Animal shelters around the state are experiencing high capacity and other gaps. Could a state trust fund help?

LAS VEGAS, N.M. — There’s a tunnel of dog kennels at the city of Las Vegas Animal Care Center. Dogs of every size and color jump against the metal doors. Their barks multiply in the echoey hallway, making it almost impossible to hear.

Some of these dogs are adoptable, shelter manager Beatriz “Bea” Gallegos. Others might be “fearful and feral,” a bigger issue in rural areas, she said. But with just 31 dog kennels to serve all of San Miguel County, both dangerous and adoptable dogs have to be held together.

“It’s not a good situation,” Gallegos said. “Everybody starts to feed off of each other and it makes it hard.”

That’s something that Gallegos wants to change — along with removing fire hazards, improving gates so dogs can’t break out and increasing staff. She’s looking for $2 million in state funds to design and plan an additional building for the shelter to start.

“I don’t know what a lot of other small shelters are like,” Gallegos said. “But I see places like Santa Fe Animal Shelter, and I’ve been to a few in Colorado. They make us basically look like a cardboard box.”

Three New Mexico state representatives are attempting to fill some of the gaps that Gallegos and other providers experience. Reps. Tara Lujan, D-Santa Fe; Joseph Sanchez, D-Alcalde; and Cynthia Borrego, D-Albuquerque, have proposed a bill to create an Animal Welfare Trust Fund for the state.

Earnings from the fund, which would start with an initial $10 million, would be distributed annually to state, county and local entities, nonprofits and tribal agencies for projects such as shelter infrastructure improvements, programs to reduce euthanasia rates and animal control improvements.

The bill, HB 191, passed its first committee last week.

Staci Voss, animal welfare director for the city of Farmington and chair of the Shelter Committee for the New Mexico Board of Veterinary Medicine, said the state is lacking infrastructure dollars for shelters and funding for spay and neuter programs.

“We have a lot of small rural shelters trying to do really good things with really good people,” Voss said. “(But) they don’t have the resources.”

A few years ago, the board set minimum shelter standards. But in some areas, shelters are still struggling to meet them because of a lack of resources, Voss said.

The Las Vegas Animal Care Center is one of them.

“We’re really trying to meet those minimum standards that the state has put out,” Gallegos said. “We are barely meeting them.”

Ruben Lucero, cruelty response and tribal affairs manager for Animal Protection Voters, a group that advocates for bills to protect animals, said many tribes around the state struggle with a lack of shelter space and animal welfare resources.

“Many tribes would like to enforce their animal ordinances but can’t because they don’t have a memorandum of understanding in place with a local shelter,” Lucero wrote in an email to the Journal. “Right now, the shelter situation in many areas across the state is dire, with most of them operating over capacity, which can hinder agreements between tribes and shelters.”

Animal welfare in the state is lagging behind other states, Voss said. New Mexico has a higher intake rate than the national average. In Farmington, the shelter takes in 13 animals per day, on average.

Voss said the Farmington shelter has a relatively new building. But like several other shelters around the state, it lacks isolation areas for sick animals. Instead of being able to treat infections, workers often have to euthanize sick animals to prevent the spread of disease.

“The last few years, we’ve seen distemper outbreaks in several different shelters across the state. That’s a horrible, sad thing,” Voss said. “And parvo is endless in New Mexico shelters.”

But the trust fund could help beyond the shelter walls, Voss said. Included in the bill are preventative measures, she said, that can help people keep their animals instead of having to surrender them to the shelter, which she said saves money.

“It’s not just an animal issue,” Voss said. “It’s a people issue, too.”