Texas City police and say they are considering a lawsuit against the county facility. Both women say they are angry about the harm brought to their dogs and because they think kennel workers were not being honest about their treatment of the animals.

“My dogs are like my kids. I’ve had them for 14 years,” Cisneros said. “In my opinion they are responsible for what happened.”

Meyerhoff was on vacation with her family last week when the Wisp and Lulu were picked up by animal control. After the family returned and found out what happened, they called the pound, Meyerhoff said. She said an employee there told them the dogs were fine, but the pound was closed for the holiday and to pick them up the next day. That following morning, though, the Meyerhoffs got a call to come immediately. Wisp was sick.

“He had a hard time breathing and he was foaming at the mouth” Meyerhoff said. “By the time he got to the vet, the vet said there wasn’t anything he could do.”

Cisneros, a Santa Fe resident who has two golden retrievers, said she got a call Friday afternoon to come get Sandy, who had gotten loose a week earlier. When Cisneros arrived at the pound, her 14-year-old dog was lying motionless on the kennel floor. “We didn’t think she would make it,” Cisneros said. “She was like a dead dog, but barely breathing.”

Cisneros says the technicians at the kennel tried to get her to put Sandy down, but she refused. David Smith, director of county animal services, denies that could have happened. “That’s the first I ever heard of that,” he said. “We don’t recommend that people put their dog down.”

Smith, a dog owner himself, has said he has no idea what could have caused the symptoms in the three dogs. “We wracked out brains about it; I said ‘Can anybody think of anything they might have gotten into?’” he said from his office at the pound on Tuesday, speaking above the racket of barks and yaps. In the back, among numerous fenced kennels, employees were spraying the concrete floor and cleaning the cages before the facility opened to the public.

This cleaning procedure is the same every day, Smith said, and it has been the same since the facility opened in 1993. The kennel uses the same cleaning products as area hospitals. “We have relatively innocuous chemicals that we clean and sanitize with,” he said.

Chemicals kennel workers say they used could not have cause the lesions he saw on the dogs bodies, said Veterinarian Scott Johnson, who made the connection between the Meyerhoffs and Cisneros’ dogs.

But Johnson said he could not think of any natural disease or bacteria that could have cause the symptoms either. “I have seen other animals, cats and dogs, that chew on electrical wire and it burns their tongue, but that’s about the only thing I’ve every seen like that,” he said.

Meyerhoff is collecting statements from neighbors, who say they are willing to testify to Wisp’s health before he was taken to the pound Dec. 31. She has also asked the veterinarian to write out a narrative of his conclusions and plans to have a necropsy and toxicology report done on Wisp’s body.

She said she wants her vet’s bills paid and money to purchase another border collie. Wisp was a fast friend of her four kids, she said. “His brain was either a Frisbee or a ball,” she said. “That’s all he knew was play, play, play.”

On Monday, the whole family showed up at the vet’s office to pick up Lulu, who Meyerhoff says is recovering perfectly. But the children still don’t completely understand what happened to Wisp, she said.

“They were pretty upset when I told them,” Meyerhoff said. “I talked to my son about it. He was mad at the vet cause he (thought he) let him die. I told him some people have done wrong and we are going to try to find out what they did and we’re going to get you another dog.”