DALTON, Ga. - Ten days after state investigators said his staff did not properly euthanize dogs and cats, Whitfield County's animal shelter director stepped down.
The county commission accepted Don Allen Garrett's retirement after an executive session Monday night. A group of animal safety advocates had been complaining about the shelter's practices for almost a year, and on Aug. 4 investigators with the Georgia Department of Agriculture made a surprise appearance.
County Administrator Mark Gibson said Garrett told him last week that he would retire, though he had been talking about ending his career for months. Officially, his employment runs through Friday. But Commission Chairwoman Lynn Laughter said Garrett will not return to work this week.
On Aug. 4, Gibson said, an investigator with the department showed up at the shelter. He said a "higher up" at the state agency called for the surprise appearance. A spokeswoman for the agriculture department declined to give any specifics about problems found at the shelter, only saying that the investigation is still open. The department will close it after the county's shelter fixes whatever problems actually exist.
Gibson said the investigator found that the staff did not have their training records in the proper order. He did not specify what the proper order was. But in an email to the Times Free Press, he said, "The method of euthanasia [performed] did not match as to the method trained by the [shelter's veterinarian]."
"This is exactly what we needed," Kaye Lipscomb, a former volunteer at the shelter, said after leaving the meeting. "The animals will be so happy."
In 2015-16, according to the shelter's records, Whitfield County's euthanasia rate sat at 47.7 percent. During that same time, Murray and Walker counties had similar rates, while Calhoun, Ga., had a rate of 38 percent and Gordon County had a rate of 14.5 percent.
The Department of Agriculture investigation came months after some former volunteers criticized the shelter, claiming the workers there did not properly care for the animals.
Lipscomb said Garrett was not scanning the new animals for embedded chips, which help staff identify whether a dog or cat is a runaway. The microchips allow staffers to find the animals' owners pretty easily. After Lipscomb began to volunteer there in September 2016, she said she found some animals injured, lying on the floor. The staff should have brought them to a veterinarian, she said.
"I wasn't pleased with how the shelter was being run with my tax dollars," she said Monday.
Rebecca Rood, a photographer who volunteers at some animal shelters, started visiting Whitfield County at the request of some of other advocates. She wanted to take clear, high-quality pictures of the animals, post them on the shelter's Facebook page. People are looking for an excuse to adopt, she said, and her pictures are the perfect nudge.
But after she started volunteering, she noticed the staff put down some of the dogs and cats using an intraperitoneal injection, sticking the deadly needle into the animal's abdomen. Either that, or they used an intracardial injection, putting the needle into the heart. Rood said both methods take longer and feel more painful than finding an animal's vein. (Laughter, for her part, said she watched a euthanasia procedure at the shelter, and the animal was not in pain.)
Rood said she emailed the commissioners and did not get a response.
"I don't think they took anybody seriously," she said.
Lipscomb said the shelter's staff banned the volunteers in May, after some complained on Facebook that the shelter did not properly treat the animals. At the time, she said, the workers had moved the kill rate down to about 5 percent. On Monday, she told the council that the shelter's kill rate in July is up to about 18 percent.
Laughter said she will need to verify those numbers for herself.
Jan Eaton, another former volunteer, complained that she and her friends are blocked from commenting on the shelter's Facebook page.
"I want to know why I'm being blocked," Eaton said.
"We didn't know you were," Laughter said. "So "
"No, no," Eaton said. "That's not the question. The question was: Why was I blocked?"
After the meeting, Laughter said she previously heard complaints about county workers banning Eaton and others from the Facebook page. But she added that Gibson had told them to unblock the group. She had not heard any complaints since.
She added that county employees have blocked other people for inappropriate language - cursing, as well as calling Laughter "trash" and "a liar."
Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at 423-757-6476 or tjett@times freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.