It's demanding, challenging, heart-wrenching work, a job nobody really wants. Only someone who cares enough can do it. For nearly 12 years, from 1988 until 2000, the someone was Sylvia Shafer, retired director of the Kanawha-Charleston Animal Shelter.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - It's demanding, challenging, heart-wrenching work, a job nobody really wants. Only someone who cares enough can do it. For nearly 12 years, from 1988 until 2000, the someone was Sylvia Shafer, retired director of the Kanawha-Charleston Animal Shelter.
With the tenacity of a pit bull, the zeal of a beagle puppy and a heart as big as a St. Bernard, she reformed shoddy shelter practices and lobbied tirelessly for animal welfare laws. She pushed for spaying and neutering, the prosecution of animal cruelty cases and a ban on selling shelter animals for research, for starters.
Even eight years into retirement, the constant influx of pets at the shelter disturbs her. The life-or-death decisions she had to make as director still hurt her. Winsome, beseeching faces of the caged pets she passed on daily rounds still haunt her.
How can she stop trying to help? At 75, she remains a busy animal rights activist and serves as treasurer of the Kanawha-Charleston Humane Association.
This year, the Legislature honored her efforts to protect pets and other animals.
"I was born in Hinton. We moved to St. Albans when I was about 18 months old. My sister and I both got polio. I was quarantined a month and my sister was quarantined two months.
"My parents separated and my mother went back to Hinton. Daddy stayed in St. Albans. He worked in projection room at the Alban Theater.
"My arm was paralyzed. It took two years of my mother doing physical therapy, but it's fine now. My sister had the type that was respiratory. She wasn't paralyzed at all but was more dangerously ill than I was.
"Due to that, we lost a cat named Jumbo and a dog named Cutie. We couldn't take them back to Hinton and had to find them homes. That left a lasting impression. I loved them. I've always loved animals.
"Having polio and wearing a brace was a tough adjustment because Summers County didn't have polio, and they certainly didn't want me there. It was like it was a shame. I didn't have any animals, and I couldn't play with kids. It was a sad childhood.
"My parents went back together, and we came to Charleston. It was World War II and Daddy went to work at DuPont. When I was about 12, we purchased a cocker spaniel mix from a neighbor for $10. From that age on, I had animals. I've always wanted to help them.
"My parents couldn't afford to send me to college. I took business classes at Charleston High School and went to work for the telephone company.
"In 1983, I joined a group called Kanawha Action for Animals. There was a lot of pet-napping. It was formed to educate people on how to keep from losing their pets and how to find them if they did lose them.
"They were trying to do legislation on what is now called pound seizure. It means that animal shelters can't sell pets to
research. It took about seven years for it to pass. We were one of the first states to have it.
"WVU had a research lab, and they still do. The year before it passed, they came out in big numbers to fight us. WVU had a bill that said no animal shelter could put anything to sleep or do anything with it until they had first choice. It was astonishing. That was my first involvement with legislation.
"In 1984, the shelter board had a vacancy. Because of my work with Kanawha Action for Animals, I was voted to join. I thought I couldn't do it because I didn't want to look at the animals. But I found that if you are going to be a board member, you really should look at the animals and know what you are talking about.
"I started volunteering, and I picked up on things I wasn't satisfied with, like their recordkeeping and their disrespect for cats. And they weren't as humane as they should be. I won't go into the gory stuff. The first weekend I volunteered, I came home and cried and cried.
"I grew up in accounting in the controller's department where you dotted every i and crossed every t. I became a detail person. They certainly didn't do detail up here. They do now.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - It's demanding, challenging, heart-wrenching work, a job nobody really wants. Only someone who cares enough can do it. For nearly 12 years, from 1988 until 2000, the someone was Sylvia Shafer, retired director of the Kanawha-Charleston Animal Shelter.
With the tenacity of a pit bull, the zeal of a beagle puppy and a heart as big as a St. Bernard, she reformed shoddy shelter practices and lobbied tirelessly for animal welfare laws. She pushed for spaying and neutering, the prosecution of animal cruelty cases and a ban on selling shelter animals for research, for starters.
Even eight years into retirement, the constant influx of pets at the shelter disturbs her. The life-or-death decisions she had to make as director still hurt her. Winsome, beseeching faces of the caged pets she passed on daily rounds still haunt her.
How can she stop trying to help? At 75, she remains a busy animal rights activist and serves as treasurer of the Kanawha-Charleston Humane Association.
This year, the Legislature honored her efforts to protect pets and other animals.
"I was born in Hinton. We moved to St. Albans when I was about 18 months old. My sister and I both got polio. I was quarantined a month and my sister was quarantined two months.
"My parents separated and my mother went back to Hinton. Daddy stayed in St. Albans. He worked in projection room at the Alban Theater.
"My arm was paralyzed. It took two years of my mother doing physical therapy, but it's fine now. My sister had the type that was respiratory. She wasn't paralyzed at all but was more dangerously ill than I was.
"Due to that, we lost a cat named Jumbo and a dog named Cutie. We couldn't take them back to Hinton and had to find them homes. That left a lasting impression. I loved them. I've always loved animals.
"Having polio and wearing a brace was a tough adjustment because Summers County didn't have polio, and they certainly didn't want me there. It was like it was a shame. I didn't have any animals, and I couldn't play with kids. It was a sad childhood.
"My parents went back together, and we came to Charleston. It was World War II and Daddy went to work at DuPont. When I was about 12, we purchased a cocker spaniel mix from a neighbor for $10. From that age on, I had animals. I've always wanted to help them.
"My parents couldn't afford to send me to college. I took business classes at Charleston High School and went to work for the telephone company.
"In 1983, I joined a group called Kanawha Action for Animals. There was a lot of pet-napping. It was formed to educate people on how to keep from losing their pets and how to find them if they did lose them.
"They were trying to do legislation on what is now called pound seizure. It means that animal shelters can't sell pets to
research. It took about seven years for it to pass. We were one of the first states to have it.
"WVU had a research lab, and they still do. The year before it passed, they came out in big numbers to fight us. WVU had a bill that said no animal shelter could put anything to sleep or do anything with it until they had first choice. It was astonishing. That was my first involvement with legislation.
"In 1984, the shelter board had a vacancy. Because of my work with Kanawha Action for Animals, I was voted to join. I thought I couldn't do it because I didn't want to look at the animals. But I found that if you are going to be a board member, you really should look at the animals and know what you are talking about.
"I started volunteering, and I picked up on things I wasn't satisfied with, like their recordkeeping and their disrespect for cats. And they weren't as humane as they should be. I won't go into the gory stuff. The first weekend I volunteered, I came home and cried and cried.
"I grew up in accounting in the controller's department where you dotted every i and crossed every t. I became a detail person. They certainly didn't do detail up here. They do now.
"I started dropping in after I got off at the phone company. By the next July, I was board president. Ken Pauley, the director, got rheumatoid arthritis in 1988 and gave his resignation. I was sort of railroaded into taking the job.
"When I took the job, I asked a County Commission intern to copy every state law pertaining to animals, and I studied so I would know what the law actually is.
"One of the things I didn't like was, no matter how cruel a person was, they didn't get prosecuted. They got the animal back. My first cruelty case is what started me on path to legislation. It was a horse case. When the woman came after her horses even though we had won, I told her I was going to change the law. I have turned the cruelty code upside down in this state, with the Legislature's help.
"Nobody would want this job. It doesn't pay that much. And you are on call 24 / 7. You go home with a beeper. I was on the road a lot. I wanted to make sure that the cases were handled correctly, that evidence was gathered correctly.
"Jack Buckalew was State Police superintendent. He arranged for a class on the laws and the judicial system and how to present a case. I will be eternally grateful to him. I didn't know anything about the judicial system or anything about the Legislature either. This job was an education.
"I'm still very involved with legislation. I could live to be 150 and maybe get all the laws the way I'd like to see them.
"The final authority for the board on what is euthanized and what stays is up to the director. When I left, I said I would never walk these aisles again and look an animal in the eye. I did that every day for 12 years.
"We have to make room for new ones, but it's heartbreaking. We consider things like how long the animal has been here and its color. Black is the most adoptable. The easier ones are the sick, the extremely elderly or the vicious.
"At first, the ones I got so attached to and couldn't find a home for, I just took them home. I got up to six dogs before I realized I had to stop. All six stayed with me until they died. Every time I lose one, I say I'm not going to get another one because of my age, but I lost one a year ago in May, and by the end of that month, I was up here adopting a dog. I have three.
"This job needs an animal lover, but they are the ones who hurt the most. I was a chain smoker until two years ago, because of the stress. If you don't really care, you aren't going to push for improvements.
"This shelter had a policy that spay-neuter had to be done by the time the pet was 6 months old. It came around that we could do early spay-neuter, and I pushed that. No animal can leave here unless it's spayed or neutered, even if it's 6 weeks old.
"It's disturbing to me when I come back up here. Nothing ever changes. The main thing is the people turning in the animals. We could have a shelter the size of Kanawha Airport and it would fill up. There ought to be a way to force spay-neuter, but you are treading on people's rights.
"I've learned a lot about people. You get lied to so much that you become skeptical. The main thing they lie about is whether a dog or cat they're bringing in is theirs. I'm guessing 50 percent of our strays aren't strays.
"This one guy was telling us how much he loved to hunt, how he was in the woods and found these dogs and gave up his hunting trip just to turn in the dogs. We were telling him how grateful we were. A few days later, a couple came in and said, 'What are you doing with my neighbor's dogs?' Their neighbor was the hunter. It sours you on human nature.
"I had a lot of stress in my life when I retired. I had just had major eye surgery and lost the sight in my left eye, and my mother had Alzheimer's. I was 67 and decided it was time.
"When I retired, I left board for one year, and they asked me to come back. I'm still on the board. I'm the treasurer. I plan to stay active as long as I can.
"I'm still lobbying for better laws for animals. One of the biggies is going to be a state law limiting the number of dogs. We'd also like to increase the license fee. It's only $3, and it's been that way since 1951. We get 90 percent of that $3.
"And we'd like to outlaw the gas chamber and require euthanasia by injection. Many shelters still have obsolete homemade gas chambers.
"As long as I'm able, I won't quit. There is too much to be done."
Reach Sandy Wells at 348-5173 or e-mail san...@wvgazette.com.
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Would this be similar to the limit law in Charleston Wv, where you are only allowed to have 4 pets and only 2 are allowed to be dogs?
And then this woman boo hoos about the number of animals that shelters have to kill? She wants to make it harder for responsible owners to have a pet?
And as far as her sob story about the hunter, how does she know that the neighbor was telling her the truth? could be that a neighbor wanted to make someone look bad
OR could it be that the shelters make owners feel so much like trash when they take an animal in, that people feel that they must lie?
Yep, Miss Sylvia and WVFOHO (the WV version of HSUS) there is a lot more to the story!
about, the citizens of WV or how they look to groups with large amounts of $$$. I love all living things and believe we should honor Gods gifts and treat all of them as we would be treated however, the citizens of WV need our legislators to act on our behalf which at this point does not include more laws, especially about kennels.
WV has one of the highest cancer rates in the country, what are we doing about this?
WV has one of the highest autism rates in the country, what are we doing about this?
WV has the poorest economy in the country, what are we doing about this?
WV has the most polluted cities in the country, what are we doing about this?
What are our legislators DOING to help West Virginia? Anything?
We do NOT need anymore animal laws.
Here are some of the differences:
As animal welfare advocates. . .
• We seek to improve the treatment and well-being of animals.
• We support the humane treatment of animals that ensures comfort and freedom from unnecessary pain and suffering.
• We believe we have the right to "own" animals -- they are our property.
• We believe animal owners should provide loving care for the lifetime of their animals.
As animal rights activists. . .
• They seek to end the use and ownership of animals, including the keeping of pets.
• They believe that any use of an animal is exploitation so, not only must we stop using animals for food and clothing, but pet ownership must be outlawed as well.
• They want to obtain legal rights for animals as they believe that animals and humans are equal.
• They use false and unsubstantiated allegations of animal abuse to raise funds, attract media attention and bring supporters into the movement. (The Inhumane Crusade,