Mason - The first time Penelope Tsernoglou walked through the front door of the Ingham County Animal Shelter she cried.

"I was just devastated that there was a place like this in existence," said the East Lansing resident, who has been volunteering at the shelter for more than a year.

But that has changed, she says.

Tsernoglou and other volunteers say they have seen great improvements in the facility's cleanliness and care despite recent criticism from local animal activists who question the shelter's conditions and practices.

Tsernoglou says there has been an increased attentiveness to messes and better medical attention to animals from a new veterinarian.

"They have cleaned up a lot since they have been facing a lot of scrutiny from the media," she said.

The quality of the shelter's facilities, though, remains in doubt with some community members, which caused the Ingham County Board of Commissioners' law enforcement committee to hold public discussion in May, allowing concerned citizens to voice complaints. The meeting lasted several hours as roughly 50 people spoke to the committee.

There, they questioned the shelter's practice of selling animals to dealers before opening as well as complained about the quality of care provided to the housed animals.

But shelter and county officials disagree with those claims, saying their job is to control the county's stray animal population and not to be a pet shop.

The shelter sold 1,112 animals in 2002 - 364 went to adopters compared to 47 to research facilities, including dealers. The other animals were given to animal rescue facilities (609) and other non-research-based groups (102).

Jim Woudenberg, a Class B dealer, has been buying animals from Michigan shelters for more than 20 years and says the Ingham County Animal Shelter clears the county of strays, attempts to locate owners and works to find homes for pets.

Class B dealers purchase dogs and cats from animal shelters and resell them to research facilities, whereas Class A dealers breed animals specifically for research purposes.

"The shelter is extremely well run and efficient," Woudenberg said. "It performs a limited scope of duties extremely well."

But some animal activists and community members argue the county's policies on the sale of its orphaned animals provides animal dealers too much opportunity to resell animals to research facilities.

At $10 an animal, the shelter made $470 in sales to research-based patrons whereas between $30-$50 an animal for adopters, it made $23,005. The shelter donates the animals to the non-research-based and rescue groups.

Between the walls

About 150 large and small cages and kennels make up the back ward of the Ingham County Animal Shelter. The shelter has the space to hold roughly 250 animals, but some cages are left open to accommodate new animals, Deputy Director Steve Hummel said.

The shelter's four long hallway wards have 6-foot-tall fenced cages where large dogs such as pit bulls and German shepherds are held. They sit on yellow tiled floors next to metal water buckets, awaiting kennel cleaning.

Smaller dogs and cats sit on newspaper in stacked cages at the end of the hall. Large, loud fans make up for the lack of window ventilation and control the temperature while drowning out the meows and whimpers of cats and dogs.

Shelter animals are fed dry food, often donated by food outlets such as Sam's Club. Food is stored in an industrial-sized walk-in refrigerator that once housed dead animals. Those animals now are kept in an outdoor freezer.

Adoptable animals are held in an adoption room where the public can come in and pick out a family pet. The shelter has a four-room ward where animals wait out their holding periods. Animals can not be adopted during their holding period - a minimum of four days without a collar, seven days with one.

The shelter also has two isolation rooms, separated from the ward - one where sick animals are kept and one for animals with "vicious tendencies." Most dogs that have bitten people stay in isolation, awaiting euthanasia.

Hummel said they don't like to hold the animals in the ward for extended periods. The shelter works with MSU and rescue groups to spay and neuter pets to make them more adoptable and clear the shelter.

"Shelter life can be very stressful on the animals," he said. "With the adoptable ones, it's unfair to hold them longer than that."

Allowing the practice of selling animals to research has dramatically increased the number of animals that are adopted from the shelter, Hummel said.

"We get a lot of animals out the front door rather than pushing them out the back door," he said.

Filing complaints

Roseville resident Amber Sitko, who works with a rescue groups that receive animals from the shelter, said she has received misinformation from shelter workers.

"They will tell rescue groups they don't have anything to sell and dealers leave the next day, cats in hand" she said.

And Sitko, who has been protesting the shelter and become a watchdog of sorts, said she hasn't seen the improvements at the shelter.

"You should have disinfectant everywhere and use it after you touch every animal," she said. "You have to take some basic precautions and they don't seem to do that."

The shelter does not enforce frequent hand sanitizer use and those handling animals do not always wear gloves. But animal-control trucks that bring in animals are sprayed with high-pressure disinfectant to control disease.

Helping hands

Animals at the shelter are cared for by a staff veterinarian and the facility is maintained by prisoners from the Ingham County Jail.

Prisoners are in charge of feeding animals, cleaning cages and bowls and assisting in euthanasia. Cages are cleaned in the mornings and afternoons with spot checks throughout the day.

Hummel said he works to make sure inmates are doing their jobs to keep kennels clean.

"If I see a pile of poop on the floor and I stick my finger in it, and it's still warm, it should not be there," he said.

If the shelter becomes overcrowded, Hummel said animals not sold to research must be put to sleep.

"There's been a couple days this year we've had to make the difficult decision of putting down the nice dog," he said.

The solution

The board of commissioners will vote June 10 whether to continue to allow the sale of shelter animals to Class B dealers in Ingham County.

"I really wish people cared as much about kids as they do dogs," Commissioner Mark Grebner said.

Activists will hold a memorial before the meeting for animals sold to research. They are asking concerned citizens to bring donations of dog and cat food as well as cat liter.

"Let's try to make the pets that do have to live in that hell a little more comfortable," Sitko said.