Unless improvements are made, state Sen. Bill Stanley said he will work to shut down the Danville Area Humane Society, which has come under fire for euthanizing a beloved dog named Eve. The shelter has for years had one of the highest euthanasia rates in the state.
Stanley, R-Franklin County, is an animal lover who has introduced a number of animal welfare bills during his 15 years in the General Assembly. He was also instrumental in the 2022 closing of Envigo RMS, a beagle breeding facility in Cumberland that had a high mortality rate and was accused of animal welfare violations.
Eve had been at the Lynchburg Humane Society since 2021 before she was finally adopted in November. She had been adopted once before, and then surrendered to a shelter in Amherst County.
Her microchip was registered with the Lynchburg Humane Society, so the shelter in Amherst “immediately reached out to us and we took her back,” said Jill Mollohan, director of the Lynchburg shelter.
But that didn’t happen this time, when Eve was surrendered to the Danville Area Humane Society.
The 12-year-old American Staffordshire terrier was euthanized about two weeks after being surrendered to the Danville shelter.
Paulette Dean, the longtime director of Danville’s shelter, said her staff followed the proper protocols, scanning Eve for a microchip and promoting her for adoption and foster opportunities, but “no one expressed interest.”
The microchip scan came back “unregistered,” Dean said, and the owner did not mention that Eve had been adopted from Lynchburg.
“If we knew, we would’ve emailed [Lynchburg] immediately, as I always do,” she said.
The Lynchburg shelter said that Danville didn’t use the “standard practice” of searching for a microchip identification number through a nationwide database, instead searching with just one of many microchip companies.
“There was no reason for that dog to die,” said Stanley. “She was a senior dog who had led a good life and deserved to live out the rest of it.”
Stanley, who represented Danville until a 2023 redistricting changed his district, said this situation “deserves not just a response but an action.”
He is developing two strategies — an immediate strategy and a legislative strategy — to ensure that improvements are made at the Danville shelter, and “if need be, we will shut this place down.”
The shelter in Danville is open-admission, meaning it takes in every animal that comes its way. This means that sometimes healthy animals are euthanized due to space or resource constraints.
Limited-admission shelters, on the other hand, can and do turn away animals, and reserve euthanasia for animals that are terminally sick or dangerous.
The Danville shelter has come under fire in recent years for its high euthanasia rates, which peaked in 2023, when the shelter euthanized about 78% of its animals.
Last year, that rate had declined to 59%, but still remained far above the state average of 9%, according to annual self-reported numbers from each animal shelter in the state to the Virginia Department of Animal and Consumer Services.
Eve was surrendered by her owner at the Danville shelter on April 10 due to “a family matter unrelated to Eve,” according to a May 4 Facebook post from the Lynchburg shelter.
Mollohan said that the Lynchburg shelter learned she was in Danville on April 28.
“We immediately reached out in hopes of bringing her back into our care,” the post said. “It was too late.”
The Danville shelter had euthanized Eve earlier that morning, the post said.
Dean said that space constraints were the primary reason that Eve was euthanized, but that “she had also started wheezing, and that’s never a good thing for an older dog. But that wasn’t the primary reason.”
She met with her staff on the morning of April 28 to discuss the euthanasia list.
“We have been getting many, many animals. It’s the worst time of year for shelters,” she said. “We all hated that Eve was on the list. I said, ‘We can euthanize her today.’ It was very sad for all of us. … We wish we could go back in time.”
Dean has been director of the Danville shelter since the mid-1980s. The shelter opened in 1972.
Every pet adopted from the Lynchburg shelter is microchipped, which helps reunite lost pets with their families, but also ensures that pets surrendered to another shelter are traced back to the Lynchburg shelter and can be transferred there, the post states.
Dean said her staff did a microchip scan, and the chip came back “unregistered,” which means that the pet has a chip, but it is not connected to any owner information.
Mollohan said there’s a national database for microchip lookups, but that the Danville shelter only checked with a specific company.
“There’s plenty of microchip companies out there,” Mollohan said. “If they would’ve done the industry standard on that, it would have come back with us as the people who implanted and who bought the chip.”
According to a May 4 Facebook post by the Danville shelter, Eve’s owner said they attempted to contact the Lynchburg shelter before bringing her to Danville’s facility, but did not hear back.
Mollohan said the Lynchburg shelter has no record of this.
“We looked up the number we had from that particular owner, and we had received no voicemails and no phone calls at all,” Mollohan said. “We also keep track of our emails, and we had no emails from them. … We do know that sometimes technology fails, but we’re pretty confident in our system.”
The Danville shelter advertised Eve as available for adoption several times on its Facebook page and ran an ad in the newspaper.
“No one showed any interest in a 12-year-old,” Dean said. “That’s a sad, sad, sad reality.”
The shelter did not post Eve on PetFinder, which is a site that many shelters use to post adoptable animals. It is also popular among people looking to adopt.
The Danville shelter has been criticized in the past for not using PetFinder for adoptable animals. Dean said that the shelter had an account at one point, but “we ran into so many issues with it.”
“It was very cumbersome, and we didn’t have any adoptions from it,” she said. “There were also some technical issues, so we haven’t posted any animals there for a while. We have talked about it, but we’ve been posting more on our Facebook.”
The Danville shelter is adding a line to their intake form for owners to identify whether they got the animal from another shelter.
“We’re doing that proactively,” Dean said. “Other than that, I don’t know what we could do proactively.”
‘My blood just started boiling’
Stanley said he was “outraged” when he first heard Eve’s story.
“My blood just started boiling,” he said.
When he represented Danville, the legislator said he had many conversations with the shelter about making improvements, “to no avail.”
“They’ve run out of chances in my book,” he said. “I’ve had enough. … It is my opinion that their policy, based on what I’ve seen, is that they would rather euthanize the animal than find a warm and loving home.”
After seeing Stanley’s post, Dean said she invited him to come by the shelter.
“He’s never been here,” she said.
The Danville shelter’s Facebook post said that open-admission shelters face incredibly difficult decisions due to space, resources and the needs of animals in their care.
“This is never the outcome we want,” it said. “Every animal matters to us, and every decision weighs heavily. … We stand by the work we do for this community and its animals every single day.”
Dean said that Eve’s euthanization has sparked public backlash, including hateful and threatening messages, something she and her staff have experienced multiple times over the years. The shelter is introducing increased security measures, including keeping its doors locked at all times.
Mollohan said that many open admission shelters in Virginia have lower euthanasia rates than the Danville shelter, and it is possible to remain open admission while saving lives.
Every municipality in Virginia is required by state law to operate an animal shelter or to contract with another nearby facility, so residents have a place to take strays. Municipal shelters are usually open-intake, but there are exceptions.
“There are very good examples of how simple and cost-effective it can be to save lives,” Mollohan said. “If there is any funding needed, grant-funded programs can enact change very quickly and save lives very quickly.”
But Dean said that other municipal shelters may have a different definition of “open-admission.”
For some places, this means that they only accept dogs from their own locality, Dean said. And some shelters may not accept healthy, owner-surrendered cats because they are not mandated to by state law.
“Our definition is, we don’t turn any Virginia animal away, we do not put anyone on a waiting list, and we do not charge,” Dean said.
The Danville shelter has also been criticized for its unwillingness to partner with shelters in neighboring localities.
The Lynchburg post mentioned this, saying, “Our organization regularly partners with shelters to take in pets who are at risk of euthanasia. We have extended that same offer to DAHS many times over the years, but those offers have been repeatedly rejected.”
Dean said that the Danville shelter only partners with organizations that have the same adoption guidelines. The Lynchburg shelter has lower barriers to adoption, she said.
“Plus, they stay full,” she said. “Why would we want to send Danville animals up there, if they’re putting Lynchburg animals on a waiting list?”
Mollohan said that Eve was adored not only by shelter staff, but by volunteers, residents and even local reporters.
“She was just, she was in our hearts. We plan on having a memorial for her in the coming weeks,” she said. “It’s a tragedy, but if this awareness helps save other pets in Eve’s memory, something good can come out of this.”
Stanley’s plan
Groups of residents have been calling for change at the Danville shelter for years. Many of them believe that lifesaving practices improve when there is public outcry, and then regress when the conversation blows over.
Stanley said there are several ways to ensure that improvements are actually made.
“One strategy is for the locality to look at this and take action, and that may be through ordinances or legal action,” he said. “I think we need to have our local commonwealth’s attorney look at possible criminal action, investigate to see if anything they’re doing violates any of Virginia’s laws.”
Then, during next year’s legislative session, “we make sure that we’re writing legislation to ensure that one, they can’t do this if they’re still in business, and two, that places like this should not be in business because of the regulatory framework that we create in Virginia,” he said.
Stanley went through a similar process that resulted in the shutdown of Envigo ,which was investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice and found in violation of animal welfare standards.
Stanley and Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax County, introduced animal welfare bills that were signed into law in 2022 after passing unanimously in the House and Senate. The legislation addresses recordkeeping, transparency and closed a loophole exempting breeding facilities from animal cruelty violations.
“I told [Envigo] that I’m going to craft legislation that will either change the way you do business, or we’ll put you out of business,” he said.
Stanley ended up adopting Daisy, one of the more than 4,000 beagles rescued from the facility.
“When it comes to companion animals, I’ve been a stalwart and a champion,” he said. “Now we’re going to demonstrate that we will not tolerate a releasing agency that has the word ‘humane’ in it, that is not being humane at all.”
Dean said that the Danville shelter complies with state laws, and that all Virginia shelters are inspected by VDACS regularly.
“Every shelter has violations from time to time. That goes along with the work, but we have never, never had our treatment of animals called into question,” she said.
Despite controversy over the years, the Danville shelter has maintained strong support from city government.
City Manager Ken Larking puts much of the local controversy down to a difference in sheltering philosophy, and has said that the community should be part of the solution to the sheltering challenges in Danville, which largely start with high intake, by fostering, adopting and volunteering.
“I am aware that there is a spirited debate among animal rights organizations about how animal shelters should function,” he wrote in a Thursday email. “This debate often creates strong emotions and opinions, and I acknowledge and appreciate everyone’s passion regarding what they believe is in the best interests of the animals and our community.”
Stanley said that he has not been in contact with Danville city leadership yet, “but you can count on it.”
“It’s a place that receives taxpayer money,” Stanley said. “I cannot imagine that a governing body such as the city council can think this is OK, and if they do, then each one of them should explain why. … They’re dropping the ball if they’re allowing this to occur.”
Larking said that the relationship between the city and the shelter remains in good standing. He said he has confidence in the shelter’s leadership and commitment to proper protocols and legal standards.
The shelter informed the city of Eve’s euthanasia “from the outset” and Danville will continue to work closely with the shelter to support its mission “to operate the shelter with compassion and integrity,” he wrote.
“The circumstances surrounding this particular case involve multiple organizations, and a thorough review of all the facts is necessary before drawing any conclusions,” Larking wrote. “We are all just human beings doing our best to navigate a complicated world and showing grace toward each other should be our first response.”
