Lisa Falkenberg, a columnist for the Chronicle, wrote last week about conditions at BARC. She writes:

The bit of good news I reported last week from the city of Houston’s troubled animal shelter didn’t tell the whole story.

While the shelter’s new policy to vaccinate all dogs upon or before intake is indeed progress, the practice wasn’t implemented until June 10 — not in January, as a city spokeswoman had indicated in my column, according to Kim Grieff, the recently resigned senior community liaison at Houston’s Bureau of Animal Regulation and Care.

Grieff, who reluctantly talked with me last week after trying to avoid media spotlight, also revealed what she believes is the true reason for the policy change: the killing of “hundreds of dogs” during about one week in late May or early June “because they were not vaccinated after several days in the facility.”

“It was assumed they would come down with distemper, so they were euthanized,” Grieff told me.

You can read the rest of her column here. 

A blogger for PetsHouston also had bad news out of BARC last week about dogs who were clearly underweight at an adoption event in the Heights. The post inspired a Craigslister to start a letter writing campaign to get the attention of Mayor Bill White.