Protestors call for change at Animal Shelter following new penalty

ROCKINGHAM — A group of about 20 protestors gathered outside the Richmond County Administrative Building Tuesday to call for changes in leadership following a new penalty being levied against Animal Shelter and after repeated attempts to contact commissioners about the issue were unsuccessful.

Several of the protestors shared the connection that they had rescued five or more animals of their own or had been past staff members or volunteers of the Animal Shelter, but nearly all were members of the Concerned Citizens for Our Shelter Animals (CCOSA) Facebook group, formed in response to the latest penalty against the county in January. They decried an insufficient response by the county to its penalties and named a series of potential solutions as they stood along Fayetteville Road.

They waved signs reading, among other things, “Animals don’t have a voice so you’ll never stop hearing mine,” “Fury babies [sic] lives matter too,” and saying that both County Manager Bryan Land and Animals Shelter Director Bonnie Wilde “need to go!” for “allowing the abuse to continue!”

County officials did not engage the protestors at any point Tuesday afternoon.

The solutions to the issues with the care of animals at the shelter put forward by the protestors in multiple interviews included, as the signs described above suggest, replacing Land and Wilde in order to get people with new ideas in charge, making the animal shelter a “no-kill” shelter, implementing a TNR (trap, neuter, release) strategy to reduce fertility of stray animals, and devising a way to increase the public’s access to and awareness of spay and neuter options to clamp down on the animal population.

Sarah Holder, lead organizer of the protest, and Sallie Culley, a former shelter staff member and an active animal advocate, agreed that the public also needs to take more responsibility to spay and neuter their pets so that the shelter isn’t overloaded.

Board of Commissioners Chair Jeff Smart at this month’s board meeting said they were pursuing new training for shelter staff to address the lapses that have lead to the penalties from the state. Many of the protestors scoffed at this idea, with Alice Summers, a former shelter volunteer, saying this is a “waste of money.”

“You’re either compassionate or you’re not, that’s not something that you can be taught this late in life,” Summers said.

The inciting incident for this protest was the news that the county had been issued a new fine for improper treatment of an animal in January. The North Carolina Department of Agriculture (DOA) and Consumer Services Veterinary Division fined the county a total of $2,250 stemming from its actions while in custody of a dog named Princess, who was picked up last summer with “paralyzing” injuries after apparently being struck by a car.

Princess was in the care of the shelter from July 19, 2020 until the owner picked her up on July 23. The dog did not receive any pain medication, according to the DOA, until 30 days after being picked up and eventually finding its way into the hands of a rescue who was able to take her in for surgery. This was after the Humane Society of Richmond County took Princess to a vet who recommended euthanasia based on the extent of her injuries — which the Humane Society apparently did not inform the shelter of — and the dog’s owner returning the dog to the shelter on Aug. 19.

Princess has since recovered after receiving surgery, and is in the care of a rescue, according to the DOA. A spokesperson for the county said that shelter staff’s actions during the time they had custody of Princess were based on a desire to give her “a chance to live a long life reunited with her owners.”

Holder, who has five rescues herself, said that owning rescued pets makes any mistreatment of them “hit home,” especially when it’s at a facility paid for with her tax dollars.

“You think (the shelter) is supposed to give these animals a second chance at life and you find out that they’re not getting the medical attention, they’re not getting the chance to be adopted and they’re being just killed,” Holder said, referring to ongoing frustrations with the shelter’s system of advertising adoptable dogs and the 2019 penalty for premature euthanasia.

Holder said that if they had been able to start a dialogue with the board of commissioners, via email or public comment sessions, they wouldn’t have resorted to protest.

Culley said that it takes “compassion” to care for these animals effectively. She believes that is lacking at the shelter at the moment.

“There’s a couple kennel techs in there — they bust their butt to do their job,” Culley said. “But you need a director in there that is compassionate, that has compassion for these animals. If you ain’t got compassion you don’t need to be in that seat.”

Culley was fired from the shelter over an argument with a pet owner about five years ago, and has since had a tense relationship with it. In her time she said saw good things and things that she vehemently disagreed with, but that she joined the protest not because of any grudge over her firing, rather out of a desire to save lives of the animals.

“I’m here because the animals don’t have a voice — we are their voice,” Culley said.

A CCOSA member, Bill English, started a Change.org petition two weeks ago to garner support for ousting Wilde. In that time, the petition has received 806 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon. Wilde was hired on Nov. 25, 2014. In her tenure, she has never faced any disciplinary actions and has been given five raises — totaling a $5,986 increase in pay to now $41,874 — for merit, earning a new certification, successful probationary completion and, most recently, after her 5-year job-revaluation in March 2019, according to the county’s records.