Shelter puts emphasis on training

SPANISH FORK — A dog being held at the South Utah Valley Animal Shelter had been fitted with a microchip, but the identifying device went undetected.

It's the type of mistake that can be fatal for an animal — and devastating for a shelter and its director. Fortunately, new shelter director Mike Morgan said, this story doesn't have a tragic ending.

A scan of the dog when it arrived at the shelter last week failed to read the microchip, Morgan said, but a subsequent scan the next day detected the device and shelter employees were able to contact the owners.

"That shows that our procedures are working," he said.

Morgan, who served as director of the old Utah County animal shelter in Provo in 1997-98 and 2000-03, was hired Aug. 18 to replace Shirley Bybee as director at the Spanish Fork facility.

Bybee was fired June 26 following a series of mistakes by shelter employees that resulted in the unnecessary euthanasia of six dogs. In one of those cases, a microchipped dog was put down before the owner was contacted because the chip was not detected.

Morgan said the shelter can't afford to make such mistakes, so he's made training of staff his top priority.

"We can't euthanize the wrong dog," he said. "We just can't. Nothing can cause us more heat than that."

All animals at the shelter now are scanned between three and five times before they are either adopted out or scheduled for euthanasia, Morgan said.

"By gosh, out of those five times scanning that dog, we ought to find the chip if they have one," he said.

The procedure for multiple scannings for microchips actually was put in place by Bybee following a fatal mistake in April, Morgan said.

"We've tightened up on (the procedures) a little bit, but she was going in the right direction," he said. "Unfortunately for Shirley, even though there were procedures in place, there were some breakdowns in the way those procedures were taken care of by her employees, and she took the heat for that."

Morgan was hired in early June to assist Bybee with training at the shelter and later was appointed as interim director after Bybee was fired.

The longtime employee of the Utah County Sheriff's Office impressed the board of directors of the South Utah Valley Animal Services Special Service District by being able to step into a difficult situation and improve operations at the shelter, said John Borget, Provo's representative on the board, the governing body for the shelter.