One of my first memories of my adoptive father was his decision whether or not to put down his beloved pit bull, a dog he’d raised since a puppy.  Kazin, a brindle Pit, had been his constant companion for years.  He now suffered from dropsy.  In a few months leading up to this decision Kazin had become more crippled up, found breathing harder and was going down hill. Now he was no longer interested in food as he hacked looking pitifully at my father to help him. My father stroked his head, the tail came into action as a weak thump was heard from the other side of the ottoman where Kazin lay.  “I think the time has come.”  My father faked a sneeze to cover a sob.  The next morning the two went alone to the veterinarian’s office and my father carried back a bundle wrapped in a blanket which he burried in a secret place.  He reported that Kazin could not walk the entire distance from the parking lot to the clinic of the veterinarian.  After six weeks or so my father selected another pit bull and we kids got to name him and he entered our household.  Kazin had lived 12  years which in the early 30s was a long time.  The next dog would be named Tuffy and live an equally long life.  When I ask a standard question of people wanting to adopt from us “Have you ever had any dogs before?  What happened to those dogs?”  If they are around thirty and tell me they’ve had dozens of dogs there is something wrong.  Normal life today for most dogs is from 12 to 18 years so if a person 30 has had oodles of dogs they’ve either had several at a time or discarded them along the way just as this dog they want to adopt will be discarded perhaps when it does not play very much any more.  There is no end to reasons people want to euthanise but “we are moving”, “she doesn’t like my husband”. “we got another dog and they fight”, “my son went off to college and no one is interested in the dog any more”, “she is getting old and sometimes makes mistakes on the floor”, “she sheds too much”, ”She eats feces”, “it costs too much to have a dog (or cat)” are a few.  The list is sad and endless but we also see these people seek to give up their pets.  There is a growing population which has no loyalty connected with their obligation of having a pet.  The pet is a living thing that becomes a burden or inconvenience so it has to go.  People who tell me they are moving know full well they can pay a deposit in 85 % of rentals in El Paso accept pets for a deposit.  Many people go out and adopt or buy a pet without even asking the landlord about the rules. Sometimes the pet is put down by Animal Services as there is no way out for him. People who give up their dogs to friends, free, may think they’ve done a good thing and it might be better than Animal Services but 80% of those pets end up dead  from running loose, in homes of collectors or in dangerous health conditions within a year.  Things given free are without value to most.  When you buy or adopt a pet you should have a plan for that pet. While agencies sometimes take back pets it is wise to have a plan if you move or change jobs or must part with your pet, start early.  If you are to get your pet into a guaranteed placement shelter like ours you may need an agreement of when we will take it and when they, the owners, have to get rid of  it. One cannot expect to call an agency in most cases and discard a pet within hours and get it into a safe rescue group that will find it a home, rescue groups often need time to arrange a cage or kennel for the pet. Then if you decide not to leave it there a pet has died that could have taken that space. We assure people of adoptions through furnishing a photo of the adoption. We once had a kennel with  300 spaces but we don’t have that capacity now so in some cases we can’t take back a larger dog without a few days notice. Otherwise we take all our dogs and cats back.  When is it necessary to euthanise a pet?  When you appreciate life the thought of death is distasteful.  Little puppies are born with tiny toe nails and little tongues and pink noses at the moment of birth. We like to save pregnant mothers like the Virgin Mary, who sought shelter in a stable among animals to deliver Jesus.  These animals are at the end of their rope, pregnant, in need of sympathy and help, they are thrown out of cars, discarded on mountain roads for wild animals to tear apart or to be killed by a car or simply starve.  Last fall a disgruntled employee stood on K Fox claiming I put down puppies without any reason and named imaginary names that we never owned. Her own children were often stashed in the kennel as her drunken mother locked the family out and she had no place to take them. The older boy had problems with the law, the little girl, dirty, her pretty hair tousled and clinging to her face.  Her mother hid out from Sheriff’s deputies and while I could have turned her in, to child protective services, I didn’t.  I thought she was doing the best she could under the circumstances.  I really believe this woman loved her children but had a hard time keeping things together.   This employee only knew me for a little over a year.  As a personality she was a hit with customers but  failed to follow instructions at all.   When we get very old dogs here that we feel are difficult adoptions, we offer to give them to employees.  I had given her a little terrier she adored.  There was another dog she had been asking for and I’d say she could have it but in the meantime she was dismissed.  She had to come back to pick up a pay check and I allowed her to take the dog free. It was a Chihuahua which had had a complete work up, was fixed and shots etc but she was the only one who could handle him.  Rather than put him down I allowed her to take him. This conflicts with her story on K Fox.    Twelve years before that some Catholic nuns, meaning well, had brought a female dog with 12 puppies to my friend’s house.  They were literally dripping in ticks. They were all in poor health condition.  The mother could barely feed them.  About seven volunteers and I started tick picking and we continued to pick for 12 hours. Finally my friend had had too much she couldn’t handle it so I took them to my house and we dipped them then they went to live with a very devoted woman who worked on the fringe of pet rescue with intense devotion.  She and I and some  others worked with the  dogs for days getting the ticks off and in the process we found most of the dogs which were puppies, were blind and deaf, deaf or blind.  Her name was Patricia Morman and her name should be bronzed somewhere for the work she did on pets.  In the end we placed all the dogs she kept mom and the deaf and blind one and I had all fixed and shots etc done. This meant I paid for it myself. My son, who at that time, was more active with retarded children, placed several of the dogs all of which had issues, with group homes out of town, this meant we drove them there. All dogs got a home and all lived out their lives not being euthanised.   Yet here is a woman who to get even with me accused me of putting down puppies for no reason. If ever puppies and mom should have been considered for euthanasia it was these but we did everything to save them.  In life to criticize and vilify another who cannot defend themselves is the way of the times we live in.  If you work with hundreds of dogs and cats the time will come you need to make radical decisions about how much you can afford to keep a pet that has issues of behavior, health problems  or  the ability to be restrained.  If the word Karma is familiar to you be careful whom you are critical of because it will come back to bite you as it has me.  I always felt there was a way to keep every pet going.  I now know there are many issues entering into this scenario.   If you are running a sanctuary it means the animal stays there until it dies and someone must take care of all its needs both physically or health wise or in general meaning housing, cleaning up after it and feeding it, buying food and medication for it. In theory it sounds like a great idea but in reality even Dog Town will their huge budget puts some dogs down. The quality of life of any pet enters into their decision although they likely return some pets to donars if they cannot help them.  The donations going to a place like Dog Town are enormous. It strips the local communities out of funds that should be going there.  An association such as this is not a fledgling and will prosper from now on it is the local groups picking up the broken bodies on the street, saving animals one at a time from local pounds and taking unwanted animals from donars who have various excuses about why they can’t keep them that need the money. The public thinks of a’ no kill’  agency calls Pedigree or Hills, Purina or other food companies and asks for food they will get coupons, free food or help this is a misconception. 

When I called a year ago bragging we were a no kill shelter they practically hung up on me we were told they did not support ‘no kill’ shelters, to qualify you had to turn your pets rapidly and if accomplishing this meant putting down, well get with it because they did not intend to feed pets that ate and did not move out quickly into homes which is where they’d recover their expense of donated food to pet groups.   In our case we came to a blank wall when after working  for five years to build an agency, the owner decided to let a former employee run it and told me I’d done a good job it was time to move on but she did not know I owned the pets. She planned to step in and have someone who’d never writting a contract before, never bothered to walk the kennels at night to check on things , had  zero people skills and an unsavory past run the operation. Unable to get help from Peta, I found that  I could place with reliable  ‘no kill ‘ shelters through out Tx the dogs and cats that were healthy and ready to be adopted. I had built a kennel in San Angelo which my son ran and his companions there refused to take any dogs from us at all. If he had taken any his chief donor,  would have with-drawn her support or been extremely angry and he chose to appease her. The end result was I had somewhere between 15 and 18 dogs I had no place to move to and no solution the only solution was euthanasia.  I had always believed somewhere there was a better solution to this but could never find it. We were begging, borrowing and building but we came down to selecting 18 dogs out of an original 350 to be put down.  No one stepped forward to take these unfortunate dogs.  I made arrangements with a man who lived in the desert to take them temporarily but he lived in NM and they are very picky about having too many animals and in the end would not help us.   We finally went over our list again selecting dogs that had epilepsy, bone disease, were blind, had extreme emotional problems to where people could not come up behind them or bit without reason. While we might have saved these animals had we had time the clock ran out.  Karma of my saying about others ‘there was a better way they should have found’ caught up with me.  One dog was a dog that could not be contained in a regular kennel. Where we left there was a 14ft fence but where we relocated  it was 6 feet.  I recalled how the benefactor who threw us out after all our hard work had owned a dalmation that was the same way.  It jumped every fence it was put behind endangering vehicles which, if striking the dog, could cause a big accident.  She ultimately put it down .  To do this caused her mental anguish and many tears but it was the responsible thing to do.   Whether sincere and hard thinking rescue groups put any animal down you should remember it is not without soul searching.  Every dog I’ve authorized to be put down I remember, every decision that falls on me takes a toll.  So as I say there are so many people who think euthanasia is a simple solution and gets rid of their problem it isn’t that way with a ‘ no kill ‘   ‘rescue shelter but the word  ‘no kill ‘ does not imply ‘never kill’ as situations are abundant that no one can deal with specific dogs and no one can save every pet although this saddens us.In cases where we have taken in dogs which we cannot handle or treat we always call the donar if there is a donor to call, we ask if they want to take the dog back.  In about half the cases they do.  We understand there are rescue groups that ask for a donation then put the  pet down before the donor slams the door on the car.  One large group here  put down 5 beautiful dogs signed  over by an angry boy friend who works at UTEP as a professor.  The dogs belonged to his mistress.  She was in jail. Before she could get out of jail the nonprofit org. euthanised the entire group. Their excuse?  At 5 too old to adopt.  Every dog was microchipped in her name and in excellent health she sobbed for days.   In my life I have had many dogs and 3 have finally had to be put down.  It is a quick and painless solution but traumatic.  It  it never easy to say ‘good bye’   but the responsibility of love means it is  the most compassionate choice.  Everyone reading this who is interested in the subject should read REDEMPTION. We can do better than kill the numbers that are being killed today  meantime the healthy pets should not have to die for people’s whims and everyone  out there can do one or two things to stop this  and finally tearing me down on TV and lying when this woman has her own person issues is hurting the cause of adopting more pets and saving more lives at the expense of a story full of lies to make K Fox appealing to the gullible public. From experience I have found K Fox isn’t nearly as interested in the truth as they are the sensation of the story.  This is called tabloid journalism.  One never sees such mean spirited journalists as Elizabeth O’Hare of K Fox take on anyone who can do reciprocal damage to the station or her.  She and the management pick on people who have no way to present their side of the story and their intention is to control everything  and everybody.  They function on a hero level.I think they should have checked out the accuser’s credentials first and her history of warrants.  Once before K Fox accused us of not taking back a boxer we’d adopted.  In those days we not only took our own dogs back but other group’s as well if we had any space.  There isn’t a group that didn’t know this.  Because I could not meet with K Fox that day they put on a very disrespectful story that I had cursed out a woman and refused to take back our dog which had been picked up running loose.  They never furnished me with our microchip number so the owner could be located prior to thinking about bringing it back to us.   We do not pick up any dogs, ours or others. Elizabeth O’Hare did everything to besmirch our reputation.  I refused to appear on TV that day as I had missing teeth and did not want to appear on TV I would have done an interview on the phone.  My feeling is other than the tag on the dog’s collar there was no proof that it was adopted by us.  It is a given fact all other groups turn away  their adopted animals if they don’t have room for them  to  take back or the pet has acquired bad habits.  When you buy a car you can’t just take it back.  It seems common place that finders and owners expect an agency to pick up or at least accept back an adopted pet.  While it is a humane gesture people expect services free.  We have done many free but a charity runs on the wheels of donations not on well meaning actions.  Doing good deeds does not assure any charity they will receive any more donations   A collar can be removed from one dog and put on another easily and the dog could have belonged to anyone but whatever it is not a legal responsibility we take an animal back but we feel it is a moral issue and had a sterling reputation for doing this.  When you are watching K Fox and they are slandering some other person, perhaps an elderly person with limited resources like me remember with a twist of fate  and you or your elderly parents could be next.  Perhaps some store owner or vendor.   Before you fall into lock step behind K Fox ask yourself “am I hearing both sides of this story?  Is it possible they are lacking a good lead story that evening and don’t care whose life they ruin to get one.”  Are you ready for one more K Fox coverage?  Last year, in 2009, Tony Flores, brother-in-law to our former benefactor appeared on K Fox.  I was never interviewed to refute anything he said.  His exact words were “Martha got the job because she was so good with animals.”  Lets stop there, a job implies you get paid and I was never paid a cent I totally donated my time, money and effort to save pets. I am also the director of a small nonprofit which deserves the title of position vs job.  To continue he said “she was given free room and board the entire time she was out there.”   Huh?  I never lived there I never stayed the night there, I never was given so much as a hot dog so unless Mr Flores is limited in his knowledge of meaings he is lying about what they did for us. We were given a sum of money monthly to run the organization. Every cent went to that cause which ran well until the benefactor hired an employee out from under us, a very unethical move on her part showing no consideration or respect.   I never had the opportunity in any K Fox coverage to present my side, unable to do it when they demanded  it was omitted entirely.  Is this the type of news you let influence your mind?  If anyone has a question about our organization call me.  We are one of the few who answers their phone live 99% of the time.  We give information for the good of the public helping them place unwanted pets we can’t take as well as  taking in as many as we can handle.  We refer to free websites to advertise. This helps keep the euthanasia count down. We tell people how to get their pet fixed free.  Most organizations do not offer this service.  Since we started in business 25 years ago under a different name we  have adopted 12,000 pets. What has K Fox done to further the adoptions from Animal Services ?  They have their favorite rescue groups and their goals are to destroy whatever they don’t like or approve of even though they do nothing to research facts.  I ran a retail business for 47 years.  If I were a retail merchant I would not advertise with K Fox.  It would only be a matter of time before they would become a victim plus K Fox seeks to destroy the less fortunate, less monied, elderly, the struggling business person.  Look at what they did to the unfortunate owner of the oriental restaurant whose customer claimed she found a mouse in her food.  Later security cameras proved otherwise but the follow up was puny.   How is it with over 4500 people dead from drug wars they are not out there demanding interviews with known drug dealers etc?  Is their courage steming from their power of the media but stops where their involvement could cost them their security?  Other stations here such as KDBC, KTSM, KVIA may have open discussions or cover issues but they also have standards and ethics.  If you are for justice watch the news on those stations.  K Fox is not the same station that appears nationally on Ch 34.

Many people do not realize there has been a separation between city and county control over animals.  Apparently county picks up animals in their area and  takes them to El Paso Animal Control in El Paso.  They are paying a specific fee for this while they use money supplied them by the city of El Paso, around $114000.   If you have a dog that is a problem and live in the county you have to call the sheriff not animal services. This number is 915-546-2280 if it is an emergency which would constitute a bite to a human or mauling etc., 915-538-2210.  In El Paso city limits it is 842-1000 to pick up pets that are unwanted and or stray. If the dog or cat has bitten someone it is absolutely imperative you report this as a bite that draws blood can cause rabies if the pet is not vaccinated.  There is little chance of this as we haven’t had a case of domestic animal rabies in years and years.  In the 80s the county vet decided a calf had rabies and people were lining up to take the shots when Austin said the calf was clean. Who ever heard of a calf biting someone and causing rabies!  As a child I can recall seeing dogs running with rabies, they were rural and probably exposed to skunks, maybe squirrels or other wild animals. If you find a wild animal that does not run from you it is probably very sick.  You should leave it alone and call someone who knows how to handle this.  A wild life agency would be good, one here is Chihuahua Wildlife and phones available at 842-1000 and other agencies.  When you pass Loop 375 going east on Montana you enter the county.  If you live near county lines you should acquaint yourself about bounderies.  At this time in March 10 there is likely no true emergency care in the county but the city does have vet on duty most of the time but the injured pet must have been found in city limits.There is a real need to have numbers published for dead animal pick up, you can’t just toss a deceased pet in the trash.  Depending on where the pet is dead, you would call Tex Dot, or whomever handles that street for other matters, those who know whom to call are El Paso Sanitation Dept and Tex Dot, Animal Control at 842-1000.  If the dog is wearing a collar it is courteous to remove the collar and turn it in at Animal Control so they can notify a worried owner not to look any longer. Before we moved to McCracken address we used to pick up dead animals on Montana as a volunteer service so that children would not see and recall the horror.  Nowadays the pet lays there, a gory mess, for days no matter whom you call.  We no longer have funds to run the truck.