Haines animal shelter unable to euthanize pets due to staff turnover
- Chilkat Valley News
- Sep 4
- 5 min read
By Rashah McChesney
Chilkat Valley News
The Haines Animal Rescue Kennel can no longer perform a difficult, but necessary, task in animal care: euthanasia. Without staff certified to administer the drugs, the community’s only shelter is unable to help pet owners facing end-of-life decisions or emergencies involving fatally injured animals.
For years, former managers Stacey Clark Cureton and CaSandra Nash held the required state certifications. Between them they performed hundreds of euthanasias annually – often in the middle of the night, often without pay.
Nash said she carried out more than 800 during her four-and-a-half-year tenure, which is an emotionally taxing role.
“You feel a bit like the grim reaper,” she said.
Without Cureton and Nash, the shelter cannot legally perform the procedure, which often requires both specialized training and a veterinarian’s cooperation to access controlled substances.
Now the lack of certified shelter staff means Chilkat Valley residents and visitors are left with limited and sometimes impractical options: arranging appointments in Juneau or Whitehorse, hoping a traveling veterinarian is available, or waiting out an animal’s decline.
Animal welfare advocates in the valley fear this means more people will resort to trying to dispatch their own pets at home.
“I’m really alarmed about that. I’m worried people will go to use their rifle or something you know?” said H.A.R.K. founder and current board president Chuck Mitman.
Former and current employees and board members say it wasn’t any one thing that led to the shelter losing the ability to perform the service. Rather, it was a combination of tension between staff members and the board, compassion fatigue and the stress of euthanizations, the need to change suppliers of the drug – FatalPlus – used to perform euthanasias, and the loss of a relationship with a veterinarian.
State rules around euthanasia have tightened in recent years.
What once could be done under a layperson’s certification is no longer legally acceptable. Chuck Mitman, who helped found H.A.R.K. in 2001, and recently returned to its board as president, still holds one of those older credentials, from 2004. The state no longer recognizes them.
“The state has removed that, nobody can get lay certifications anymore,” Nash said. “You have to be a certified euthanasia technician and it has to be state recognized.”
State statutes were also antiquated and proscriptive about the programs someone had to use to obtain the certification. Since the statute was put into place, the required courses were no longer available – making it impossible to comply.
That certification now requires completion of a specific type of training program, many of which now route through the University of Florida and a program which can be largely done remotely but requires weeks and the supervision of a veterinarian to complete.
Nash said it took her three to six months to complete a euthanasia technician course.
State Veterinarian Dr. Sarah Coburn said the changes reflect the seriousness of handling federally controlled drugs.
“You really need a stable structure of trained staff and veterinarian oversight,” she said. “When you don’t have that, it really gets challenging to provide chemical euthanasia.”
Even with certification, H.A.R.K. would need a veterinarian willing to supply the pre-sedative drugs to make euthanasias quick. Without that relationship, Mitman said the shelter could make do with the final injection drug, which can be used as a sedative, but it takes longer to kick in.
Cureton said it took her years to build relationships with the veterinarians that she worked with during her time at the shelter.
“We developed a good relationship, a trusting relationship with [a veterinarian],” she said.
Those relationships, however, are fragile– particularly because a veterinarian is, essentially, risking their license leaving a controlled substance in a community trusting shelter staff to use it responsibly. Without that trust between vets and shelter staff, cooperation can collapse quickly.
“Most small shelters don’t have a vet on staff,” said Cureton. “If they have a vet that is willing to work with them and establish a relationship with them, that should be coveted.”
A difficult departure
Nash and Cureton both described burnout and strained relationships with the H.A.R.K. board of directors as factors in their exits from the shelter.
Cureton said the workload of a shelter manager required support, not the level of conflict she was having with Mitman, which she described in a social media post and interview as verbally abusive. She pointed to a particular email from Mitman which she said undermined her authority and was demeaning.
“I got an email saying ‘Lay down and [sic]heal,’ like I was a dog,” she said. “That was the tone. That’s not something you can come back from.”
Cureton said in early June that she made sure the animals were taken care of, left her keys on the table and walked out after getting that email.
She added that the breakdown of a relationship with area veterinarians was especially damaging.
“We developed a good relationship, a trusting relationship …. Then Chuck [Mitman] came in and cleaned house.”
Mitman sees the conflict and that email differently. He said the board had been largely hands-off in recent years and when he rejoined, the group was trying to establish consistency at the shelter.
“The hours were all over the place. Post office, fliers, voicemail hours, when was it actually open? That was the most common complaint,” he said. “We wanted to get some continuity, that’s all.”
And, on the email, he said he sent it after Cureton had given her notice of resigning – and that she misinterpreted what he meant. He said he used the phrase “lie down a heal,” to indicate what she could do once she stopped working – to rest, and let go.
Regardless, Mitman said that he’d be willing to step down from leading the board if it would help get the shelter back on track to provide the services the community needs.
What happens next
To restore euthanasia capability, H.A.R.K. is planning to get its new shelter manager, Teri Bastable-Podsiki, and another staff member enrolled in a certification program, Mitman said.
He has been trying to repair relationships, reaching out to area veterinarians to re-establish the partnerships that once allowed H.A.R.K. access to the pre-sedatives.
“We are in need of euthanasia drugs,” he wrote in one plea to a traveling vet who comes through Haines. “We don’t want an animal to suffer while dying and in fear.”
So far, those efforts have not succeeded. The shelter does, however, still hold the state and federal licenses required to store and administer controlled substances once they are obtained. That means if staff can be trained and a vet partnership secured, euthanasia services could resume quickly.
But, until that time, Cureton – who is moving out of the Chilkat Valley – warned of the consequences.
“There’s going to be 80–100 people who are going to be looking, saying, why can’t you do this? The dogs and the cats that are going to have to be put down in other ways because of their suffering—I cannot live here because of that.”
Nash said anyone stepping into the role as a community euthanasia tech should know the weight of it and pay close attention to the compassion fatigue portion of the certification classes.
“It’s not just sticking an animal with a needle,” she said. “You’re the last person that animal sees. You have to be calm. You have to be compassionate, and you have to be prepared for the toll it takes on you. That’s the reality of the job.”
• This story was originally published by the Chikat Valley News.
