Veterinarians at Flathead County Animal shelter invested in animal care

Leslie Haug opens up a kennel as she scoops up a black and white cat.

The feline nestles comfortably into her arms, eating up the attention.

“How are you still here?” Haug asks the cat, resting in a cage at the Flathead County Animal Shelter.

Veterinarian Meg Gordon and veterinary technician Leslie Haug moved to Bigfork from Washington almost a year ago, and have become an integral part of the Flathead County Animal Shelter.

Though they both hail from Washington, they came from different parts of the state and for different reasons.

Gordon moved from the Olympic peninsula and Haug from the Tri-Cities.

For Gordon the move was largely for her husband, a Montana native who missed the Treasure State. Haug was following family in a leap of faith. Her father-in-law is the pastor at Crossroads Christian Fellowship in Bigfork.

Both ended up finding employment with the Animal Clinic of Kalispell, which had just gone through a bid process and signed a contract with the county to provide veterinary services to the animal shelter. As the newest employees, Gordon and Haug became the shelter veterinarian and veterinary technician. They spend two days a week working at the animal shelter on Cemetery Drive in Kalispell. Though neither had expected to be doing shelter work, they took on the job with enthusiasm.

Shelter director Cliff Bennett said when the contract was signed with the Animal Clinic of Kalispell, he didn’t really know what to expect with the new veterinarian.

“I didn’t know how good it was going to be,” he said.

The previous veterinarian had been with the shelter for years, and was a good at her job, Bennett said, but “her heart wasn’t in it like Meg’s is, she’s embraced being a shelter vet.”

Much of the shelter veterinary work revolves around spays and neuters, and maintaining the overall general health of the animals.

When Gordon came in she looked at the bigger picture, and saw what changes she could help the shelter make to improve. Her goal is getting the animals in and out of the shelter as quickly as possible and as healthy as possible.

She has spent time working with the staff, teaching them how to recognize diseases, reactions to vaccinations, how to deal with common animal heath problems, and how to prevent the spread of illness.

“I sort of look at it as the bigger picture,” she said, “Some really basic things can make a huge difference in an animal’s life” Gordon said. Gordon wants the staff to be able to deal with health problems when she isn’t there, so the animal doesn’t have to wait for treatment.

She has helped the staff adjust their protocol and the order in which they do things to make the shelter more efficient. She has worked to help prevent any diseases spreading through the shelter.

“When somebody has an idea of how to do something better, we give it a shot,” Bennett said.

Gordon is also a proponent of preventive care, and has brought that practice to the shelter. If an animal comes in that is overweight, they’ll put it on a diet.

When they started at the shelter a respiratory disease broke out that spread through the shelter, and was hard to contain. Since then, the shelter has undergone a remodel that makes it easier to quarantine a sick animal.

“It’s easier to keep animals healthy than to fix them,” she said.

This approach also ends up saving costs, which is a further benefit to the shelter.

“That’s been a real God send,” Bennett said.

When the shelter is able to come in under budget they are able to ask the county for necessities like building expansions.

The shelter is working to expand the portion of the facility that houses cats. Bennett said cats often spend much longer in the shelter than dogs, and the return-to-owner rate on cats is much lower than it is on dogs.

On average a dog will  stay in the shelter for 14 days before it’s either returned to it’s owner, adopted or transfer to another rescue. The average stay for cats is 30 days. As a result the shelter can’t take in as many cats.

The expansion won’t necessarily create room for more cats, but it will create a better viewing area, which Bennett hopes will lead to faster adoptions and shorten the average stay, opening up room at a more rapid rate.

“We’re not going to kill a cat to make room,” Bennett said.

The shelter’s euthanasia rate has been under 10 percent for the last four years. Animals are killed if they are ill and not experiencing a good quality of life. Or, the shelter with euthanize an animal on the rare occasion when there is a dangerous animal that the shelter want to let into the public.

A pet being returned to its owner is the shelter’s ideal situation.

Last year, 940 of the 1,269 dogs that came through the shelter were seized animals or were strays. Of those, 575 were reunited with their owners.

The shelter puts a lot of effort into finding owners, checking microchips and posting photos on their website as soon as animals come in. Gordon said many times an animal will have a microchip, but the information won’t be current.

She and Haug see a lot of cats and dogs that are clearly someone’s pet, but they have no way of finding the owner.

The shelter will hold a pet for three business days before the animal becomes county property. After that, if no one has claimed the animal it will be spayed or neutered if needed, and put up for adoption.

“We can’t let any animals out of here that aren’t fixed,” Bennett said.

The most common health problem they see is obesity and dental disease.

The shelter doesn’t provide veterinary services to the public. Bennett said there are plenty of great veterinarians in the valley that pet owners can utilize. The time Gordon and Haug spend and the shelter is limited and focused on the animals at the shelter.

“I like that we are doing a lot of good for a lot of animals and getting them to great places,” Gordon said. “I guess I didn’t expect to like it as much as I do. I think I had a distorted vision of what it was going to be like.”

She had the perception of shelters as places where healthy animals were often euthanized — a perception she thinks many people share.

“People have a vision that we put everything down at the drop of a hat. But that’s not true at all.

“I do get to know a lot of the animals, even though they are only there for a while.”

As Gordon and Haug go through the shelter in the morning, they greet animals they’ve bonded with. They love seeing these animals find good homes and the excitement is visible when they learn an animal has been adopted.

Gordon has practiced for five years.

She formerly worked as a geochemist studying climate change. A friend made a comment saying if all she ever wanted to do was hang out with her dog, she should be a veterinarian. Gordon changed careers.

“I do like what I do a lot,” she said, “There are hard days and there are sad days, but I still love what I do.”