The southeast part of the United States used to be a graveyard of No Kill hopes. Communities in the southeast have traditionally lagged behind in funding and supporting their shelters. The warm climate with lots of rain and vegetation provides an ideal habitat for feral cats. Practices such as keeping dogs confined and spaying and neutering pets have been slow to catch on. And cities in the southeast are not generally thought of as the most progressive in the country. But recently a minor miracle has occurred. Now we have Atlanta, Tampa, Gainesville, and several other southeastern cities making rapid progress to saving all of their healthy and treatable animals. The southeast appears to be going through the shelter revolution that happened in the northern part of the country 10-15 years ago. Particularly noteworthy is Jacksonville, Florida, which in the past two years has exceeded the 90% live release rate goal. ACPSD works closely with two large non-profits in the city. The Jacksonville Humane Society (JHS) takes in some strays and owner surrenders and pulls animals, including behavior and medical cases, from ACPSD. First Coast No More Homeless Pets (FCNMHP) is known for its spay-neuter and community cat programs. There are three aspects of the Jacksonville coalition’s program that stand out as especially effective. First, the coalition makes every effort to keep pets in their homes. The city shelter has a help desk. JHS reports a 60-70% success rate for its pioneering “safety net” initiatives. FCNMHP operates a low-cost veterinary clinic that does not turn any pet owner away, even if they cannot pay, and JHS has a similar program at their clinic. Low-cost and free spay-neuter services are available at multiple clinics, with FCNMHP alone having performed almost 15,000 low-cost and free surgeries in the previous year. The FCNMHP food bank gives out over 200,000 pounds of pet food each year to low-income pet owners. The second highly noteworthy aspect of the Jacksonville program is their cutting-edge approach to community cats. FCNMHP collaborates with ACPSD and Best Friends Animal Society in a program called Feral Freedom that has made Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) the default solution for feral cats in Jacksonville. And FCNMHP was one of the pioneers of the comprehensive approach to community cats that first appeared on the national stage in late 2013 and has been so successful in the Million Cat Challenge. This has been a revolution in cat management, and it’s hard to overstate the national importance of this new paradigm. The third outstanding aspect of Jacksonville’s success is their mega-adoption events, which contribute to the coalition’s high adoption numbers. These events have become a way for Jacksonville to help its neighbors, with shelters from the surrounding areas invited to participate. Each year, neighboring jurisdictions place about 2,000 animals in adoptive homes at Jacksonville’s mega-adoption events. Nassau County, which is just north of Duval County and is an FCNMHP partner, achieved a live release rate of over 90% in its most recent reporting year. You can read more about Jacksonville’s programs in the playbook they presented at the 2014 Best Friends national conference. Perhaps the underlying reason for Jacksonville’s success is the close working relationship that the three agencies have had for years now. They jointly promote events such as the mega-adoptathons that Jacksonville is famous for, and share resources. As Denise Deisler, head of JHS, says, “we are flying in formation towards the same goal.” So now for the results. The combined statistics for ACPSD and JHS for the year ending in September 2015 show a live release rate, by the standard calculation, of 96%. The modified live release rate (including all deaths at both shelters) was 94%. These percentages might be very slightly lower if intra-coalition transfers were subtracted out, as I prefer to do, but it appears to me based on the statistics and information that were sent to me that subtracting out intra-coalition transfers would make a difference of less than one percentage point in the combined ACPSD and JHS live release rate. Historically, ACPSD’s live release rate was 35% or less from the year 2000 up until Scott Trebatoski was hired as director in late 2008. The live release rate climbed to 50% in 2009, his first full year as director, then went to 74% in 2012 and 85% in 2013. Trebatoski left ACPSD in March 2014 to become director of the Hillsborough County (Tampa) shelter, and was replaced by Nikki Harris. Harris previously worked for the Nebraska Humane Society and FCNMHP before moving to ACPSD as shelter manager. Harris recently resigned from ACPSD and went to work for JHS, and the city is interviewing candidates to replace her. I want to say a word about the recent allegations involving Nikki Harris. News reports about the number of complaints against Harris and the nature of the complaints have been somewhat confused, but apparently the main complaint comes from a former employee and alleges falsification of ACPSD records. The city investigates all such “whistleblower” complaints, and it is investigating this one. Euthanasia drugs are controlled substances and they are subject to strict reporting requirements. As far as I can tell from the media reports (the full substance of the complaints has not been made public that I’m aware of) there has not been any allegation that more euthanasia drugs were used than were accounted for. Under these circumstances, and given that ACPSD performance did not improve more than one would expect under Harris’ tenure based on previous trend lines, I think Harris is entitled to the benefit of the doubt while the investigation is proceeding. Moreover, Harris is only one small part of an effort that has been going on for many years in Jacksonville and encompasses several agencies. Regardless of the outcome of the investigation, the progress in Jacksonville is undeniable.

Ocean City is a resort town located in Cape May County, near the southern tip of New Jersey. The town has 12,000 year-round residents, but in the summer the population swells to as much as 130,000 people with an influx of visitors and part-time residents. The Humane Society of Ocean City (HSOC), a private non-profit, provides animal control and sheltering for Ocean City. The shelter accepts owner surrenders by appointment, and I was told in a telephone call to the shelter that it has a waiting list. HSOC has a full-service veterinary clinic that provides low-cost care by appointment. The shelter also offers an “Affordable Spay/Neuter Clinic.” Public shelters in New Jersey report to the state’s Department of Health, which provides an annual county-by-county summary. A shelter’s individual report may be obtained by request from the state. The report for calendar year 2012 for HSOC shows that the shelter did very well, with a 97% live release rate. Intake was 179 animals, including 82 owner surrenders and 74 strays. The shelter reported that no animals died or were lost in shelter care. The shelter did not report any owner-requested euthanasias. In 2013, intake was 194 cats and dogs. The live release rate was 99%. Ocean City, NJ, was originally listed by this blog on October 3, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Washoe County in Nevada (population 421,000), includes the cities of Reno (population 225,000) and Sparks (90,000). The three jurisdictions have a public-private partnership for animal control and sheltering. The municipal Washoe County Regional Animal Services (WCRAS) handles animal control for all three jurisdictions. WCRAS is known for its very successful return-to-owner program, which re-homes a high percentage of animals in the field and actively seeks to find the owners of impounded animals. The great majority of animals not returned to their owners are transferred to the private, non-profit Nevada Humane Society (NHS) for placement. NHS also handles intake of owner surrenders from Washoe County residents. The shelter requires an appointment and a small fee for surrenders. Leadership at WCRAS changed in 2012 with the retirement of its director, Mitch Schneider. Recently, WCRAS became a stand-alone department. In another big change, Bonney Brown, who started as director of NHS in 2007, resigned in 2013. A Best Friends blog from July 2011 provides a look at how she used pet retention and creative marketing, along with other programs, to reduce intake and increase live outcomes. The new director for NHS is Kevin Ryan, who was previously director of Pet Helpers, a non-profit in Charleston, South Carolina. Under Ryan’s leadership, Pet Helpers was credited with an initiative that increased the save rate in Charleston County from 37% to 77%. The combined statistics for WCRAS and NHS for 2012 showed a save rate of 92% for cats and dogs, calculated as a percentage of intake. For 2013, the save rate was 90%. The 2013 save rate includes deaths in shelter care with euthanasias. Combined intake was 15,350 in 2013, down slightly from 15,516 in 2012. Reno, Sparks, and Washoe County, Nevada, were originally listed by this blog on April 16, 2013, based on their 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Dane County, in the southern part of Wisconsin, has 488,000 residents. The city of Madison, the state capital, is located in Dane County. Dane County contains over 60 cities, towns, and villages. Animal sheltering is provided for the county by the Dane County Humane Society (DCHS), a private 501(c)(3) organization, which takes in strays for the county and accepts owner surrenders. The shelter asks people to make an appointment for surrenders, and charges a small fee. In 2007-2008, Maddie’s Fund developed a strategic plan and a spay/neuter project to decrease euthanasia of shelter animals in Dane County. The plan included formation of a coalition which included DCHS, Dane County Friends of Ferals, Shelter from the Storm, and Heartland Farm Sanctuary. DCHS reported a live release rate of 86% for 2012 (see page 27 in the link). Total intake for the year was 4704 cats and dogs. Intake increased sharply to 5211 dogs and cats in 2013 (6004 animals overall), and the live release rate was 85%. Dane County, WI, is counted in the Running Totals as an 80%+ community.

Here is my latest article for the Huffington Post blog. I’ve included all the big cities that have made it to No Kill or are almost there. Let’s get the word out about the good news on No Kill! In just the last few years we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of major cities and metro areas in the United States whose animal shelters have either reached “No Kill” status or are getting close. People define “No Kill” in different ways, but the most common definition of a No Kill community is one where all the shelters in the community, taken together, save 90% or more of the community’s homeless pets. Six years ago there were no large cities that were No Kill by that definition. The first one was Austin, in 2011. Back then it was thought that large cities would probably be the last places where No Kill was achieved, because city shelters take in lots of animals and budgets are often tight. Yet today, just five years after Austin achieved No Kill, big cities are leading the way. One common way big cities get to No Kill has been by cooperative public-private efforts. Austin, for example, has a large non-profit, Austin Pets Alive!, that takes a substantial number of animals from the city shelter and finds adoptive homes for them. Austin also has another large non-profit, the Austin Humane Society, that does trap-neuter-return (TNR) for feral cats. Jacksonville, Florida, similarly has three organizations that are working closely together to make the city No Kill. The Jacksonville city shelter works with First Coast No More Homeless Pets, which does TNR and mega-adoption events, and the Jacksonville Humane Society, which pulls animals from the city shelter. Both Austin and Jacksonville had extremely high community save rates last year, in the mid-90% range. The non-profits in Austin and Jacksonville also work with surrounding communities to help them improve their save rates. The leadership of Austin Pets Alive! has been very instrumental in the success of San Antonio, whose city shelter just achieved a 90% save rate last December. And First Coast No More Homeless Pets has helped neighboring counties increase their shelter lifesaving. Some metro areas have large coalitions of shelters spanning several jurisdictions that work together. In the Portland, Oregon, metro area, shelters from four counties serving over two million people have achieved shelter save rates over 90%. The Denver metro area also has a large coalition that has reported save rates over 90% (although Denver’s success is marred by a long-standing pit-bull ban). Colorado’s shelters are saving about 90% of intake across the state. That includes thousands of dogs from other states that Colorado shelters take in each year. Another way that No Kill can happen is when advocates start a non-profit that bids on and wins the contract to run the city shelter. Then they reform it. This can be difficult in cases where the non-profit has to go it alone, but it has the virtue of putting advocates in complete control of the shelter. A good example of this method is Atlanta. Ten years ago probably few people in the United States would have believed that Atlanta would be No Kill in 2016, yet that is the goal of LifeLine Animal Project, the non-profit that in 2013 won the contracts to run both of the city’s shelters. LifeLine does not have a partner comparable to what we see in Austin or Jacksonville, yet it has already increased the save rate at both of its shelters to about 85%. In Kansas City, Missouri, as in Atlanta, a non-profit formed by No Kill advocates won the city contract. The Kansas City Pet Project was formed only just in time to make the bid. They managed to make the city No Kill in record time, within six months of their start date. They showed that it was not going to be business as usual when they held their grand opening on New Years Day, the first day of their contract in 2012. These cities are not flukes. There are similar stories in Baltimore, Washington DC, Seattle, Miami, the Salt Lake City metro area, the Richmond metro area, and San Francisco. There are large metro counties like Fairfax (outside of Washington DC) and San Diego that are on board. And many medium-sized cities and metro areas such as Asheville, Williamson County (just north of Austin), and Washoe County (home to Reno) have outstanding programs. Perhaps the most surprising transformation has been happening in New York City. The city shelter system in New York serves all five boroughs and takes in some 30,000 animals every year. The system has struggled with a lack of resources since the city took over animal control and sheltering from the ASPCA in 1994. In 2003, a non-profit named the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals, headed by Jane Hoffman, began to build a unique system for helping the city shelter. The Mayor’s Alliance is a large consortium of shelters and rescues, currently numbering well over 150 organizations, that pulls animals from the city shelter. The Mayor’s Alliance has evolved to the point that it now provides an interface for the complicated task of coordinating so many organizations in the placement of many thousands of animals. It’s a big, messy system that seems chaotic sometimes, but in 2015 the New York City shelter system had an 86% live release rate. There is no reason why every city in the country cannot do what these cities have done. With high-intake cities like San Antonio, Austin, Kansas City, and Atlanta going No Kill, there is no longer any room for excuses. The deciding factor is not how wealthy or progressive the city is, but whether local humane advocates are willing to step in and make No Kill happen. LifeLine Animal Project, Kansas City Pet Project, First Coast No More Homeless Pets, the Jacksonville Humane Society, the Animal Shelter Alliance of Portland, and the Mayor’s Alliance are examples of how it gets done.

Is No Kill possible everywhere? I think the answer to that question is “yes.” That said, we have a problem that I have not seen discussed very much, and that problem is becoming more and more evident as No Kill sweeps the country. I’m talking about pet overpopulation. Now I know that saying “pet overpopulation” to some No Kill advocates is like waving a red flag in front of a bull, so let me explain. I do not think we have a nationwide pet overpopulation problem. If we could evenly spread out our homeless animals across the United States we would be able to find homes for all of them. The problem is that our homeless animals are not spread out evenly – in some places we have too many and in some places we have too few for the local adoption demand. In reporting on No Kill now for almost 5 years, my impression is that there are two things that most communities that get to No Kill have – a substrate and a trigger. The “substrate” is made up of all the conditions that exist in the community that will make No Kill easier to achieve. Those conditions may include a population that is more educated, wealthier, and more responsible than average. It may include terrain and climate that keeps down the number of strays. It may include the availability of a large veterinary school with a shelter medicine program. It may include a forward-thinking local government. It may include local non-profit animal welfare agencies. If I were going to use one word to describe a community that has a good substrate for No Kill, that word would be “progressive” – not in a political sense but in the sense of being forward-thinking and competent. The “trigger” for No Kill is a group of people who are able to use the substrate available in the community to increase shelter lifesaving. No Kill is not a one-person show. There is simply too much work involved for one person to do it alone, even in very small communities. But one person or a small group can provide the leadership that serves as the trigger. People who can serve as the trigger seem to be much more common in places that have a good substrate to start with. That is not surprising, because the talents needed to be a good trigger include what we see with very successful professionals, and that type of person is much more commonly found in progressive communities. Conversely, communities that are poor in resources tend to be poor in talent. And those poor communities have a poor record when it comes to No Kill. No Kill is not the first animal-welfare movement that poor communities have missed due to a lack of resources. In the 1970s we had a serious pet overpopulation problem nationwide. Back then it was common to see homeless animals in the street in most American communities. But around 1970 the humane movement embarked on a huge push for spay-neuter. Private veterinarians got on board and began recommending spay-neuter as a routine part of pet health care. Progressive communities embraced the spay-neuter message, and as the sterilization rate for owned pets soared in those communities the number of homeless animals in the street tanked. Some poor communities missed the boat, though, and those places continued to have large numbers of intact animals roaming the streets. In those communities today, the number of homeless animals on the street makes it look like 1970. From 1970 to 2000, as the number of homeless pets declined, shelter intake fell by about two-thirds even though the number of owned pets more than doubled during that time. It is hard to overstate how important the disappearance of stray animals from the environment, with the accompanying plunge in shelter intake, was for No Kill. It was this sharp fall in shelter intake and in the number of homeless animals in the environment that allowed No Kill to become possible. Shelters were able to have more “market share” because they were no longer competing for homes with the neighbor who had a litter of puppies, or the strays hanging out in the alley. But in some less progressive communities intake is still very high, and shelters in those communities face an insuperable task in trying to rehome all their animals locally. There are solutions. Transports will save dogs. Return-to-field will save community cats, both tame and feral. But the problem is that implementing transports and the new cat paradigms requires resources and leadership – the very things that are lacking in the communities that need them most. Our poorer, less educated communities do not have the conditions or the leadership for progressive shelter programs. They struggle to implement the new cat paradigms, struggle to be able to pay for transports, and struggle to find resources for low-cost spay-neuter outreach. So, what to do? That’s a big question facing No Kill going forward, and there do not seem to be any easy answers. I’m starting a new series on the blog, following the efforts of a few people in one small, poor county in the Appalachian hills of Virginia who are trying to get their community to No Kill. This community is particularly interesting because, while it has a few advantages, overall it has a great many disadvantages that stand in the way of the effort to build No Kill. As No Kill becomes the standard model for animal sheltering, communities like this will be our last great problem. The community I will be following is Tazewell County, Virginia. It is located in the far southwestern portion of the state, along the border with West Virginia. Its population in the 2010 census was just over 45,000 people, but the population is estimated to have fallen to around 43,500 since then. The county is typical of Appalachia in that it is mountainous with “hollows” that have been cut out by rivers and streams. Median household income in the county is $36,000, compared to $64,000 for the state of Virginia as a whole. One in four of the residents of the county did not graduate from high school. The county is isolated, with the nearest big cities some 3 hours away. Local news is mostly about car crashes, crime, and sports. The Tazewell County Animal Shelter is run by the county. It is in an old building located next to the landfill. The shelter lacks quarantine capability, and disease is reported to be common. In the 5 years from 2010 to 2014, the shelter’s live release rate according to the state reporting system ranged from 37% to 56%. Shelter intake in those same years has averaged almost 60 animals per 1,000 people, which is astronomical. In 2012 the sheriff’s department took over animal control and tried to round up all the stray dogs in an effort to “clean up” the county. They quickly realized that task was impossible. Cats in Tazewell County are considered free-roaming and are not picked up by animal control. So even though shelter intake is shockingly high, it does not represent the true number of homeless animals in the community. There are a few bright spots. Just in the last few months an animal-friendly person was elected to the county Board of Supervisors. The old shelter director retired not long ago, and the new director, while not a No Kill advocate, does not appear at this point to be hostile to efforts to help the shelter save more lives. A new shelter building is being planned, although it will not be fancy. There are no local ordinances that forbid trap-neuter-return (TNR) or require stray cats to be impounded. And there are some people in the county who have organized to try to improve things at the shelter. One group of about a dozen people, headed by local rescuer Rhonda Kay, formed an organization called Tazewell Animal Rescue Coalition, or Tazewell ARC, in 2013.  Rhonda is also trying to get another group, the Appalachian Dog Project, off the ground to help a wider area. In an interview I had with Rhonda yesterday we discussed what she is up against in trying to save the area’s homeless animals. Rhonda concentrates primarily on dogs, since they make up most of the shelter’s intake and most of the animals killed, and her group does not have the resources to take on large-scale TNR. She told me that on the short trip from her house to the local grocery store she will see several homeless dogs. Her group does not need to pull dogs from the shelter because they get as many animals as they can take in from people who have stray dogs on their property. Rhonda’s group is certified to do stray-hold in Virginia, so they are able to take in these animals directly and try to find their owners. They use social media, and with the small size of their community they are able to return a good portion of the dogs to their owners. But many have no homes. State statistics show a surprisingly high adoption rate for the Tazewell County shelter of about 14 dogs and cats per 1,000 people. Rhonda says this is because, although the shelter takes in animals only from Tazewell County, people come from out of the county to adopt. But even with this high rate of adoption per 1,000 people, the numbers coming into the shelter are so large that the euthanasia numbers are even higher. Rhonda says trying to increase adoptions locally is not a viable strategy because most households in the area already have as many dogs as they can care for. Rhonda believes that low-cost spay-neuter is the ultimate answer to the problem in Tazewell County. She is currently waiting to hear from the Virginia representative for HSUS, because she is eager to discuss the HSUS Pets For Life targeted spay-neuter program with him. She realizes, though, that spay-neuter is a long-term solution, and to save the dogs right now her group is trying to do transports. I say “trying” because Rhonda has experienced a great deal of difficulty in raising funds for the vetting and transport expenses that her group has to pay. In recent years states have imposed requirements that animals being transported have to have health certificates, and that means that the animals must have shots, be wormed, and pass a veterinary examination before transport. Receiving rescues may impose additional requirements on top of the state requirements, including that the animals be spayed or neutered and clear of heartworm before being shipped. Many states that receive a lot of transported animals have imposed quarantine restrictions, and rescues in those states have to spend their money building and maintaining quarantine facilities, leaving less money for things like spay-neuter and heartworm treatment of incoming animals. These various state requirements, some of which are good and some of which are probably excessive, have raised the costs and slowed the momentum of transports. Rhonda has faced problems both with finding receiving rescues and with raising money for transports, but she says raising money is the worst problem. If she had enough money, she could find receiving rescues for 50 dogs per month, rather than the smaller number she is able transport now. That 600 dogs per year would go a long way toward helping solve the problem for dogs in Tazewell County. The shelter killed 443 dogs in 2014. If Rhonda could transport 50 dogs per month she could save many of the shelter dogs and also a good number of the free-roaming homeless dogs that are not picked up by the shelter. I asked Rhonda what she had done to try to raise money, and her efforts amazed me. She reeled off a long list of businesses she had contacted, businesses she had tried to partner with for promotions, various sales efforts the group had tried, social media appeals of several types, direct appeals to local donors, and grant applications to national agencies. She has had little success with these efforts, and Tazewell ARC’s budget is less than $12,000 per year. Rhonda says that there are many homeless puppies in Tazewell County, but puppies are even more expensive than adults to transport. Puppies coming from the shelter may have been exposed to disease, and a litter of puppies breaking with parvo can quickly deplete Tazewell ARC’s resources. They have had this happen in the past and managed to save the puppies, but they are reluctant to focus on puppies while their financial resources are so uncertain. Rhonda’s group does not practice “open adoptions,” at least not to the extent that most No Kill groups do today. Some people might disagree with some of the policies of Tazewell ARC, but they have chosen their policies based on their assessment of local conditions. In addition to working on low-cost spay-neuter and transports, Rhonda is hoping that the new county supervisor who is animal-friendly will take an interest in the shelter and have some ideas for making progress. She has a meeting scheduled with the supervisor soon. If that looks promising Rhonda wants to start trying to build bridges with the new shelter management. I asked Rhonda if she felt that her group had adequate leadership in areas that require some technical skills, such as business planning, marketing, customer service, and fundraising, and she said “no.” She would love to have help in those areas, but has been unable to find local people who have those skills and are interested in improving things for homeless animals. I asked if she had contacted successful No Kill leaders and shelter directors for their suggestions, and she named several people whom she had attempted to contact. Most had not answered her e-mail queries, and of the few that had, none had any suggestions that she had not already tried. In the next weeks and months I hope to follow Rhonda’s continuing efforts to help the homeless animals in Tazewell County. She herself will tell you that her skills might not be as good as the skills of someone with a professional background in marketing, customer service, business management, or law. But right now all that the animals in Tazewell County have is her and her group, and a few other people with a couple of other groups. I was very impressed with what Rhonda has been doing. She works hard and is open to trying anything that might help. I could tell in interviewing her that it is discouraging to have so little success, but in spite of the difficulty of what she is trying to do she remains upbeat about the possibilities. I do not know how this story will turn out. Will Rhonda and her group be able to start making some headway? Will the new county supervisor turn out to be a key to change? Will the new shelter director make a difference? Will the HSUS Pets For Life program be able to help? Will Rhonda be able to raise money to expand the transport program? Will she find some people who can provide effective mentoring? Or will things stay the same, and will Rhonda’s group burn out as they keep finding doors closed? Will their kennel capacity fill up with dogs for whom they cannot find either transport or local adoption? Stay tuned. And if you think you can help, please contact Rhonda through Tazewell Arc.

The Humane Alliance of Western North Carolina, located in Asheville, has provided low-cost spay-neuter in the area since 1994, and reports that it has sterilized 350,000 animals. The Humane Alliance has long been recognized as a national leader in high-volume spaying and neutering, and many veterinarians have trained in its techniques. Now comes word that the ASPCA has acquired the Humane Alliance. The ASPCA has supported the Humane Alliance in the past, and the new arrangement is expected to provide additional ASPCA funding. Site plans for Brother Wolf’s future sanctuary in Asheville are on view today at the city’s VeganFest. In addition to being a leading city for No Kill, Asheville is also one of the most vegetarian- and vegan-friendly cities in the United States. Brother Wolf founder Denise Bitz believes that the vegan lifestyle shows a commitment to compassion for all animals. The Weatherford/Parker County animal shelter in Weatherford, Texas, has announced that it has had a 90%+ save rate for the past year. The shelter participated yesterday in the national Clear the Shelters event. Washington, DC’s cat cafe, Crumbs & Whiskers, continues to get publicity on important mainstream news sites. It was featured in an article on Vox recently, and then a few days ago it was featured in an online article on the WTOP website. It is somewhat unusual for the DC press, which is generally full of political news, to take as much of an interest in a pet-related phenomenon as they have shown in Crumbs & Whiskers. The WTOP article reports that reservations for time with the kitties are in so much demand that they are hard to get on weekends, and even on week nights. The cats at Crumbs & Whiskers come from the Washington Humane Society, and they are fostered at the shop until they are adopted. In seven weeks, the cafe has adopted out 16 adult cats and a couple of kittens. That is a rate of about 135 cats per year, not to mention the publicity for the shelter. The Animal Care Centers of New York City (formerly Animal Care and Control) are getting a new adoption partner. Best Friends will open an adoption center in the SoHo neighborhood in early 2016. Broward County, Florida, commissioners will consider a measure on September 10 to amend county law to allow the release back into the community of sterilized feral cats (scroll down to “other action” in the link). This could be a big step in the right direction for Broward County’s flailing No Kill effort. Here’s an article from someone who is concerned that the “crazy cat lady” stereotype may be hurting the adoption chances of cats. The stereotype is certainly offensive, but is it affecting adoption rates for cats? I tend to doubt it. The effect, if it exists at all, must be very small because I don’t recall it ever turning up in research on why people do or do not adopt. The 2015 Veterinary Behavior Symposium, put on by the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists, was on July 10th this year, the day before the AVMA’s yearly convention. Steve Dale offers a brief look at some of the presentations at the symposium in this article. One of the presentations addressed how leashed dogs may interact differently in dog greetings than unleashed dogs, and how this may have a bad effect on some dogs’ social skills. There has been a lot of interest lately in the health and behavior effects of spaying and neutering (see this roundable as one example), with studies suggesting that there may be both good and bad effects from the procedures. The discussions are especially pertinent to early-age sterilization. This is an important topic for animal shelters, as there is no way to guarantee that adoptive owners will sterilize their pets if it is not done before the pet leaves the shelter. And before pediatric sterilization became accepted in the 1990s, shelters were sometimes reluctant to adopt out puppies and kittens less than 6 months of age (the traditional minimum age for sterilization surgery) because so few adopters followed up on sterilization, even when it was free. So shelters have a big stake in pediatric sterilization. A 2014 study provides some favorable news for early-age sterilization, finding that cats did not show behavior differences based on whether they were sterilized early or at 6 months. Follow up was for 2 years. There has been renewed interest in chemical sterilization in recent years, driven mostly by the expense and invasiveness of traditional surgical sterilization, but also to some extent by concern with the side effects of surgery. This article in Cat Watch provides a summary of where we are with alternatives to the traditional surgical methods of sterilization. Animal shelters and rescues transport animals all the time, and at last we have a study on the safety of crates and carriers in accidents. The bad news is that most of the crates and carriers tested failed to meet the successful-outcome standard for the test. The good news is that some did. More good news is that standardized tests like this will no doubt encourage manufacturers to make safer crates and carriers in the future. The Animal Compassion Team (ACT), a No Kill group in Fresno County, California, that currently runs a No Kill shelter, is expected to be approved soon to take over the contract for animal control and sheltering for the county. Brenda Mitchell, who is the director of ACT, says that achieving No Kill for the county will not happen overnight, but she is optimistic for the future. The county badly needs a new shelter, and a county supervisor says one may be constructed within two years. Animal Rescue Rhode Island is helping to make a South Carolina shelter No Kill with its Bark and Ride transportation program. Since the program started it has saved over 700 dogs. Canine flu (H3N2 variety) has appeared in Atlanta. Vaccines against the flu are being developed. The appearance of the H3N2 virus, which is thought to have originated in Asia, stimulated this article about dog importation in the Clinician’s Brief. The author of the article appears to be unaware that the number of homeless dogs in the United States is rapidly coming into balance with the number of homes available. Even so, the article is a timely reminder that, if rescuers are going to increase importation of homeless dogs from other countries in the future (as I believe we should), we need to pay very careful attention to quarantine and vaccinations to make sure that imported dogs do not pose a health risk to dogs in the United States. A New Jersey shelter that had its water cut off asked the community for help and the community literally lined up to answer the call. Problem solved.

We hear a lot about No Kill programs, and very little about No Kill models. That’s too bad, because the programs are only one aspect of getting to No Kill. What are the programs, and what are the models? A No Kill program is any particular initiative or technique that a shelter uses to increase lifesaving. Many of the most important No Kill programs were developed by Richard Avanzino in the years from 1976 (when he was hired as president of the San Francisco SPCA) to 1989. The San Francisco SPCA during those years had a contract to do animal control and sheltering for the city. The programs Avanzino developed included a foster network,  integrating volunteers into most shelter operations, offsite adoptions, pet retention, behavior training, creative marketing, engaging the public, etc. Avanzino did not develop all of the programs that we think of today as part of No Kill operations. Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) for feral cats was developed back in the 1950s in England and the 1970s in the United States, independent of the shelters. The concept of open adoptions was pioneered by people in the traditional shelter industry in the 1990s. The low-cost spay-neuter movement started in the early 1970s. And in just the last three years we’ve had a revolution in cat sheltering with the new community cat paradigms. Many of the programs are common sense, and people in the 1980s and 1990s like Bob Rohde in Denver and Bert Troughton in New Hampshire independently developed foster, volunteer, and other programs for their progressive shelters. But even though Avanzino did not develop all of the programs himself, and even though others worked on similar initiatives, Avanzino was the one who first advocated at the national level for shelters everywhere to put a comprehensive group of lifesaving programs into practice. So that is a short history of No Kill programs. What about No Kill models? Avanzino realized early on when he started work at the San Francisco SPCA that full implementation of lifesaving programs was being hampered by the SPCA’s contract with the city. The SPCA was responsible under the contract for both animal control and sheltering, but the amount of money the city paid was not enough to do the job correctly. Every year the SPCA had to make up the difference out of funds donated by the private sector. Finally, in 1989, the SPCA ended its contract with the city over the funding issue. In the years from 1989 to 1994 Avanzino built a new model for No Kill – a public-private model that charged the city with carrying out its responsibilities of animal control and the private sector with serving as back-up for shelter lifesaving. The model that emerged in San Francisco consisted of two agencies, the San Francisco SPCA and a new city shelter. The new city-run shelter was responsible for animal control and return-to-owner, and also did many adoptions. The San Francisco SPCA pulled at-risk animals from the city shelter, did medical care and behavior training as needed, and adopted them out. This arrangement was formalized in 1994 in the famous Adoption Pact, in which the SPCA guaranteed to take any healthy animal that the city shelter could not place through its adoption program. The SPCA also worked toward taking all treatable animals, although it did not reach that goal in the 1990s. The public-private model freed the SPCA to spend more resources on spay-neuter, TNR, and other lifesaving initiatives while the city concentrated on the core functions of animal control and basic sheltering. The model worked extremely well, and by the time Avanzino left the San Francisco SPCA at the end of 1998 to head Maddie’s Fund, San Francisco as a community was saving roughly 70% of its shelter animals. That is not a great percentage by today’s standards, but it was extraordinary in 1998. The average live release rate for the nation as a whole in the year 2000 was on the order of 25-35%. Shelter medicine, which is so critical to high rates of lifesaving, barely existed in the 1990s. In fact, the first class in shelter medicine was not held until 1999. Under the conditions of the time, the San Francisco SPCA’s live release rate in 1998 was a stunning success. Not every community requires a complicated model to succeed. No Kill programs by themselves, put in place at a city or county shelter, have worked in some communities, particularly small communities with adequate resources. But on the whole shelters seem to be able to get to No Kill faster and to sustain higher rates of lifesaving if they are part of a public-private network of some type. Lots of cities have successfully used the San Francisco model, and we can think of that as the classic approach – the city shelter that works with a large private organization that is dedicated, first and foremost, to pulling at-risk animals from the shelter. This classic model, combined with a third large agency that deals primarily with feral and community cats, has produced extremely high live release rates in Jacksonville and Austin and, importantly, has proven to be sustainable. The classic San Francisco model is not the only one that works. There are other approaches, such as coalitions across jurisdictional lines (the Portland and Denver metro areas are examples), and New York City’s model of a rescue consortium that works with the city shelter through a non-profit umbrella agency. We also have examples (Atlanta, Kansas City MO) of cities where private organizations have bid on the contract to run the city shelter and are making it work with little or no help from other large, non-profit animal organizations. It is my impression that when larger cities use a contract model where the contractor has little outside help they struggle more than cities that are using the San Francisco or coalition models. Smaller cities, however, can do extremely well with the model of a local non-profit doing animal sheltering by contract with just rescue support – Charlottesville and Lynchburg, both in Virginia, come to mind. One thing that seems to be common to the most successful public-private models in large cities is that the public shelter, instead of trying to work with 50 or 100 or 200 individual rescues, is working primarily with one or a small number of partners. In Austin, it’s Austin Pets Alive. In Jacksonville, it’s the Jacksonville Humane Society and First Coast No More Homeless Pets. City shelters have limited time to devote to networking, and it greatly helps their efficiency and their willingness to work with the private sector when they have one or two large, well-organized non-profits to deal with rather than a myriad of individual groups. The bottom line from all this is that experience shows that for a large jurisdiction to succeed at getting to No Kill and sustaining it we need to think about both programs and models. A large city is not likely to achieve No Kill simply from implementing programs. The idea that all you have to do to get to No Kill is to hire a good director for the city shelter and implement a few programs is greatly oversimplified. The frequent failure of this approach when it has been tried without any consideration for the model being used has resulted in a lot of confusion, discouragement, and angst on the part of advocates when their “proven” programs fail to produce the desired result. The answer to this problem would appear to be that advocates should, from the beginning, think about how they are going to supply the public side of the partnership. If no suitable private organization exists, will they need to build one in order to succeed? When I have proposed this idea to advocates in the past I’ve gotten a lot of pushback. It’s much more complicated for advocates to think about forming a non-profit and building it into a large organization than it is to just complain to city leaders about the shelter. Complaining can be done from the comfort of home, while building an organization takes a lot of work and requires shouldering some risk of failure. The great majority of No Kill leaders today realize that the public-private model is a key to success, as you can see from simply looking at where the large national organizations are putting their money and on-the-ground support. But are they articulating this realization in a way that is getting to advocates? Are they making an effective counterargument to the people who maintain that all you need is a new director and a few programs for No Kill to happen overnight anywhere? For advocates who are not willing to do the work of building large non-profits from scratch, there is another possible route to take in some cities. Many cities have large humane societies or SPCAs that have been around for decades – in some cases since the 1800s. These organizations are often not doing much to help the city shelter. Instead of pressuring the city shelter to reform (which, without the necessary resources, can be like telling a person to pull themselves up by their bootstraps) advocates could work with the legacy humane societies to encourage them to start pulling at-risk animals from the city shelter. Too often I see advocates who are all over the city shelter but are ignoring the large legacy humane organization that might be just a couple of blocks away. The need for more attention to No Kill models is why I was glad to see Brent Toellner’s recent blog post (link is here) that provides a thoughtful look at various models. Toellner makes the very important point that the public-private model is not an end in itself. Instead, it is a way to make sure that the shelter has the resources it needs to do its job. In San Francisco, the resources available for shelter lifesaving essentially doubled when the city set up its own shelter operation and the San Francisco SPCA took the role of backup. Getting to a 90%+ live release rate requires having the resources for medical treatment and behavior rehabilitation. Resources can also allow a city to have a modern shelter in a good location rather than an animal warehouse next to the city dump. And resources can greatly help with recruiting talented people. There are many things to think of in making an effort to get a city to No Kill. This blog post, long as it is, covers only a fraction of the relevant considerations. A great place for advocates to start is talking to people who have made No Kill happen in a city of relatively the same size, with similar conditions. Mentoring may be as important as programs and models, but that will have to be the subject of another post.

King George County is located in Virginia and has 24,000 residents. It lies between Washington, D.C. and Richmond, along the Potomac River. Animal control and sheltering is provided by a government agency, King George County Animal Control (KGCAC). A group of volunteers known as the King George Animal Rescue League (KGARL) partners with KGCAC to pull animals from the shelter. This article from May 2012 describes how KGCAC and KGARL have used transports to help achieve their high save rates. The article describes how a Chow who was surrendered for being aggressive with children and who also had skin allergies was placed with an adoptive family in New Hampshire after volunteers worked for several months to find the placement. Like most successful rescues, KGARL uses social media. Their Facebook page has features on shelter animals and they run a Petfinder site for KGCAC. KGARL also provides assistance for low-cost spaying and neutering. Virginia shelters report their statistics each year to the Virginia Department of Agriculture state database. KGCAC reported live release rates of 93%, 98%, 98%, and 96% in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 respectively. In 2013, the live release rate was 91%, with an intake of 664. The modified live release rate (with animals who died in shelter care added to euthanasias) was 95% in 2012 and 89% in 2013. The format for the state report does not have a separate category for owner-requested euthanasia. King George County, Virginia, was originally listed by this blog on April 15, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Newport County in Rhode Island (population 83,000) lies along Narragansett Bay, and there are several islands in the bay that are part of Newport County. The largest of the islands is Aquidneck. There are three small cities on Aquidneck Island — the city of Newport (population 25,000), Middletown (16,000), and Portsmouth (17,000) (Portmouth’s territory includes several of the smaller islands along with part of Aquidneck). The Potter League is a non-profit animal shelter located in Middletown that has contracts for stray intake and sheltering for Middletown, Portsmouth, and the city of Newport. It also accepts owner surrenders from all residents of Newport County without any conditions, although it asks owners to fill out a personality profile on surrendered animals. The League offers a wide range of services and programs. The League publishes its statistics in annual reports. According to the report for fiscal year 2011-2012, the League had a total intake of 1732 animals during the year, with a live release rate of 91% (89% if owner-requested euthanasias are included with euthanasias). The League transferred in 331 animals from “overcrowded shelters in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and the Virgin Islands.” The report is interesting in that it shows that the money the League receives for its sheltering service is a small fraction of its total intake. One advantage that a non-profit has over a tax-funded city shelter is that non-profits can and do raise money directly from the public, often very successfully.

The villagers were living in conditions that made their existence seem almost as though they were on a different planet from the developed world. And as hard as life was for the villagers, the lives of their animals were even harder. Lara describes the suffering of the animals as “profound.” It was this experience that made her decide that she wanted her career to be improving the lives of animals. When Lara returned to the United States she settled in her home town of Middleburg, Florida, near Jacksonville, and began working with the Safe Animal Shelter (SAS). SAS was a private, limited admission No Kill organization. Lara started out as a volunteer and then joined the staff, working her way up from kennel tech to vet tech to assistant manager to director. She worked at SAS from 2005 to 2011. The last year she was at SAS she purchased a truck to allow her to transport animals from the county shelter to the SAS facility. She made regular trips to the county shelter and had to select animals to save from the ones they were going to kill. It was devastating to look at the ones she could not take, and she thought about them all the way home. It was this experience that made her decide that if she was going to help animals in a more meaningful way she would have to work in an open-admission shelter. When a director’s position became available at the open-admission county shelter in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, she applied for and won the job. The shelter, called Southern Pines, took in some 5,000 animals per year. Lara ran Southern Pines for two years, and during that time she and her team worked to bring up the number of animals that left alive. Lara was not focused on statistics at that time but she believes the shelter was killing about 2/3 of its animals when she started. When she left the save rate was in the range of 80% to 90%. Lara and her team did not follow any particular program to achieve those gains – instead, they brainstormed together to solve the problems that were in front of them in the county. Their success was so great that Lara decided she wanted to travel around the country, working at failing shelters for a couple of years and turning them around, then moving on. It was at that time, early in 2013, that Lara saw a mysterious ad on a website listing shelter jobs. The ad said that a large open-admission shelter in the southeast needed good leadership after years of unsuccessful leadership. The job sounded like just the thing for Lara, and she applied. It turned out that the ad had been posted by Rebecca Guinn of LifeLine Animal Project in Atlanta, which had just won the contracts to operate the two county shelters that serve the city of Atlanta. Rebecca’s mission was to make the city No Kill, and she was on a very tight deadline to get two large management teams up and running by the rapidly approaching takeover dates. Lara’s first thought was to stop the bleeding by making changes that they could implement quickly for maximum impact. The first thing she did was to start reaching out to rescues. There is no large organization in Atlanta that pulls lots of at-risk animals from the shelter, as Austin has with Austin Pets Alive!, Jacksonville has with the Jacksonville Humane Society, and Richmond has with the Richmond SPCA. There is the Atlanta Humane Society, but it does not take significant numbers of animals from the county shelters and does not take the behavior and medical cases that need the most help. So Lara hired two full-time rescue coordinators to make sure that any rescue that did want to pull from the shelter had all the information they needed and would receive complete cooperation. To minimize length of stay Lara adopted a first-come, first-served policy for strays. A person who wants to adopt an animal on stray hold, or a rescue that wants to pull a particular animal, can tag the animal as soon as it comes in the door. If the animal is not reclaimed by the owner it goes to that adopter or rescue as soon as the stray hold expires. Individuals who go through the adoption process for an animal on stray hold are advised that an owner might show up, and if so their money will be refunded, but this policy prevents the problem of highly desirable animals having many people signed up to adopt them and then being disappointed if they are not the one chosen. It also gives rescues the same chance to get an animal as anyone else, which makes the rescues more willing to work with the shelter. In addition to making the shelter as user-friendly for rescues as possible, Lara quickly instituted changes to make the shelter as inviting as possible for adopters. A large “STOP” sign that was in the lobby got pitched out. The tiny, thick plastic grill that separated visitors from the front desk was taken out, and a big, open window installed. Lara’s idea of customer service is to establish a relationship of trust with each person who walks in the door. She wants them to feel that if they adopt an animal, they can always turn to shelter staff for help and they will not be judged or criticized. The staff member who greets a visitor gives his or her full attention to the visitor, and does not make the visitor wait while answering the phone or doing other tasks. Another policy change that Lara made was to stop having Animal Control pick up healthy outdoor cats. Soon after taking over at the Fulton County shelter she examined the applicable laws and ordinances and found that there was no requirement for the county to impound free-roaming cats. Nor was there any requirement to impound wild animals like raccoons, possums, and foxes as the previous shelter operator had been doing. In fact, when she consulted with the authorities she found that the previous operator had been violating the law by impounding wild animals since the shelter was not licensed to do so. When people call the shelter asking to have cats picked up, the dispatcher tells them that the shelter will be happy to take in healthy cats over the counter. Animal Control will pick up sick or injured cats. Healthy cats who were found outdoors, with no known owner, are sterilized, vaccinated, and ear-tipped at no cost and then returned to their location (a three-day hold period applies to non-feral strays). The dispatcher explains to callers that if outdoor cats are taken to the shelter and killed, more cats are likely to show up and take their place. Most people are interested in the new way of handling cats and accepting of it. If a caller says that they just want the cats gone, however, LifeLine can send someone out to assess the situation and speak with the person in more detail to come up with a solution. The shelter euthanizes cats only for medical reasons. Both of the LifeLine county shelters – Fulton and DeKalb – are running at about an 85% live release rate right now. Lara told me that the biggest remaining problem area they have in saving the last 5% of savable animals is dogs with behavior problems. The Fulton County shelter is so small that dogs have to be housed with more than one to a run. This puts extra stress on the dogs. A dog that has been traumatized in some way might be fine if it went into a facility where it could have a quiet space of its own to decompress, but it might show fear or aggression under the circumstances of the Fulton County shelter. The shelter has a full-time foster coordinator and about 150 to 200 active foster caregivers, but that is not enough for all the dogs who need help. Shelter staff networks for these dogs as hard as they can with rescues, but these are the dogs who are killed if no rescue can be found. Now that Lara has her team in place and has raised the live release rate from 35% to 85%, she is turning her attention to this last group of animals. It won’t be easy, because the county does not provide resources to cover costs for these dogs. That means LifeLine will have to fundraise for the expensive process of getting these dogs the training they need and the quiet housing they will require while they are being rehabilitated. Lara will have been at the Fulton County shelter three years by next spring, and she has given up her idea of moving every two years to take over a failing shelter and turn it around. The challenges in Atlanta are so large, and the importance of No Kill in the city is so great, that she wants to stay there to continue the work. The work of the LifeLine team in getting Atlanta to the edge of No Kill in spite of very tough circumstances, with relatively little outside help, and in less than three years, has been one of the most inspiring stories I’ve seen in No Kill. I hope LifeLine is able to get the support it needs going forward, because Atlanta will certainly be one of the crown jewels of No Kill.

The state of Colorado will be releasing its shelter statistics for 2014 in the next week or two. The statistics are collected pursuant to the state’s PACFA reporting rule and include all intake shelters and rescues. The live release rate for Colorado as a whole for 2013 was 89%. We may find out when the statistics for 2014 come out that Colorado is the first state ever to go over the 90% LRR mark for an entire year. Summary statistics will be posted on the state’s PACFA website for those interested, and I will be reporting on the full statistics on the blog. The Austin Pets Alive! facility was flooded in the recent torrential rains in Texas. A call to the public resulted in dozens of people lining up to provide temporary homes for the animals. Volunteers also cleaned up the water and unclogged drains, allowing the shelter to reopen in only two days. Due to all the help from the public, APA! was able to take in 67 dogs from another facility to keep them from being euthanized. Maddie’s Fund has a helpful article on Twitter effectiveness for animal shelters and rescue groups, and another article with encouraging news on ringworm. Also a ton of information on saving orphaned kittens. Saving Our Companion Animals, a group that started up last January in Fort Bend County, Texas, is doing pretty much everything they can think of to help the county animal services division. The list of stuff they are doing includes animal care and socialization, networking on social media, taking photographs, interfacing with rescues, running adoption events, and doing pet retention. They also have an emergency medical fund and they work on spay-neuter. Whew! They need financial support – sounds like possibly a great opportunity for a grant-giving organization. From Arlington, Texas we have fresh statistical evidence that charging a surrender fee does not lead to pet abandonment. A pilot program instituting a $25 surrender fee correlated with a drop in stray intake, a drop in owner surrender intake, and fewer calls reporting loose animals. Win, win, win. The funds collected will be used to pay for an animal cruelty investigator. More win. Other shelters that have kept statistics after instituting managed admission policies, including Lynchburg, Virginia and Douglas County, Nevada, have also found that asking owners to be more responsible correlates with positive changes. Animal Farm Foundation has a great article about how animal shelters can best approach the issue of breed identification. The SPCA of Martinsville-Henry County just did its largest single transport ever with 122 animals going to North Shore. The transport was aided by  the American Humane Association. Since the 1990s shelters in West Virginia have relied on transports to the northeast to save their animals. West Virginia shelters tend to be extremely underfunded and often do not receive much support from local populations, either in reducing intake or increasing placements. Fortunately, the state has a convenient transportation corridor in freeways running across Pennsylvania. West Virginia also has many shelter workers and volunteers who work very hard networking the animals, getting them vetted for transports, and often driving the first legs of transports. I’m seeing more and more stories like this one about cities and counties building good, modern shelters. Sometimes the stories are about a private SPCA or humane society that has the contract for animal sheltering and is fundraising for the new building. In many cases, though, the local government provides all or a good portion of the funds. The Niagara Falls City Council has approved a 1-year contract with the Niagara County SPCA. The Pet and Women Safety Act (PAWS Act) is pending federal legislation that addresses the common situation where a victim of domestic violence is reluctant to leave an abusive situation if it means leaving pets behind. The proposed law also addresses situations where an abuser stalks a victim’s pet. Not much is getting through Congress these days, but the numbers cited in the linked article indicate this is a much-needed measure. Another pending federal bill takes aim at animal cruelty. It’s encouraging to see these proposed bills at the federal level, since most animal issues are relegated to the state and local level. The Huntsville, Alabama animal shelter has higher-than-average intake at close to 6,000 animals per year. It has recently been using reduced-fee adoption events and extended hours to increase its live release rate, which was 92% for May. The shelter faces ongoing challenges, though, including high recent intakes and an influx of dogs from hoarding cases.