Soon after Petunia, a roughly 70-pound boxer mix, came to Anne Arundel County Animal Care and Control in Millersville in March 2022, those who worked with her noted she had tried to bite them several times.

She was eventually put on 400mg of the antidepressant Trazadone a day, according to documentation obtained by The Capital. After she was adopted, her owner returned her for aggression, said Heather Maranto, a former officer and veterinarian technician at the facility. Petunia was ultimately euthanized for behavior issues.

Similar scenarios have played out over the last 3 1/2 years at the facility, which is overseen by the Anne Arundel Police Department, as leadership has sought to maintain high adoption rates and suppress euthanasia rates, according to five former employees who spoke to The Capital.

These staffers, who worked as animal officers and veterinarian technicians, all left the agency since the beginning of 2020 after they say cats and dogs they witnessed and documented as being vicious were overmedicated and then adopted. Some of the animals were later returned for scratching or biting their owners, these former employees said.

Maranto, whose job included taking in new animals, assessing them and administering medication and euthanasia, worked at the agency from January 2016 to November 2022. She said she left, in part, because she felt the adoption practices weren’t protecting the public interest. Maranto said she and other staffers saw dozens of animals be adopted despite being assessed as aggressive or vicious.

All five former staff members who spoke with The Capital, including Maranto, said it was the agency’s administrator Robin Catlett who encouraged the practice of overmedication and pushed for aggressive dogs to be adopted.

“It became about numbers,” Maranto said. “People are getting bit and the animals are going home with these people and they’re not being told the truth. It got bad. I couldn’t do it.”

In an email, Catlett said decisions about adoptions and euthanasia are made on a case-by-case basis and always include the assessments of staff and volunteers.

“The supervisory team considers all information available when deciding whether to euthanize or place animals, including but not limited to; call notes, police or animal control officer reports, witness statements/observation, and medical and staff/volunteer documentation,” Catlett said. “If a decision is made in which someone disagrees, they could feel unheard. This does not mean they weren’t heard or considered.”

Some pets with behavior issues were put on calming drugs like Trazodone or Gabapentin. Documents obtained by The Capital show some animals were on as much as two tablets of 100mg of Trazadone twice a day.

The agency’s long-time veterinarian, Dr. Sue McDonough, who left the agency in September 2022 to do more work at her own spay-neuter clinic, gave her authorization to allow the vet technicians to use her name on pre-printed prescription labels, McDonough said. Using dosage guidelines posted in the facility, the techs would give the dogs these medications when they felt necessary.

“The staff made the evaluation,” McDonough said in an interview.

However, Maranto said supervisors, including Catlett, would sometimes request animals be put on antidepressants.

While reducing euthanasia rates may seem like a noble pursuit, it hasn’t necessarily led to improved safety, Maranto said. When an animal is euthanized by staff at their discretion it may be reported to the county’s Animal Welfare Council, an oversight board of county residents appointed to promote ethical and humane treatment of animals, she said. However, when an animal is brought in by a resident for biting or dangerous behavior and the owner asks for it to be euthanized, the agency doesn’t bear as much responsibility as the decision to euthanize wasn’t made by staff, even if the animal originally came from the agency.

Maranto, Randi Baker, a former technician and Maranto’s sister, Ashley Steele, a former animal control technician, as well as former officers Jessica Woodson and Jacqueline Bowen all agreed with the assessment that some adoptions were meant to reduce euthanasia rates.

“As long as an animal left the building and didn’t get euthanized, I feel like they didn’t care how they had to make it happen,” Baker said of management. “There’s always excuses made for the behavior of the ones where there’s aggression. There’s always some justification to why it’s OK.”

Catlett, who has been the agency’s administrator since 2011, was previously the director of operations for SPCA of Anne Arundel County. She was hired to replace Lt. Glenn Shanahan, who faced criticism at the time for instructing the agency to euthanize a high percentage of the animals.

Former County Executive John Leopold said in 2011 he liked the choice of Catlett because he thought she would maintain a high adoption rate at the agency, which she has.

Last year, the shelter adopted out 545 dogs and 1,015 cats, according to data obtained by The Capital. Of those, 74 were returned to the agency for various reasons, including buyer’s remorse, children with pet allergies, an animal not getting along with another pet and biting or scratching.

Those adoption numbers have increased steadily since the start of the pandemic. In 2021, 226 dogs and 837 cats were adopted compared to 166 dogs and 749 cats in 2020, according to the data.

In 2022, 590 pets were euthanized upon request of their owners.

Baker said she saw at least 10 aggressive animals get adopted from animal control in her time from late 2017 to early 2021. Internal documents obtained by The Capital included staff members’ notes about animal behavior with words like “biting,” “snapping,” “showing teeth,” “growling,” “swatting” and “hissing” in animals that eventually got adopted out of the shelter.

Maranto and Steele, who left the department in September after six months, said residents interested in adopting animals who would see these notes were told this aggression was typical behavior for an animal in an animal control facility and it would calm down once it got home.

“It was, ‘Oh they’re cage reactive,’ or ‘Oh, the shelter stresses them out,’ ” Steele said.

If a person agreed to adopt an animal on medication they would be informed, Maranto said. Staff knew some of the animals likely wouldn’t calm down at the new home, especially without medication. They said animal experts can tell the difference between a dangerous pet and a pet who is simply nervous or defensive.

Bowen, a former Anne Arundel animal control officer from July 2021 to October 2022, said pets can exhibit all kinds of aggressive behaviors, but it’s the manner in which they convey that behavior that indicates whether or not they are profoundly dangerous.

“Dogs who are truly just scared and don’t want any confrontation will settle generally quickly once they get a routine in the shelter,” Bowen said in a message. “A dog that bares teeth but doesn’t growl or raise hackles [neck hairs] doesn’t want to hurt you and will give you every warning possible before actually biting you.”

Conversely, if a dog lunges, or has hackles up with a stiff wagging tail and wide stance, that’s a dog to be worried about, Bowen said.

While former staffers said they noted troublesome behavior in their written assessments, Bowen said, the problem is the potential adopters aren’t really listening when their future pet is brought out to meet them and they aren’t adequately skeptical, Maranto said.

“They bring the dog out and try to go over the paperwork with the people and when you have a dog sitting in front of you or a new kitty sitting in front of you, you’re not really going to listen,” she said.

Maranto said she felt some pets were given Trazadone to make them seem calmer to adopters. Steele estimates about a third of the aggressive dogs she saw be adopted from the shelter were on Trazodone.

“I’ve never seen so many dogs given Trazodone in my life,” Steele said, who worked at an animal hospital before animal control. “‘They’re just anxious, give them Trazadone. Give them Trazadone. So they’ve got them on Trazodone, every day, all day, twice a day so when people come in to view them they obviously have Trazodone in their systems so they’re more chill, more relaxed and they get them home and they’re like, ‘What in the hell is this dog?’ ”

The agency’s medication practices are reviewed by veterinarians and use standard dosages, Catlett said.

“Being in a shelter environment is extremely stressful for animals thus; some animals require medication assistance,” she said. “Any medications or treatments given to animals is under the direction of a veterinarian on staff.”

McDonough said she agreed it was appropriate in some cases when a dog could not settle to give them Trazadone, but she wasn’t aware of any getting antidepressants for the purposes of seeming calmer to potential adopters.

“When a dog is in a kennel situation for a long period of time just like anyone else they get upset more and more and more and it seems to me unkind to let them act out if we can help them,” McDonough said.

While staff veterinarian Dr. Holly Mazzurco replaced McDonough in December, Maranto said McDonough’s name was still on prescription labels months after she left in September.

Mazzurco said she works at the agency full time and has more responsibilities at the shelter than Dr. McDonough did. She said she has been reviewing the medication practices to see if any updates are necessary and added that her team consults with her before administering drugs for the sake of combating anxiety.

“The usage of anti-anxiety medications, such as Trazadone, are now commonplace in the veterinary and shelter worlds as shifts for the need to address mental well-being in addition to basic care such as food, water and shelter have evolved,” Mazzurco said in an email. “I support the use of these medications in the manner that Animal Care & Control is currently using them to reduce stress in our animals.”

Dogs aren’t typically meant to be on these drugs for long periods of time like they were at animal control, Maranto said, only in anticipation of them getting anxious for a car ride or vet appointment.

Dr. Reggie Cox, a veterinarian with Alpha Veterinary Center in Glen Burnie, said about 90% of the time she gives out Trazodone, it’s for one-time use, such as a vet visit.

Typically a small, 20-pound dog is prescribed 25 to 50mg the day before the event and another dose the day of, Cox said, and dosage scales up based on the size of the dog. She only prescribes the pet daily Trazadone if they’re highly anxious. If she does, the dosage is usually fairly similar to what she would give them on a case-by-case basis, she said.

“The public expects us to set them up to be successful,” Maranto said. “There are so many good animals that deserve good homes and they push and push on these ones that have issues.”

Not all animals were prescribed drugs despite exhibiting aggressive behavior.

In April 2022, a 5-year-old pitbull named Dozier was brought to animal control.

When technicians would try to open the cage to examine the dog and get him to warm up, Dozier would become “wide-eyed, lip curled, showing teeth, tail tucked,” according to a copy of the dog’s initial examination provided to The Capital.

“You couldn’t restrain the dog. He tried to bite my hand off putting a muzzle on him,” recalled Steele who was so unnerved by his behavior that she went as far as including additional documentation about her experience with the pitbull in his file.

Two weeks after his arrival, Dozier was adopted by the person who had brought him to the shelter. When he first left the agency, he was terrified, his owner said, who requested anonymity because she works in animal care. But after working with him for several months he became very well-behaved.

“He’s progressed from being scared and feeling like he has to protect himself,” she said. “Now that he has me he does very well.”

Maranto said there were numerous times, particularly during her last few years at animal control, when she took in a vicious or aggressive animal, it got adopted, and the adopter brought it back deeply upset thinking they’d failed the animal as they requested it be euthanized for biting.

“Having animals come back for biting kids and seeing the bites on a citizen who is completely upset because they did not know the reality behind the animal they adopted from us eventually takes a toll on you,” Maranto wrote in her November 2022 exit interview. Exit interviews are supposed to be reviewed by the county police department. Maranto said she raised these issues to the police supervisors several times but never saw any action taken.

Police spokesperson Marc Limansky said the department was made aware of the issues by animal control staff in the past. Commanders who met and discussed the issues with animal control management said they were satisfied with the decisions made to address the issues at the time, Limansky said.

Another dog, an Australian Shepard named Zuko, was documented for biting and growling while being pet after he was brought to animal control in May 2022. He was adopted out anyway. When the adopter brought him back for biting, his owners were told all the county could do was euthanize him, Maranto said, so the family decided to keep him.

“If there is some sort of aggression issue it should not be able to be adopted out,” Baker said. “At what point does the public become your priority and not your numbers?”

Former employees said the agency is set up to fail because it has two contradictory objectives. As an animal control agency, it is designed to protect residents from dangerous animals while the shelter’s goal is to find homes for as many animals as possible.

The dueling objectives of a combined shelter and animal control agency is an issue that occurred in Queen Anne’s County across the bay. Since 2012, they have functioned as separate entities, said Queen Anne’s County Administrator Todd Mohn.

The decision to separate the two entities was originally financial, Mohn said, as the county was hit hard by economic factors and needed to reorganize. They decided to enlist a nonprofit to help with the shelter so they could rely on that group’s funding to support the animals. However, the county still wanted to keep the animal control staff who worked on the public safety side separate and housed them in the county’s emergency management office.

“There are some competing interests there with the control piece and the animal services piece so at that time we did separate them,” Mohn said.

Over the years, Mohn noticed the people who worked with the animals as staff of animal control would tend to lean toward euthanasia while animal activists in the community would lean toward adoption. That’s why the county created a euthanasia board that included residents, staff, veterinarians and behavior experts who review information and vote on each euthanasia case, Mohn said.

“We have a pretty rigorous procedure,” Mohn said. “It’s always difficult but in some cases it’s absolutely the right thing to do because you don’t want to be adopting animals who are going to end up coming back anyway.”

In Anne Arundel the decision to euthanize is made by animal control leadership alone, former employees said.

Mohn said Queen Anne’s animal services were brought back under sole county management in 2020 as the shelter was struggling to raise enough money to support the program, but the organizations are still run by separate managers and in separate offices, Mohn said.

“It all comes down to good balance,” he said.

It can be tough to ensure everyone’s needs are met, Catlett agreed, but she said she feels confident her agency makes the best decisions for all.

“Each decision is difficult, and the team recognizes it is nearly impossible to make everyone happy with any life-or-death decision,” she said, adding her and the rest of the agency’s leadership “try to find the best balance between animal welfare and public safety.”