Mayflower community concerned over future of city’s animal control

MAYFLOWER, Ark. — The City of Mayflower has recently seen some changes in the city government, with a city council member resigning, as well as the mayor, chief of police, and both animal control officers. 

The resignations have left many worried about the future of the city and the future of animal control in Mayflower.

Compassion for Canines is a nonprofit rescue that has been paying for the vetting for the dogs that have come into the Mayflower shelter in the last five or six years. However, with the changes in the city, the money that has gone to the shelter will no longer be available.

“So, for the last five to six years, I have partnered, more or less a silent partner, with Mayflower animal shelter to vet and place the dogs at their shelter. And I have to say, we’ve had pretty good success. Over the last five years, we’ve adopted out 1,200 plus dogs, spent a little over $200,000 vetting those dogs, but that area is infiltrated with dogs that have been dumped,” described Dana Venable, who runs Compassion for Canines.

In the last couple of months, there were conversations around council members of Mayflower’s city council talking about setting a limit on dogs being at the shelter or being euthanized. 

However, Venable explained how that caused concern with her after she invested in the shelter.

“It really can take us a month to six weeks to get them fully vetted, to get them marketable to adopt. And so I showed up at another city council meeting probably two months later, around May or June, and expressed my concern, and basically had said, if that’s what it comes down to, that I would probably remove my services, because as a rescue, we can’t step in and invest all of this money for the dogs to be euthanized within six weeks time, or even three months for that matter,” Venable described.

After Lisa Kossman, who was in the animal control officer role, resigned, she said in her resignation letter that she wanted to clear the shelter.

Venable said that thanks to the community, that has happened. She also explained that it was Kossman’s role as animal control that made the partnership work.

“She has been a dream to work with, and it’s a very sad day to know that not only is that partnership now changing, she will continue to work with me and rescue, but on a more limited basis. And it’s just so sad for the City of Mayflower to see a shelter that was not broken. You know, a city has tried to fix there’s nothing broken with this system that we had,” Venable added.

Since Mayflower has had a problem with people dumping dogs, through Compassion for Canines most of the dogs have found their forever home in the northeast, but Venable has also been pushing lawmakers for stricter laws when it comes to what she calls an epidemic in the state.

“Shelters are not overcrowded. Shelters are not our issue. Rescues are not our issue. Our issue is we need stricter laws in place. We need a change in legislation around licensing of breeders so that we don’t have a lot of backyard breeders, and then also spay and neuter requirements cities and towns to require proof of that. We have an influx of dogs across the state, as you mentioned, with not enough homes, we can’t continue to ship them to the northeast. We need to clean this problem up here,” Venable said.  

If you want to get involved in fostering dogs or helping out, there is one thing that you can do, which is to spay or neuter your dog. That can really help the population stay manageable and can help prevent having too many dogs.