The Montgomery County Animal shelter runs a 24-hour, 7-day operation that keeps a shameful problem out of sight

- From records at the Montgomery County Animal Shelter.

This pit bull was picked up after fighting with a neighborhood dog. Only his legal owner could get him out of the shelter, as pit bulls are never offered for adoption. The dog was euthanized. WALLY NELSON/DAYTON DAILY NEWS

"People called, they thought she was dead," he said. "It was heat exhaustion. She was extremely overheated. I didn't think she was going to make it."

He got her into his truck and rushed her back to the shelter, where he and the staff swung into action. They put her in a cool bath, ran IVs - did everything they could to get her stabilized.

It worked. She lived.

In Mick's eyes, they brought her back from the dead. She, of all the animals he's handled, got to him.

"The next day, she was doing fine," he said. "But then she went into heat, and we had to put her down.

"They kept me busy that day, away from what was going on. It was bad, let me tell you. But my friends here, they knew that dog was special to me. They shielded me," Sagester recalls. "We do that for each other here."

Yes: The dog he saved was killed because she was in heat. She was perfectly healthy, not aggressive, strong enough to come back from heat exhaustion. But at the shelter, a dog in heat means chaos for the un-neutered males held in the same big room.

At the shelter, a dog in heat is a dead dog.

At the shelter, a dog that is too old is a dead dog.

At the shelter, a dog that snaps or shows fear or anger is a dead dog.

At the shelter, a dog that is too injured or sick is a dead dog.

The shelter is a place of cold realities, harsh pragmatism and intense compassion. It's a contradiction, a place where animal lovers kill dogs every day. It's a place where the workers say, `We're here for the dogs' as they make out the day's list of which ones will die; where they stroke a dog's head and whisper in his ear while the needle is set.

The shelter is a very hard place to be, because of what it says about us. And this is what its workers understand: It's never, ever the dogs' fault. It's ours.

Knowing that, however, does not by itself solve the problem of what to do with all these dogs.

In 1997, 9,013 dogs ended up at the Montgomery County Animal Shelter. Of these, about 8 percent were adopted. Another 17 percent were redeemed by their legal owner.

The rest were put to sleep.

To be killed with caring is better than to starve, or be eaten alive by maggots, or choked slowly by a collar that was too small a year ago. That's what the shelter workers believe, or they could not go to work.

Animal-care provider Craig Smith holds a seemingly healthy female beagle picked up by an animal-control officer. A vet check revealed a hernia, making her ineligible for adoption. WALLY NELSON / DAYTON DAILY NEWS

The dogs are called by number, and one by one they're taken from their cages and walked into the clinic by Ken Bishop, who lifts them to the waist-high, stainless-steel table. The vet, Sharon Schumann this day, does a cursory examination, taking temperatures, listening to hearts and lungs, running hands over bodies, feeling for a solid structure and internal soundness. She estimates the age of each dog and, if it's not full-grown, makes an educated guess on its potential adult weight.

It's a busy day. There are 26 dogs for the vet to see, 26 dogs that have lingered in the shelter's cages past the legal holding period - three days if unlicensed, 14 days if licensed.

If a dog bites, growls or is abnormally shy, he won't even make it to vet check. Unless his owner claims him within the proscribed holding period, he is euthanized when his time is up. This is the rule, and it's hard and fast, non-negotiable, never open for debate.

If he's a pit bull, part pit bull or probably pit bull, again it's up to his owner to save his life. The state of Ohio, in bestowing the official `vicious dog' designation upon the breed, has made the pit bull the one breed the Montgomery County Animal Shelter will not offer for adoption. This is the rule.

There are guidelines, too, about unreasonable youth or excessive age. These guidelines are loose, with lots of room within which to maneuver.

The 26 dogs on Wednesday's list, having made it this far, await Dr. Schumann's decision on their soundness for adoption.

It's going well. Of the 26 dogs, 21 will eventually be passed on for adoption. The shelter will be crowded today, once doors open to the public. It will be nonstop work for Kay Mulvaney, who volunteers her time to bathe each dog, and for Dave Vollette, the staffer who'll handle today's adoptions.

Work stops when the back door to the clinic opens, admitting animal-control officer Christine Moorman with a dog, big and darkly brindled, a mixed breed. Each rib is evident; his shoulders and the bones of his thighs show in outline. Everyone moves to let them in.

`Who's this, then?' someone asks.

`What's his story?' wonders someone else.

`He's a nice guy,' Moorman says. `All the neighbors were afraid of him.'

She found him lounging under some bushes, keeping out of the July heat.

`I just bent down and called him and he came walking out.' She shrugs, `Don't tell, but I didn't even use a rope on him. He's a good dog.'

The dog stands beside her, sniffing the air, then ducking his head to sniff the shoes around him. And then it becomes clear why he's been brought in the back door, in the middle of Moorman's shift, for immediate attention.

`His collar has grown into his skin,' she says.

Like it happens all the time. Like it's not that big a deal.

`We'll need some wire cutters,' Bishop says. His boss, Donna Wilson, moves to find them.

`Wire cutters,' says Craig Smith, a kennel worker, taking a step back and shaking his head. `I've never seen them use wire cutters.' Smith has been on the job for three months.

This dog is lifted to the table, where Dr. Schumann scratches his ears, asks him how he's doing. She gently lifts the skin of his neck, which has bunched to the front of the chain collar, giving him a wrinkle-dog head on his skeleton body.

She studies his wound, red and raw and slick.

`They have an incredibly high pain threshhold,' she sighs, `But this....'

He wags his tail. There is neither time nor money to treat this dog. His wound is too severe.

He wags his tail. The vet shakes her head.

Euthanasia. They'll do it now.

Five minutes later, the darkly brindled dog is dead, his body laid gently on a bright-green blanket.

Like it happens all the time, because it does.

Like it's no big deal. But it is.

When an animal-control officer brings a dog to the shelter, it's classified as a `rescue.' When an owner brings a dog, it's a `release.' And those owners are asked why.

Dave Vollette, who works the front desk, has asked that question over and over. And he's heard it all.

`There was one I remember especially. The dog did not match their furniture,' he says, punctuating each word. `The dog hair didn't match their carpet, or whatever, and so they brought the dog to us. They'd bought it from a breeder.'

An extreme example, perhaps, but in Dave's experience, that excuse is as good - or as bad - as any other.

`We have people who come in and outright lie,' he says. `They'll say they found the dog, that it's not theirs. Then we go out to get the dog and it won't let anybody near it, but it's wagging its tail all over the guy.'

Vollette breeds Labradors. He's a show judge, too, and says there's a year's waiting list for his dogs.

`I've been showing dogs since I was 6. I started in 4H, in fact,' he says. Vollette and the shelter are a strange combination: He creates dogs in his breeding business; he watches them be killed by the thousands at his day job.

`I breed for my next generation,' he says. `I guarantee my dogs, and the people have to bring them back if they're not happy - basically the same as here in the shelter's adoption program. I check (the people) out very thoroughly ... I spay and neuter the animal, and I'll take the dog back at any time.'

But working at the shelter has changed the way he does business.

`I had two females the same age, and I wanted to breed both of them. Working here makes me think I don't need to do that. I'll just breed one of them.'

More evident is the way the shelter has changed how Vollette deals with people.

`When I first started here I felt bad for the people, I truly did. I reassured them, I told them it'll be OK, that we'd take good care of the dog even if I was pretty sure it wasn't going to go up for adoption.

`Now, dealing with these people every single day, and seeing so many people releasing dogs, I'm very up-front with them,' he says. `I try to make them feel guilty, so next time they see a cute little puppy, at least maybe they'll think twice.

`Now I make them understand that their dog may not go up for adoption. Some people say I shouldn't do that, that I shouldn't make them feel bad. But I do it in a nice way .... They make it sound like I'm the awful one. But I'm not the one releasing the dog. It's them.

`This is just a real easy place for people to get rid of their dogs.'

Allergies. Job changes. A cute furball that grew into an adult St. Bernard, crowding its owner in his one-bedroom apartment. A puppy given as a gift to a woman who's terrified of dogs by a boyfriend who never thought to ask. A couple working 60-hour weeks who just didn't realize dogs need their time. Dogs who've lived their lives in cages, frightened and unsocialized, snapping at any peripheral movement. Dogs with the wrong hair color.

These are the dogs with owners who don't want them anymore, but who at least took the time to take the next step.

`Maybe we make it too easy for people,' muses shelter director Stephanie Smith. `I mean, they come to this nice building, where they're met by articulate, trained professionals.'

It's their job to make it easy for people to rid themselves of unruly pets, unplanned-for puppies, companions that have become a nuisance. It's their job to cleanse the streets of strays, to feed them and talk to them and do what they can for them. It's their job to stick a needle in them, to hold them while they die.

`Starving to death, embedded collars... I can deal with people releasing their dogs to us. I can't deal with the abuse that some of these animals get. I don't think people realize truly how many dogs there are out there that have such hard lives.

Right: Smith mans the cremator, where the bodies of euthanized animals are reduced to ash at 1600 degrees. WALLY NELSON / DAYTON DAILY NEWS

`People just need to come in here one day and watch what goes on.'

But they can't. It's too tough. So it's up to people like Vollette, who tries to be nice but who tells it like it is - and who lives for the good times, which come often enough.

`There are some dogs in adoption here longer - yeah, we get a little attached to them. For instance, there was the bloodhound and the St. Bernard just in here, two truly very good animals. We worried: `Who would take these two dogs?' And we did find the best homes for them.

`That makes us feel good. That's rewarding.'

Dogs in new homes, dogs returned to old homes.

`There was a lady who had an 11-year-old mixed breed - it really wasn't anything exciting to look at, at all. It got loose from the groomer ... It was missing for three weeks, and the lady found it here. She was crying, the dog was all happy....

`And there was this cat, lost for three weeks. The woman came in every single day, and the cat was found three weeks later, very thin and very scared. But it turned out all right.

`That was a great thing. That's what brings us back.'

This day, she's paged over the P.A. system, called to assist in an `immediate euth.' A dog needs to be killed, at the request of a county taxpayer, the dog's owner.

The owner has filled out the paperwork and paid the $50 ($25 release fee; $15 for a late license, required as proof of ownership and $10 for the euthanasia). He hands the dog's leash to Davis, who walks the lumbering, overweight golden retriever back to the clinic.

`This is Duke,' she says. She scratches his ears while the man, who gave a vague `couldn't keep him any longer' reason for his decision, peels rubber leaving the parking lot. Davis cradles the big dog's head, telling him what a good boy he is. Ken Bishop, a veteran animal-care provider, prepares Duke's front leg for the needle.

Five minutes later, the dog is dead, lying on a green blanket on the floor of the clinic.

Duke's owner had requested immediate euthanasia. His wish was granted by strangers in the shelter's clinic, a room separated from the dog wards by a hallway and heavy metal doors. Dogs that need extra attention are kept here. Injured dogs. Very young puppies. There's always a dog in the clinic.

Before any dogs are euthanized, any cages containing dogs are covered.

`We do that to avoid any stress on the dogs in here,' says Bishop. `Some people say the dogs know - that they can smell it - but who knows?'

When those puppies are seen by the vet, who ultimately determines their adoptability, they're said to be `about 7 weeks old.'

David drops his head, then looks up at the vet through his eyelashes. `They have to be 8 weeks to be eligible for adoption.'

It takes the vet a second to understand.

`OK, they're 8 weeks, then,' says the vet with a shrug. David smiles. The puppies will move to the front of the shelter, where the adoptable dogs are kept.

Penny Davis moves in and out of the clinic. She pauses to watch as the vet treats a deep cut on the front right paw of a big brown pit bull. His head rests in a visitor's hand; he smiles his big pit-bull smile while his thick, strong tail whomps the stainless-steel examination table.

If no owner appears, he'll be killed after his holding period, because pit bulls are never placed for adoption, per the state's designation of them as `vicious.' It's a hard rule for the staff, because they know better than most people how nice some pit bulls can be, how almost always it's the owner who makes the difference.

`We had a pit bull in here once who'd been shot twice,' Penny says. `He had a broken leg, too.' Even so, he was a friendly dog. Even so, the rule applied to him, as it applied to the white-and-brown bruiser who glared from the back of his cage until a person came near, when he'd move his nose forward for a sniff and a tentative wag. His owner was in jail; his owner's mother had called the county to come take him away.

If a dog looks even a little like a pit bull, only his owner can save him. Every single other healthy dog is given a shot at salvation and a fresh start in a new home. But one growl, one snap, one curl of the lip, and he's `red-dotted' with a sticker on his cage card that warns others of his aggressive nature. He will not make it to vet check; he will not be available for adoption.

No exceptions. This is another rule that's rough for the staff: Their red dot means death for the dog. But they understand.

`We have to consider the other workers,' Davis says, `their safety, too. They could be going to get a dog and not know ... It's a hard call to make sometimes. You don't want to do it. We talk about it, a lot, among ourselves.'

The budget dictates how often the switch is flipped: The cremator is an expensive piece of machinery to run, and small loads aren't cost-effective.

The freezer is its own building, separate from shelter, off the employee parking lot. On days when the cremator will be running, the workers assigned to the job start loading early.

They wear masks - because of the smell, which is overpowering.

They wear gloves - because of what they'll be touching.

One dog, picked up by its stiff, frozen feet, is laid on the rolling cart for its trip to the oven. Then another is loaded.

Then another.

Penny Davis walks by on her way into work.

`I hate the smell of that freezer,' she says as she hurries inside.

The cremator can hold 250 pounds. When the cart is full, the workers roll it inside, where

MONTGOMERY COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER Dogs taken in (1998, through October): 7,565. Dogs adopted: 594. Dogs reclaimed: 1,207. Dogs euthanized: 4,673. MIAMI COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER Dogs taken in annually: 1,882 (1997). Dogs adopted: 457. Dogs reclaimed: 600. Dogs euthanized: 825. PREBLE COUNTY HUMANE SOCIETY Dogs taken in annually: 1,500 (1997, approximate). Dogs adopted: 570. Dogs reclaimed: 135. Dogs euthanized: 795. WARREN COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER Dogs taken in (Jan. 1-Oct. 24, 1998): 2,191. Dogs adopted: 582. Dogs euthanized: 1,584. Animals reclaimed (including cats): 580. GREENE COUNTY ANIMAL CONTROL Animals (dogs and cats) taken in annually: 3,222 (January to Nov. 13, 1998). Dogs adopted: 324. Dogs reclaimed: 306. Dogs euthanized: 888. Dogs died (sick/injured): 65. SICSA (SOCIETY FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE CONDITIONS OF STRAY ANIMALS) Dogs taken in (1998, through October): 624. Dogs adopted: 475. Dogs returned to owner: 21. Dogs euthanized: 13. HUMANE SOCIETY OF GREATER DAYTON This private organization handles cruelty and neglect investigations only. All stray reports are referred to the county shelter. Dogs for adoption at the Humane Society are strictly those animals impounded as a result of cruelty or neglect investigations.

the cremator waits. Its door is shoulder height, and the men and women sometimes must struggle to lift a frozen, dead dog up through the yawning opening.

Once inside, the body is pushed to the back by a rake-like stick. When enough dead dogs are inside, the door is mechanically shut. Buttons are pushed. The cremator's cycle has begun.

It'll take about three hours for the oven to reach its peak of 1600 degrees. As the bodies burn down, the workers keep loading more. And more. And more, until the freezer is empty and the cycle can run itself down.

Considering the alternatives, the cremator makes a gruesome job almost bearable. Almost. There are still hundreds of dead dogs to handle, along with the roadkill wildlife the shelter handles by contract with some Montgomery County cities.

The bodies used to be sold to a rendering plant, which essentially melted them down and then sold the useful leftover. That was before the freezer, and the practice ended when the company missed a pickup. The decomposing bodies caused a nightmare-inducing hazard.

For a time, the bodies were disposed of in county landfills.

`That was hard on everybody,' Director Stephanie Smith recalls. `It was hard on the shelter staff who had to go there and dump the bodies; it was hard on anybody who went to the dump.'

The county bought the cremator in 19 XX for about $45,000. The disposal job is still far from pleasant, but the end product is shoveled from the oven into garbage cans.

All that's left is white, brittle bone.

Not a trace of pet remains.

Part Two:   Their jobs are often brutal, but shelter workers do what needs to be done.