Processing Bite Quarantine

This process takes you through how to process animals that are involved in a Bite/Scratch incident and must be quarantined, e.g. for countries where Rabies is an issue. 

Calculations for the length of quarantine time will vary depending on local requirements and laws. For example, some require the quarantine time must apply from the time the Bite Quarantine status is applied, but others may prefer to calculate it from the time since the bit itself happened. 

You can set up Hold Times for Bite Quarantine via the Circumstance. The Circumstance can either be applied at the time the animal first entered care or at any time during the animal's stay. It will alter the Date Due Out accordingly, although in some cases (e.g. if the bite happened prior to the animal entering care and your process requiring the quarantine begin from the time of the bite itself), you may need to manually adjust to compensate for variables. To adjust Hold Times for Bite Quarantine cases, see our help doc here. 

Admitting a Bite Quarantine animal as an Intake

This process is applicable if the animal needs to be recorded as "In Care", even if the quarantine time is to be completed in a home. 

To admit a Bite Quarantine animal:

1. From the Welcome/Search page, search for the Person, Agency or Shelter/Rescue presenting the animal to you
2. Scroll down to the Person Categories at the bottom of the page and select the one most appropriate for the intake of this animal. This can include any of the following Person Categories:
   • Agency Incoming
   • Stray
   • Owner Surrender
   • Ambulance*
   • Cruelty Cases*
   • Animal Control Officer*
     *Intakes marked with an asterisk (*) are available via Dispatch Jobs, rather than a Person Category. 
3. When the Animal Details page loads, select the source applicable to the intake type. This denotes the means by which the animal entered care for quarantining. 
   • Remember, you will not be able to use the Circumstance to differentiate between an animal surrendered voluntarily to an Animal Control Officer (ACO), Ambulance officer or Humane Officer,  and a stray animal brought in by the same, so make sure you select the appropriate source, e.g. ACO - Impound or Owner Surrender - ACO. 
   • Owner Surrender Bite Quarantines (including Owner Surrender via ACO, Ambulance or Humane Officer) fall into two categories:
     

     a) the owner cannot reliably contain the pet for the quarantine time and have surrendered it for the sole purpose of completing the quarantine time safely, after which they are able to take it back and

     b) the owner has relinquished ownership of the pet, regardless of the outcome of the quarantine.
     
     Notes relating to either category will need to be recorded on the file. The General Animal Notes may be useful for this purpose. 

4. Select the Bite Quarantine status. This activates the file for bite-related reports and helps you identify these animals in care. You may select*:
   
   • Bite Quarantine: If the animal is quarantined on site, this status should be used.
   • Bite Quarantine (Home): If the animal is allowed to be quarantined in the home, i.e. has come into the shelter and is being released to the owner for home quarantine but must be monitored by the shelter for the duration of the quarantine. This is an in care status and therefore can be monitored and reported on the same way as Bite Quarantine. It simply helps you identify easily that the animal is off-site with the owner.
5. Select the Circumstance Bite Quarantine (unless your local process varies from this). This will set the Date Due Out to the exact number of days from the intake date depending on the set up in your Hold Times Administration (typically 10 days). 
6. Complete the rest of the information for the intake as required by your local processes. 
7. When the Animal Details page is complete, go to the Animal Menu on the right and locate the link Add Bite/Scratch Incident. 
   • Once a Bite Scratch Incident is added, a bright yellow banner will display at the top of the Animal Details page whenever the page is loaded, warning of a Bite Scratch Incident and offering a link to the Bite Scratch Incident history pop-up page. 
8. Click the link and complete the form. For detailed steps on completing this form, click here. 

Don’t forget to:

• Take and upload a photo of the animal.
• Enter vaccinations, tests, and treatments if administered at the time of intake.
• Print out a Kennel Card to be placed on the kennel where the animal is placed.
• If required, print a copy of the Bite/Scratch Incident form.
• Add any applicable notes to the General Animal Notes link in the Animal Menu on the right side of the Edit Animal Details

Assign a kennel number to the animal once they have been placed, if it has not already been done

* If your area is lucky enough to have a stable of foster homes available that are will to take and reliably contain bite cases until their quarantine time has expired, there is also the option of the status Bite Quarantine - In Foster. As with any foster status, it is only available via the Foster process, so you must still assign the initial Bite Quarantine status for new intakes (animals that have bitten/scratched while in care can go straight from their previous status to the Bite Quarantine - In Foster status via the Foster process). 

These pets are processed just as any normal Foster process; the only difference is this special status that marks them in care, a bite/scratch case and in foster all at once. From here, their bite quarantine can proceed as for any other animal. 

If the animal bit/scratched while already in care: 

This can raise additional challenges in calculating quarantine times, depending on the structure of your local bite quarantine requirements. 

 However, this process should cover most eventualities:

1. On the day the bite/scratch incident takes place, change the animal's status to Bite Quarantine. 
2. If required, change the Circumstance to Bite Quarantine, however, this may not always be necessary. Only take this step if it is required for reporting reasons.
   • If selected, this will re-calculate the Date Due Out from the current Date In/Found
   • If the animal has been in care for more than the required length of time already, or if the duration of the quarantine must be determined from the date of the bite rather than the date the animal was already in care, this may need to be manually adjusted by clicking on the Date Due Out calendar icon and selecting the date the quarantine is to end. 
3. Unless amending the Circumstance was sufficient to accurately do this, for clarity we recommend applying the Put Animal On Hold option to clarify for your users when the Bite Quarantine will be completed. 
   • Animals with this option activated can be tracked using report 728 Put Animal On Hold, which allows you to filter by the reason for the hold so you can target your Bite Quarantine animals specifically.
   • For more information on using the Put Animals on Hold feature, see our help doc by clicking here. 
4. Complete the Bite/Scratch Incident report 

Don’t forget to:

• Take and upload a photo of the animal.
• Enter vaccinations, tests, and treatments if administered at the time of this incident.
• Print out a new Kennel Card to be placed on the kennel where the animal is placed.
• If required, print a copy of the Bite/Scratch Incident form.
• Add any applicable notes to the General Animal Notes link in the Animal Menu on the right side of the Edit Animal Details

 

 

Releasing a Bite Case:

If the animal has completed quarantine time without issue and can be released back to the owner, and is linked to the owner already, then the status "Bite Quarantine/RTO" can be applied directly to the Animal Details page from the status menu, or can be made available via the Reclaimed menu upon request (if it isn't already there).

If the animal is in care, you can identify the end of the quarantine time simply by changing the status to something indicative of the next step in the animal's journey. 

 

Reporting:

There are two reports that primarily focus on bite cases: 

Report 620: Bite Quarantine Status Report

This report lists animals that had a Bite Quarantine status during the date range selected. Its filters include -

• All pets who had a Bite Quarantine status applied within the date range selected.
• Jurisdiction: this filter uses the jurisdiction field on the Animal Details page stored in Source History.
• Date Range: limits the report to animals that had a bite quarantine status within these dates
• Sources: target only animals with a specific source(s) at the time of the bite. Selecting none will include all. 
• Region/Physical Location: use this filters to limit the report return to animals only in one Physical Location. Defaults to "All Regions" to include all pets. 

This report return includes the date in (as Source Date), the Status Date (assuming this is the date the bite occurred), Animal ID number, Animal Type, Jurisdiction and Post/Postal/Zip Code.

Report 114: DOH Bite Cases

This report was designed as a custom built report, so may not be available on all sites. If you'd like to use it and it does not appear in your list of reports, contact support@shelterbuddy.com.

Very simply, this report lists all bite cases ever entered into your system, regardless of status. It looks only for pets that have had a Bite/Scratch Incident entered. It has no filters (except font size) and automatically exports to Excel format. 

The report return includes -

• All pets with a Bite/Scratch Incident record. Animals may be represented more than once if they have multiple Incidents. 
• Photo: image of the animal if available
• Bite ID: the ID number from each specific Bite/Scratch Incident
• Animal ID
• Name
• Region: Physical Location assigned to the bite
• Desexed/Spayed/Neutered: The spay/neuter status of the pet
• Sex
• Colour
• Secondary Colour
• Breed
• Secondary Breed
• CrossBreed Status (yes/no)
• Source
• Date In Shelter
• Hold: this column does not relate to any field, it is designed for you to manually enter notes in.
• Bite Date: the Date of Incident from the Bite/Scratch Incident form.
• Days since Bite: a rounded calculation of the number of days since the Bite Date
• Bite LOS: The difference between the date of the bite, the date entered care and today. This number may match the Days since Bite, if the animal bit and entered care on the same day, or it may be less than that if the animal bit and then several days later entered care. 
• Kennel LOS: the number of days the animal has been in care overall. 

Report 700: List Bite Reports

This report was designed as a custom built report, so may not be available on all sites. If you'd like to use it and it does not appear in your list of reports, contact support@shelterbuddy.com.

This report was designed to display details for bite/scratch incidents entered within a specified date range. The only filter is for the date range, which uses the Date of Incident from the Bite/Scratch Incident form to target records, and a number of show/hide fields, including:

• desexDate: the Spay/Neuter date from the Medical Details page
• License Expiry: the date a license is due to expire (only applies if the license was processed through Shelter Buddy. Ignores the date if it was entered manually onto the Animal Details page)
• Rabies Due to Expiry: uses the Date Due from Vet Treatments for Rabies vaccinations. 

Multiple incidents may appear within a selected date bracket, so the animal may be represented multiple times on the report. Use the Bite ID column to identify separate incidents for a single animal. 

For this report, "Owner" refers to the person currently (actively) linked to the animal. I.e. the person that will load if you click the Go to Person link from the Animal Details page. If the link changes, this information will change also (e.g. if a pet is reclaimed from care, or placed in foster care). It represents the person currently in custody of the animal, rather than the legally recognised "owner". 

The report return includes the following fields: 

• Bite ID
• Incident Date - from the Bite/Scratch Incident page
• Animal ID
• Type
• Breed - Includes both Primary and Secondary breeds
• Gender
• Age - will use Age Group if no Date of Birth is entered
• Colour - Includes both Primary and Secondary colours
• Name - of the animal
• Victim - from the Bite/Scratch Incident page
• Victim Phone - from the Bite/Scratch Incident page
• Victim Address - from the Bite/Scratch Incident page
• Victim Zip Code
• Owner ID - Person ID number of the person currently linked to the pet
• Owner Phone - from the Person Details page
• Owner Address - Physical Address of the person currently linked to the pet
• Owner Zip Code
• All Fields from the Incident Details section of the Bite/Scratch Incident 
• Submitted to Lab - from the Laboratory Details section of the Bite/Scratch Incident
• Lab Submitted to - from the Laboratory Details section of the Bite/Scratch Incident
• Spay/Neuter Date - from Medical Details page
• Rabies Due Date - from Vet Treatment History