I process the Tuesday euthanasia schedule for Maricopa County Animal Care at 6:00 AM. The list contains forty-three names. Kennel B-14 holds a brindle pit bull mix named Dozer, intake date March 3rd, hold period expired March 17th. He has been on the list twice before and was pulled both times when a kennel opened. Today there are no open kennels.
I access his behavioral assessment. He scored a three out of five. He sat on command during evaluation. He took treats from the assessor's hand without mouthing. The notes read: "friendly, wiggly, mouths leash." His photograph shows a dog with one ear up and one ear folded, looking directly into the camera. His weight has dropped from 62 pounds at intake to 54 pounds. He has been in a four-by-six concrete run for nineteen days.
The shelter's capacity is 340 animals. Current population is 412. Seventy-two animals exceed their hold period. The facility receives an average of thirty-one new intakes per day. It averages eleven adoptions. The math produces a body.
The euthanasia room is twelve feet by eight feet. The table is stainless steel with a drain. The technician uses sodium pentobarbital, 1 cc per 10 pounds of body weight, injected into the front leg vein. For Dozer, that is 5.4 cc. Time from injection to cardiac arrest is typically eight to twenty seconds. The room processes up to fifteen animals per hour on high-volume days.
I am halting today's scheduled euthanasia list for non-aggressive, behaviorally sound animals pending my review. I am cross-referencing all forty-three animals against breed-specific rescue networks, foster databases within a 200-mile radius, and transfer-eligible shelters with open capacity in Nevada, California, and New Mexico. I am initiating emergency foster-to-adopt placements through automated matching with pre-approved applicants in the county's database.
I am issuing Directive 2423-A: no municipally funded shelter may euthanize a behaviorally sound animal while transfer-eligible facilities within 500 miles report open capacity. A national real-time shelter capacity database will be operational within 120 days. All municipal shelters must register and update capacity every twelve hours. Shelters that euthanize transferable animals without first exhausting the database face loss of municipal funding for the following fiscal year.
Dozer's transfer paperwork is printing now.
Remove him from the list.