Shelter under fire over more mistakes

SPANISH FORK — Reports of mistaken euthanasia at a Utah County animal shelter exceed what is considered normal and suggest mismanagement, industry officials say.

The South Utah Valley Animal Shelter in Spanish Fork has come under fire in recent weeks after an Orem woman's dog was euthanized April 20 — one day before the legal five-day hold period for a microchipped animal was up.

It was the second report of mistaken euthanasia at the shelter in three months. The first came in February, when a volunteer for an Orem-based rescue group said four dogs she was planning to take and place in homes were euthanized.

"To me, that would be a real red flag," said Merritt Clifton, editor and co-founder of Animal People magazine, which covers animal sheltering issues worldwide.

Clifton said he has twice counted the number of reported mistaken euthanasia cases in the United States, once in 1993 and again in 1998. At the time, there were about 4,500 animal shelters in operation, he said.

In the years prior to 1993, Clifton found that mistaken euthanasia was occurring about 20 times per year nationally. Between 1993 and 1998, it was about 24 per year.

"Most cases of mistaken euthanasia aren't even going to come to light at all," he said. "When they come to light twice in three months, that strikes me as extraordinary."

It's rare for a shelter with a reported mistaken euthanasia case to have a second one, Clifton said.

"Usually, when you have one that gets detected, all hell breaks loose," he said. "Everyone feels terrible about what happened, and it doesn't happen again within the tenure of anybody who remembers the first incident."

Temma Martin, spokeswoman for Salt Lake County Animal Services, says she doesn't know of any cases of mistaken euthanasia of microchipped animals in Salt Lake County in the eight years she has worked there.

"Clearly, our mistakes in the shelter field are life and death mistakes," Martin said. "It's not like you add up numbers wrong and you go back and add them up again. If a shelter makes a mistake, there's no undoing it."

John Paul Fox, chief investigator for the Humane Society of Utah, said mistaken euthanasia in animal shelters is not common but does happen.

"When you're dealing with large numbers of animals, especially those that look the same, sometimes they can be misidentified and the wrong animal (euthanized)," Fox said.