Volunteers Cite Problems at Animal Shelter

County officials are looking to improve conditions at the shelter, which can temporarily house 100 dogs and 50 cats. The county is accepting bids from contractors until Thursday.

Patricia A. Shema, the unsalaried president of the league, said the group is not bidding on the contract largely because her longtime shelter manager has resigned and no other experienced manager is available. The league was formed specifically to run the shelter.

Shema said the county plans to open a $13 million shelter next spring. It would feature updated ventilation systems to segregate air breathed by sick and healthy animals, a dog park and a spay-and-neuter clinic. It could house 300 dogs and 150 cats, officials said.

Shema said her group, which employs about 40 people to run the shelter, is too small to run the larger facility. The retired veterinarian said she helped form the league because she was critical of how the shelter was being run more than a decade ago.

"These problems aren't new," she said.

A 1998 report by the Humane Society of the United States found "a great deal of kennel cough and upper respiratory infections in the shelter." It also deemed the shelter's adoption process lengthy and said this potentially contributed to "far more animals being euthanized than adopted."

Taylor said 2,600 animals were adopted and 6,000 were euthanized at the shelter last year.

"It's extremely frustrating for me to have worked as hard as I have and feel like things are status quo," Shema said.

She praised the efforts of volunteers and rescue workers, saying, "Without them, many, many, many more of these animals would be euthanized."

Still, rescue workers say they sometimes find their efforts thwarted.

Lisa Ordakowski, a volunteer with a Northern Virginia animal rescue group, said she went to the shelter on a Sunday about six weeks ago to evaluate canine rescue candidates. Two days later, she returned for a dog that was chosen for rescue. But she learned that the animal had been euthanized the previous day, Ordakowski said, even though the shelter had paperwork showing that the animal was slated to be rescued.

"The saddest part was the shelter wasn't even completely full that day," Ordakowski said.

Staff researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.