Dog rescuer to be sentenced for animal neglect – who is to blame? (opinion) by Katerina Lorenzatos Makris
To the jury of 12 who convicted Alice Via last week on five misdemeanor counts related to failure to obtain a kennel license and failure to care for animals, the 62-year-old Lakeside, California woman is a criminal who deserves to answer to the law.
To many in the San Diego-area animal welfare community, Alice Via is a heroic, hardworking former junior high teacher whose only mistake was trying to help too many dogs, and who has been victimized by injustice.
To a reporter who has been following the case closely, the matter is troubling from every angle.
After 17 years of fostering and re-homing some 1,500 dogs with her group of volunteers—239 of those animals at county shelter workers’ request—Via faces sentencing tomorrow with a maximum of 2.5 years of incarceration, plus restitution fees of more than $100,000 to reimburse the county for its expenses in the long-term care of the 62 dogs confiscated from her two-bedroom home a year ago.
One of deaf dogs Alice Via rescued Photo: Boxer Rescue San Diego
Unfair prosecution or justified animal protection?
The prosecution of Alice Via has shocked many fellow animal rescuers who condemn what they see as a puzzling, draconian, and counterproductive campaign by an animal control department that frequently asked her to take in problematic dogs.
County animal control officials maintain that Via could have and should have simply said “no” on any of the occasions when they called, that she was solely responsible to provide proper care for the 62 dogs found in her home-based Boxer Rescue San Diego on the day of the raid, that she should not have had more than the legal limit of six, and that county shelter workers’ duties do not include asking private rescue groups questions about their facilities or conducting inspections of them before requesting that they take in the shelters’ surplus animals.
One of the charges against Via involved a puppy found on the day of her arrest with dried feces in his fur and claws. Another charge focused on a Chihuahua with chronic demodectic mange for which the county’s veterinarian deemed Via’s treatment methods to be inadequate. A third centered on a boxer alleged to have symptoms of incipient bordatella, or kennel cough.
Other private rescue groups are re-examining their own facilities and methods, wondering if they'll be next, and worrying that this case will spook folks away from rescue work.
Disconnect between policy and reality
In the bigger picture, the case is emblematic of the desperation of millions of unwanted dogs and those who try to help them.
It seems there’s a tragic disconnect between laws and shelter policies on one side, and on the other side the daily suffering endured by these animals, and the heartbreak and exhaustion on the part of their rescuers, be they private citizens or dedicated shelter employees.
Given the controversy over Oreo’s Law, as well as New York’s recently-introduced shelter access bill—both of which would require shelters to attempt to “exit” even aggressive animals to rescue groups rather than euthanize them—the conviction of Alice Via is a valuable albeit worrisome case study.
And to some observers, the real culprit in the Via case is the tsunami of unwanted animals slamming through our communities, creating both public and private disasters.
Questions
What are policymakers doing to address this crisis?
What role do breeders and powerful lobbies like the American Kennel Club (AKC) play? Most of the dogs in the Via case were purebred boxers and Chihuahuas.
Why aren’t puppy mill operators and irresponsible breeders regulated by more stringent laws or prohibited altogether?
Year after year their factories churn out untold millions of animals and rake in substantial, often untaxed profits. Some of their “products” ended up unwanted and diseased—afflicted by genetically-predisposed chronic mange, blindness, and deafness—as the responsibility of Alice Via.
Why doesn’t every American community offer free or nominally-priced, easily-accessible spay/neuter services and pet care education? Wouldn’t that be less expensive—at least in the long run—than the price we’re paying now?
Why, in California and most other states, is there no law to guide public shelters in proper methods of releasing animals to private rescue groups? Such a law, like the new shelter access bill recently introduced in New York, might have helped save taxpayers the expense of prosecuting Alice Via and kenneling her 62 dogs at county shelters for several months. (Five of those animals remained in a county shelter as of last week, amounting to one year of custody in county kennels, according to a shelter spokesman.)
Is the system fair to the tens of thousands of private rescuers around the nation who sacrifice time, money, and, as in the Via case, risk reputations and even prosecution trying to take up the slack left by overwhelmed public shelters?
Why is there so little public guidance, support, or even acknowledgment of those private rescue groups? Such assistance might also have helped prevent the expensive prosecution of Alice Via.
Would less finger-pointing and more cooperation between all of these various players create viable solutions? Condemned to the harshest sentence
Regardless of Alice Via’s guilt or innocence, what will remain after her sentencing are the millions of dogs in public animal shelters, as well as countless more abandoned on the streets or forgotten in backyards—most of them entirely innocent of any crime to warrant the sentences that every day of every year too many of them will ultimately receive—sentences of hunger, of illness, of injury, of fear, of loneliness, and at the end of their own long and torturous trials, of death. Read more articles about the case of Alice Via.
