A dog waits in a cage Feb. 15 at Lied Animal Shelter a week after about 150 diseased animals and another 850 exposed to them were destroyed. Photo by K.M. Cannon.

Local animal control officers repeatedly warned Lied Animal Shelter officials about problematic crowding conditions nearly a year before outside experts discovered a disease outbreak fueled by the facility's packed state.

It remains unclear whether those warnings to reduce Lied's population numbers fell on deaf ears before a crisis last month forced the destruction of 1,000 animals infected with or exposed to deadly viruses at the regional pound.

In monthly meetings last year, visiting animal control officers from Clark County, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas told Lied officials that they were housing too many animals, employing too few staff members and not properly training employees, said a person who attended some of the meetings last spring.

"It was constructive criticism, but it was ignored," said the person, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Animal control officers told the private operators of the pound they had "serious concerns," the person said, and repeatedly instructed the shelter's operators to reduce the number of dogs they had in runs.

Clark County Animal Control chief Joe Boteilho, who attended some of the same meetings, acknowledged that he and a deputy voiced such concerns about conditions that were out of compliance with American Humane Association guidelines that Lied had to hew to as part of their county contract.

But Boteilho disagreed that Lied officials ignored them.

"Anytime we saw some things out of compliance, we were pointing them out, and they were addressing them. We were making progress down that road," he said.

"We were talking to the shelter and working with them. They were on the right path," he said.

Boteilho said that several times he pointed out areas where too many dogs were in a cage, creating dangerous crowding conditions, and Lied officials would respond immediately.

"Sometimes they would euthanize to reduce the numbers, or they would move animals," he said.

He also pointed to larger steps Lied adopted at animal control officers' suggestion.

"They streamlined how animals were moving through there, from receiving on down the line," Boteilho said.

Lied also introduced a computer system that tracked animals whereabouts.

"They needed to shift their paradigm (from a no-kill shelter) toward a municipal pound, and that was hard for them because they didn't want to kill animals, but they were taking steps," he said.

But a former senior staff member who requested anonymity disagreed and said that shelter director Diane Orgill frequently disagreed with the animal control officers' analysis and did little to adopt measures to attend to them.

"She didn't want to hear that there were too many animals, and she was suspicious that they (animal control) wanted to take over the shelter, so she ignored them," the staff member said.

Several local advocates for animals said they also complained to Orgill about dangerous conditions more than a year ago.

One of them, Gina Griesen, snapped photos of overcrowded, sick animals during a September 2005 visit to Lied in search of a friend's lost dog.

"There were around 10 dogs in each run with puddles of vomit and diarrhea," Griesen said. "I'm not a vet, but I could see there were problems with sick dogs. These animals were suffering."

Griesen said she told Orgill that the shelter had far too many animals and that sick ones needed to be euthanized. Griesen said Orgill dismissed her concerns.

"She said, 'You're just like animal control, just like Joe Boteilho. You want us to kill everything,' " Griesen said.

Orgill did not respond to calls seeking comment.

Griesen made her concerns and photos public at a Sept. 21, 2005, Las Vegas City Council meeting and e-mailed a letter describing conditions to Clark County commissioners.

Although Boteilho said conditions were improving, Griesen and the former Lied staff member said nothing was changing at the shelter as officials there heard repeated complaints about conditions.

As evidence backing their contention, they pointed to what unfolded when outside veterinary experts visited Lied earlier this month for a four-day inspection initiated by shelter officials.

The team from the Humane Society of the United States declared an emergency at the North Mojave Road shelter after discovering an outbreak of Parvovirus and distemper in dogs and panleukopenia in cats.

Lied closed for a week as about 150 animals infected with the diseases, and another 850 exposed to them, were destroyed at the Humane Society's recommendation.

HSUS officials stayed an extra day to help perform the euthanasia and train Lied staff on proper procedures.

Lied since has adopted HSUS recommendations to keep fewer animals to prevent another outbreak.

Shelter spokesman Mark Fierro said the Humane Society told Lied officials that their attempt to operate the regional pound as a no-kill shelter where dogs and cats are kept longer in hopes of adopting them out made animals more susceptible to disease because of the stress from the crowded conditions.

Lied also has adopted HSUS policies for cleaning the facility and immunizing animals as soon as they come into the shelter with a faster-acting vaccine.

Allegations of pound mismanagement are not new for Lied operators the Animal Foundation, a private nonprofit group that contracts with Southern Nevada municipalities to provide shelter services.

A 2001 investigation by Las Vegas found that management controls at the shelter were inadequate, that poorly trained employees had illegal access to controlled substances and that thousands of dollars had been stolen.