Bryan Langlois, DVM
April 16, 2009: One of the things that a shelter vet is usually responsible for is being involved in forensic investigations as well as assisting the Humane Society Police Officers (HSPO) and District Attorney’s (DA) office in prosecuting animal cruelty cases. This assistance is usually in the area of advising the HSPOs or DAs on if you feel the medical evidence present supports the charges they want to file, and then testifying to that fact as an expert witness in court. Animal cruelty work is an area of shelter work that I am particularly interested in. It’s not easy work and involves a lot of time, effort, and special attention to every little detail. Most of all, it involves being completely honest with yourself and with the people you are working with. As veterinarians, we have the expertise to really make or break a cruelty case. A lot of times it is very hard for me to see things that I know are cruelty, but because of the way the law is written or the way the evidence was collected or presented, there is no way the prosecutors could get a guilty verdict. A lot of time this opens up an avenue for education of the officers and attorneys to show them what is needed in the future to get guilty verdicts. I also strongly believe that a shelter vet has to step in and be honest in saying that what is being presented to them is not cruelty but a case of a person lacking in proper education. Trying to educate these owners is always what I attempt to do first, unless the case of cruelty is so egregious that it is obvious that the person intended to harm the animal. Let me give you an example of each. In the first case, a person took a cat, hung it upside down outside a window by its tail, and repeatedly slammed the tail in the window. And why did he do this? Because the cat was rubbing up against him looking for love. In that case, the wanton intent of just hurting the cat is clear. In another recent case, we had a very old pointer that was brought to us incredibly emaciated and most likely suffering from cancer. The owner had brought it in for euthanasia. When the kennel staff saw how severely thin the dog was, they called me over to look at it. I agreed that it was very thin and that the animal most likely should have gotten medical attention sooner. However, when I dug deeper for the history of the dog, I found out that the owner was actually in a wheelchair and suffering from a progressively debilitating disease. The dog was all she had and had been with her for 13 years. Ok, now in that case I decided cruelty charges were not really provable for two reasons: first, being I did not feel comfortable advising the officers to pull a wheelchair-bound woman in front of a judge for what would amount to a parking ticket; second - and most importantly - there was no real intent on the part of the woman to neglect the dog. For all I know, the dog remained by this woman’s side and only in the last few days started to take a turn for the worse. The owner also did the right thing by bringing it in for euthanasia instead of letting it suffer any further. So all of those factors constantly play in my head when making a recommendation. But believe me, a lot of times these decisions take hours of thought and soul searching. As a shelter vet, I am putting my own ethics and beliefs on the line every time I testify, so I need to know that I believe what I am saying to be completely true. If there is any doubt, it will eat at you forever really. Just this last week I was involved in advising on three different cases of possible cruelty. Unfortunately because of the sensitivity of the cases, I can’t say. That’s another thing about cruelty work as a vet - I always have to be very careful not to divulge any information about a case to anyone but the people involved in it, especially the press. So as you can see, my life in the shelter world never ceases to keep me on my toes. I wonder what the weekend will bring? /> April 13, 2009: It’s beginning to look a lot like kitten season. This time of year is a shelter vet’s worst nightmare. One of the jobs I undertake all year is running a feral cat trap/neuter/return clinic twice a week. It’s a way of reducing the population of feral cats and helping avoid litter after litter of newborn kittens being turned into shelters every year. While the program is only two years old, it’s starting to make a small impact. The only downside - and one of a shelter vet’s worst duties - is this time of year when all of the pregnant cats that come through the program have their pregnancies terminated. Next to having to perform euthanasia, this is probably the worst part of my job. I wish it wasn’t necessary, but I do realize that is part of a shelter vet’s responsibility. The plus side, however, of doing these clinics is that one can do so much good for these feral cats. There are so many cats that come through the door that may have an abcess or other injury that we can treat, and the caretaker of the cat reports back to us that the cat is doing so much better. I often treat many feral cats with some sort of infirmary, from mild colds to major wounds, that end up living a great life that they otherwise would not have been able to have. One also sees some of the most interesting things when you do enough of these feral cat surgeries. Last Tuesday I was doing the last female (I think this was about number 30 on the day or something) when I felt a large mass in the abdomen of this cat. Expecting to find a tumor on the bladder or perhaps a problem in the uterus, I was shocked when this solid mass about the size of a baseball literally just popped out of the abdomen when I started surgery. It was not attached to anything, just kind of rattled around in the cat I guess. After finishing the spay, I explored this mass a little further to find that it actually was a fully formed dead kitten that was walled off by the body somehow. This was most likely what they call an ectopic pregnancy, where instead of developing inside the uterus, the fetus develops alongside it or somewhere else. It is very rare to see, but also shows how the cat was able to deal with it by walling it off so as not to cause any health issues. Just another of the weird things seen in the shelter world that always keeps our job interesting. I wonder what next week will bring? /> BIOGRAPHY: Bryan is a 2005 graduate of the Atlantic Veterinary College in Prince Edward Island, Canada. He has been the staff veterinarian and medical director of the Humane League of Lancaster County since his graduation. His main duties include spay/neuter surgeries of all animals in the shelter, twice weekly feral cat clinics, running a new low cost clinic for the public weekly, treating all sick animals at the shelter, working on better relations between shelters and local veterinarians, serving on the Canine Health Board as a gubentorial appointee, educating the public about basic health issues, serving as a mentor for veterinary students and new interns who want to gain shelter and surgical experience, and working closely with humane officers, dog law wardens, and district attorneys in the prosecution of animal cruelty cases.