MAS is widely considered the worst shelter in America, although there are plenty of contenders to that title. Click here if you want your day ruined. There have been promises of reform, steps taken, and little tangible improvement in Memphis. The webcams that were installed in the shelter were supposed to show the public that MAS staff were doing a good job, treating the animals well, and that things were getting better. Unfortunately they merely revealed more abuse, more substandard care, and in the end, city employees filed a grievance, stating that the cameras made them feel unsafe. That's right, the city employees were afraid that they might face retribution for their animal abuse caught on video, and their solution was not to stop abusing the animals, but rather, to remove the cameras. The city agreed with them.

Luckily for this dog, the cameras were still running when she was being dragged across the floor, unable to breathe and urinating on herself. When people saw the footage, they began calling the shelter to find out what was going on, and were told that she was a feral dog, and the catch pole was the only option for safely handling her. There was some initial interest in adopting the dog, but it was determined fairly quickly that she would need more specialized care. By the time I became involved, there had already been considerable negotiation with shelter management to get the dog, named 'Mari' by her advocates, released. When other offers fell through, I agreed to take Mari.

Shelter administrators played a game very familiar to me - a lame PR tactic in which they agree to let a dog go, but place an arbitrary deadline on the transfer that they know I can't meet. This way, they can say they agreed to give me the dog, but I never showed up. Pretty clever, albeit transparent; I wasn't given enough time to fly to Memphis, much less drive. Their original deadline only gave me a three-hour window, which isn't even enough time for me to drive to the airport.

With the help of rescuers around the country, I tried to find someone in Memphis to go get the dog, but this proved difficult, and my Facebook appeal backfired. No one would give the poor dog a ride, but they were calling the shelter, which no one had asked anyone to do. The sudden pressure from people who had nothing to do with the case resulted in the city attorneys getting involved. It got Mari a stay of execution, but as it turned out, it didn't change the situation. The next day, we found ourselves with a new, equally unrealistic deadline.

Fortunately, Mari's advocates were able to negotiate an extra day this time, and I arranged for her to go to our friends at Animal Rescue New Orleans, where she could be evaluated by people who actually know something about feral dogs. A couple of Memphis volunteers even came forward to transport her. Things were looking up. I knew there would be problems, but I mostly kept that to myself, so as not to scare the volunteers away.

The next day our drivers arrived at MAS, where they were made to wait two hours, face interrogation, and sign numerous forms before being told that they could take Mari, but that no one from the shelter would help them get her out of the kennel. Due to the bizarre layout of the shelter, the volunteers couldn't even fit a trap into the kennel, so the only way to get the dog out was going to be with a catch pole. Having no experience in this area, our volunteers were afraid. They started calling others to help, and a former animal control officer came to the rescue, or so we thought. He ended up refusing to catch the dog, too, citing an inability to guarantee her safety or his own. He later sneaked away and turned his phone off so no one could beg him to come back and help.

After making countless phone calls and appeals to rescuers and veterinarians, and after begging shelter staff and being denied, citing a 'mandate from above' barring any of them from assisting, we found ourselves in a difficult position, with only about an hour remaining to get the dog out of the shelter before it closed for the night. I was told that shelter staff would kill the dog if she wasn't removed by closing time, claiming that she had a respiratory infection that she would pass to the other dogs. Knowing that she had been in the shelter for over two weeks and had either contracted the infection from other shelter dogs or had it already and had been exposing the other dogs the entire time, I considered this unreasonable. Shelter staff were willing to use a catch pole to take the dog to be killed, but not to place her in a carrier so that she could live, which would have been easier and saved them money.

What was going on in Memphis? In cases like this, I expect problems from shelter staff, but where were the experienced rescuers? Had this been Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, or any of scores of other cities we'd have had the dog out the first day, but Memphis was different somehow. As one rescuer put it, "they like to hold candlelight vigils and pray, but when it comes to hands-on rescue, they don't want to get involved." I don't want to believe that, but it certainly seemed true that day. That is, until, in the eleventh hour, a local rescuer who had been following the story online got tired of all the nonsense, got in her car, drove to the shelter, and put the dog into the trap for transport.

I like to imagine that she walked in and did the job without saying a word to anyone, and left in the same manner. I know it didn't go that way, but it makes for a better story.

The volunteers got on the road with the dog, all parties quite happy to be out of MAS, and Charlotte and Lise from ARNO met them in Jackson, MS to take her the rest of the way. And by the way - Mari was a boy. The staff at MAS were so careless that they hadn't even gotten the dog's gender right, after housing him for weeks.

The story didn't end there, though, because whenever a shelter, city, or agency goes out of its way to make you fail and you succeed in spite of it, and especially if you make them look bad in the process, for example, pointing out that they failed to correctly ascertain a dog's gender, they have to attack you. So attack they did. They attacked us for taking the dog to ARNO instead of bringing him directly to OAS, claiming they would have to change their policy as a result of this deception on our part. They attacked us for not having a veterinary health certificate for him before transporting him. They attacked us for putting so much time, effort, and money into saving one, feral dog, when MAS is slaughtering adoptable animals at an appalling rate. The local paper didn't bother to talk to me before publishing their skewed version of events, and the public chimed in, even citing stories of my exploits and illegal activities that they had invented themselves to support their accusations. They complained that we didn't pay an adoption fee - that MAS had spent money 'fully vetting' the dog, and we should have been responsible for that expense. They said we broke the law by taking the dog across state lines without a health certificate. They called us liars. One person called me an anarchist - me, Steve Markwell, who just testified in Olympia last week, sits on two legislative advisory committees, and works directly with nearly every law enforcement agency in Clallam County, as well as others around the country. I chose not to respond to minor league journalists and the sad little people tapping away at their keyboards. I decided they could all go to hell. But if I had responded, I would have said this:

1. Transfers of animals between shelters, rescues, and sanctuaries are routine, and one organization fostering or housing animals for another is absolutely standard in this field. We don't charge each other adoption fees or boarding fees. There is nothing scandalous about sending this dog to ARNO, or that we didn't give MAS any money for the dog.
2. We never stated that this dog would be coming directly to Washington from Tennessee. It takes time to arrange transport, and MAS wasn't giving us any.
3. We did not obtain a veterinary health certificate for this dog because: a) thanks to MAS's unprofessional and obstructionist conduct, we did not have time; b) MAS's staff veterinarian refused to help; c) contrary to the statements being made by some, it WAS NOT required by law; d) to attempt an examination of a feral dog under those conditions would have been a waste of time, as well as risky to the dog and anyone trying to handle him.
4. MAS did not "fully vet" the dog; they did sedate him, give him a rabies vaccine, and administer a heartworm test, but they did not address his respiratory infection, and in fact misidentified him as female. I am at a total loss as to how a large, fully sedated, short-haired dog's gender could be mistaken after what was supposedly a thorough veterinary examination, so we must assume that the exam was conducted with the utmost lack of care or concern.
5. I understand that MAS kills many adoptable animals, and some people are upset that so much time and effort was spent to save one dog that may not be adoptable. The truth is that it would not have taken so much effort if MAS followed standard operating protocols and had good, working relationships with rescue groups. Additionally, because I specialize in feral dogs, of course a feral dog was the one I offered to take from the shelter - this doesn't make MAS's killing of adoptable animals my fault. MAS has the power to change their situation through proven effective management and operational protocols that include a large-scale spay/neuter effort that will ultimately save the city money, and reaching out to rescues, sanctuaries, and other entities for help. That they chose not to take this course of action is not my fault. And finally, animal control officers chose to trap this feral dog and impound him at the shelter in spite of being grossly behind in their duties elsewhere; my understanding was that they had over 700 calls they still had not responded to, and yet they had time to trap a feral dog. Trapping this, one dog had a negligible effect on the community, but incurred a significant cost to MAS and to the city that they had no reasonable expectation to recover.
6. Eat shit.

But I didn't say any of that. Instead, I let them stew in their willful ignorance and brazen stupidity. Mari was renamed Mario, and he settled in at ARNO, where he gets along great with other dogs, but not so well with people. He has made progress, but his attempts to bite make him somewhat atypical of feral dogs, and a poor prospect for eventual adoption. Based on ARNO's assessment, not MAS's, Mario will be coming to live with us in Washington, and I can bring him here with the confidence that this is truly his best option - something I could not have done with only MAS's 'professional' assessment of him.

Mario's journey isn't over, and you can help him with the next step. Click here to make a donation for Mario's transport to Washington and his ongoing care.