Pet ownership as a percentage of the human population of the United States has shot up since 1970. In 1970, the number of owned pets was about 30% of the number of people. By 2000, that percentage had gone up to about 46%. In the 2000’s the increase accelerated, and as of 2012 the number of owned pets was roughly 57% of the number of people. The numbers are: 1970: 60 million owned pets 203 million people 2000: 130 million owned pets 281 million people 2012: 179 million owned pets 313 million people Perhaps some of the success of shelters at increasing adoptions in recent years has to do with an ever-increasing actual and relative demand for pets. Or it could be that shelters have been a cause of the increase in pets, and adoption promotions have helped to drive demand. Whatever the cause for the increasing percentage of people who own pets, it’s good news for shelter animals, as long as it keeps going. There has been a lot written about the reasons why pets are more popular these days, with most of the commentary centering on the idea that with modern life causing more social isolation, pets can provide companionship for the harried worker or parent who does not have time for a social life. There is one possible cloud on the horizon, in my opinion, and that is veterinary costs. The fact that vets can do more for animals today than in the past is a blessing for those who can afford to pay the bills, but for those who cannot and have to say no, it can bring guilt and remorse.

West Coast – Washington, Oregon, California Upper Rockies – Idaho, Montana, Wyoming Middle Rockies – Nevada, Utah, Colorado Lower Southwest – Arizona, New Mexico Non-Contiguous – Hawaii, Alaska The western United States, like most other regions of the country, has a mixture of very good and very bad shelter systems, with a lot in between. Some parts of the western United States are as good at No Kill as you can find anywhere in the country, but at least two states in the region are among the worst for No Kill. The West Coast area has several cities that are models for No Kill. Seattle and its metro area, including Kitsap County, do not provide consolidated statistics, but the area certainly appears to be No Kill. The Portland metro area, consisting of four counties that have formed a coalition, is saving more than 90% in its population area of over 2 million people. Oregon is also home to the city of Eugene, which is No Kill. In Northern California, the city of San Francisco has had a consolidated live release rate of over 90% since 2013. The San Francisco SPCA partners with the city of Stockton to help them increase their save rate. Sacramento, which has faced a lot of challenges, had a 78% save rate in 2015 with intake of almost 11,000. Sacramento apparently includes died/lost in their live release rate calculation, so with the standard calculation they might be over 80%. Chico, California, is notable for the stunning success it has had with the new community cats paradigms. Its shelter reduced cat intake from 2,839 to 442 and cat euthanasia from 1273 to 88 after it implemented a community cat program. This success story was featured in the March/April 2015 issue of the HSUS Animal Sheltering magazine. Southern California is rapidly improving. Best Friends is helping with a massive effort in Los Angeles that is paying off in substantially increased lifesaving. The San Diego coalition reported that it has reached 90%. Ventura County has also reported reaching No Kill. The Upper Rockies have a lot in common with the Western Midwest – both are areas where we do not have much information about how No Kill is doing. My impression is that these states are making progress, though. There is a correlation between mountainous terrain and cold weather and No Kill. And these states are becoming more progressive and have many resort areas, both of which also correlate with No Kill. There are several small No Kill communities in Montana and Wyoming. I have heard reports of shelters that are doing well in Idaho, although I have not researched those shelters. The Middle Rockies states are amazing. Colorado is a No Kill state, as measured by the state’s shelter reporting system. Best Friends has had a project to make Utah a No Kill state ongoing for several years now, and they have been very successful, with the Salt Late City metro area and a double-digit number of smaller cities and counties with live release rates of 90% or more. The giant Humane Society of Utah, which is open admission for owner surrenders and pulls lots of animals from public shelters, recently announced that it had a 90%+ live release rate in 2015. Nevada is home to Washoe County, where the shelter system has been No Kill for years. The Nevada Humane Society, which has been a crucial partner to Washoe County and the cities of Reno and Sparks, is now working on making Carson City No Kill. Las Vegas has a serious No Kill effort underway in which a large local No Kill group, No Kill Las Vegas, is participating. It is great to see a terrific No Kill group like NKLV assisting the local shelter to succeed. Unfortunately, there is less good news in the remaining regions of the west. The Lower Southwest has some areas where reported stray numbers are high and kill rates are high. This part of the country, like Houston, Dallas, and Detroit, seems stuck back in the 1970s, with a large number of homeless animals roaming the streets. There have been sporadic efforts to improve save rates, as with Albuquerque’s cat project. Pima County, Arizona, has been making an effort. One bright spot is the Yavapai Humane Society, which has contracts in the Prescott, Arizona, area, and has reported 90%+ save rates for several years now. In general, though, Arizona and New Mexico do not seem like good places to be a homeless pet. It may be that a major intervention in low-cost spay neuter is needed in the area to get the stray problem under control. Animals in the Non-Continguous states of Hawaii and Alaska were in the news in 2015, and not in a good way. The Kauai Humane Society received heavy criticism of its practices and kill rate. In Alaska there are persistent reports of mistreatment of sled dogs. Working sled dogs get a lot of exercise, which can be a good thing, but it appears that they typically spend most of their non-working time chained outdoors or in small kennels. The Iditarod race is the focus of concern about cruelty to sled dogs, but the Iditarod happens only once per year and the year-round treatment of sled dogs deserves attention too. Conclusion Both the Middle Rockies and the West Coast get a B+. They are doing splendidly well, closing in on New England (and a lot more transparent than New England). I’m going to give the Upper Rockies a C, but it is possible that if we had more data it would reveal them to rank a little higher. The Lower Southwest unfortunately gets a D-, the lowest grade of any region in the United States. The Non-Continguous states get a D.

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is a prestigious, full-service consulting firm with international reach. The city of Dallas, TX, hired BCG a few months ago to make recommendations for reform of the city shelter, Dallas Animal Services (DAS). BCG just issued the report, and it could be a game-changer for No Kill reform efforts, especially in large cities. Dallas has had complaints for years from people who live in South Dallas about large numbers of free-roaming dogs. The city’s media took up the cause, pointing out that South Dallas was an impoverished area with a high minority population, and arguing that the residents of South Dallas were being ignored by the city. Complaints of people being harassed and bitten by stray dogs continued to grow. Then, in May of  this year, a woman was attacked by a pack of dogs in South Dallas and bitten more than 100 times. She died of her injuries. After the woman was killed, many other horror stories were publicized, including one of a woman who was walking her small dog when she was attacked by two free-roaming dogs. She heroically held her small dog up over her head while the two strays bit and scratched her. Finally the owner of the dogs arrived and called them off. The victim had to be driven home because she could not walk. A photograph of her after the attack shows what appears to be an 8- or 10-inch gash on her upper arm and several other scratch or bite marks. Another story was of a grandmother who had to use her cane to keep a dog from attacking her pregnant daughter and 4-year-old granddaughter. The dogs of South Dallas suffer too. Many are killed by cars. There are so many dead dogs that certain areas of South Dallas have become known as dumping grounds for dead and injured dogs. Most cities got their stray-dog populations under control in the years from 1970 to 2000 by means of spay-neuter and leash-law campaigns. In a few cities, like Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, those efforts never took hold, and some parts of those cities still have large numbers of stray dogs roaming the streets. It was in this context that Dallas hired BCG to analyze the situation and come up with recommendations to reform DAS. When I heard about this, I felt that BCG would probably develop a strategic plan that was long on enforcement (“catch and kill”) and short on shelter lifesaving. After all, BCG is a mainstream group. The consultants who work for BCG understand very well that the primary duty of local governments is to exercise the police powers that are delegated to them by the states. Local governments, first and foremost, have a duty to keep people safe. And that duty extends only to human beings, not animals. In any contest between the safety of a human and the life of an animal, a local government is required by its delegation of powers to put the safety of the human first. Even if BCG was favorable to shelter lifesaving and wanted to make lifesaving a priority, I thought it was unlikely that they would talk to the right people about how to do that. Relatively few people today understand how large cities make No Kill transitions. Indeed, there are some prominent No Kill leaders who do not seem to understand that public-private partnerships have been key for almost every large city that has gone No Kill. I was afraid that even if BCG talked to No Kill leaders, they would talk to the wrong ones and come away thinking that No Kill was not ready for prime time. For all those reasons, I was shocked to see that BCG’s final report, which was just released, puts shelter lifesaving on an equal footing with public safety. The commitment to shelter lifesaving in the report is not just lip service. The report prominently states that the goal is to “increase the number of positive outcomes for Dallas dogs, euthanizing only the sickest animals.” It specifically targets a 90% live release rate. This high-profile report, prepared for a major American city by a prestigious mainstream consulting firm, says unequivocally that the goal of No Kill is just as important as the goal of public safety. That is extraordinary. What makes the BCG report a watershed event, though, is that it provides Dallas with a detailed roadmap and a step-by-step plan of exactly how to get to No Kill, without busting the budget. The report sets out the usual things that we’ve all heard — increasing adoptions, better online marketing, increasing shelter hours, preventing surrenders by helping owners with pet problems, increasing volunteer hours, etc. Any No Kill advocate could list those things in their sleep. But the report provides details of the research it did to back up those recommendations, the details of exactly how and when and to what extent they should be implemented, and the cost and number of animals expected to be affected by each program. For example, the report doesn’t just say “start a spay-neuter program.” Instead, the drafters of the report counted the dogs in South Dallas, figured out how many of them would have to be sterilized to keep the population down, and researched how the program could be structured to make it effective. They came up with a recommendation to provide 46,000 low-cost spay-neuter surgeries per year for three years. To increase adoptions, one recommendation is that the city open a second offsite adoption center, either using its existing arrangement with PetSmart Charities or with a similar organization. The report estimates the cost for this added venue and the number of additional adoptions the new venue would produce. The report even goes into detail about the order in which things should be implemented, with the goal of keeping lifesaving high at the same time enforcement is being stepped up. The BCG report goes beyond the usual No Kill cookbook, though, and includes two things that I thought it would surely miss. One is the critical importance of a large, private-sector partner for the city shelter. We have seen this arrangement work spectacularly well in many cities. The two major cities that, to my knowledge, have the highest sustained live release rates in the nation today — Jacksonville and Austin — both have municipal shelters that work closely with a large non-profit. This arrangement has also been key in San Antonio, which has recently been running at a 90% live release rate. The BCG report recommends that Dallas enlist such a partner for DAS, and spells out the benefits that will provide for the shelter. The second thing I thought the BCG report would surely overlook is the highly important issue of the authority that the shelter director has within city government. Far from missing this issue, the report zeroed in on it and set out a string of recommended changes. The report proposes that DAS become an independent department within the city government, that DAS should be exempt from the civil service hiring recommendations, and that the city should provide adequate funding (spelled out in detail, with dollar amounts) to meet the goals. Having DAS as an independent agency is key, because that gives the shelter director more power and flexibility. We’ve all noticed the phenomenon of shelters improving dramatically after being taken over by a private, non-profit No Kill contractor, as happened in Atlanta and in Kansas City, Missouri. With DAS as an independent agency, the DAS director will be on a par with the directors of private organizations in terms of ability to make and execute policy. The changes to hiring will be an important part of that increased power and flexibility. So often the directors of municipal shelters are hamstrung by layers of bureaucracy that can restrict even small things like reducing fees for an adoption special or what can be posted on social media. The BCG report recognizes that problem and proposes radical and effective fixes. Some people in Dallas think that the director of DAS, Jody Jones, should be fired as part of the reform process. I think that would be a big mistake. Jones has been criticized as weak on animal control, but in most cities the size of Dallas the executive director does not personally manage animal control. The public safety part of the BCG proposal is technically the easiest part, and could be carried out by a person specifically hired for that type of expertise, if a new hire is necessary. Shelter lifesaving is far harder to do well, and in that area Jones has expertise. Moreover, because of the limitations imposed on her by the city’s bureaucratic structure, Jones has not previously had a chance to show what she can do. In a time of great change, her familiarity with the system could be an important point of stability. Some people within No Kill have already criticized the BCG report because it recommends increased enforcement. I think this reaction is short-sighted and harmful. The report provides a roadmap for how the city can quickly increase lifesaving at the same time it increases enforcement. If implementation is done as BCG recommends, there will be no need for more dogs to die in Dallas. And the long-term problems, including the serious public safety issues and the suffering of dogs on the street, will be solved. It would be counterproductive for No Kill advocates to ignore the very real threat to public safety caused by the free-roaming dogs in Dallas. I myself have advocated for community dog programs analogous to community cat programs. But that idea is a non-starter in Dallas because of the numerous attacks on people that culminated in a woman being literally torn to pieces by a pack of dogs. Public safety is a serious issue, and if we as No Kill advocates refuse to admit that public safety must be taken into account, then we risk marginalizing ourselves and losing any ability to be taken seriously and influence the debate. The BCG report has handed us a huge gift by making lifesaving equal in importance to public safety. We should welcome the report and work hard to see that it gets implemented. It is possible that the city of Dallas will implement the public safety part of the recommendations and fail to implement the lifesaving part. But if the No Kill movement offers help and support with the lifesaving recommendations, the chances of Dallas implementing the entire report will be much improved. If the No Kill movement instead stands on the sidelines and throws rocks, that just makes it more likely that the lifesaving proposals will fail to be implemented. And that would be a tragedy. The BCG report could be a watershed moment for the entire country, not just for Dallas. If Dallas succeeds in putting shelter lifesaving on a par with public safety and turns around a very bad situation for its residents while at the same time increasing shelter lifesaving to 90%, then all the other cities that have not yet succeeded in getting to No Kill will have a roadmap that their leaders have to take seriously. BCG is about as prestigious and as mainstream as you can get. If we as No Kill advocates blow this opportunity, we will blow the best chance we’ve had yet to make No Kill a default aspect of good city government. Getting the street dogs of Dallas into good homes may not be easy, because Dallas seems to have many dogs who have been living rough for a long time, and some who are apparently feral. A lot of these dogs may require rehabilitation before they can become adoptable. Standing ready to help these dogs would perhaps be the most crucial role that the No Kill movement could play in making the BCG recommendations a success. If every No Kill shelter and organization in the country could take in just a few of these dogs, they could all find safety. The BCG report concludes by stating that Dallas has the opportunity to both improve the quality of life for Dallas residents and “to rescue animals and treat them with dignity and care.” We should make sure that opportunity is not lost.

Dear Readers, You may recall that I recently listed St. George, Utah, as a 90%+ shelter in the right sidebar. The listing was based on statistics for the St. George shelter for calendar year 2013 that were sent to me by Best Friends. A few days after I posted the listing I received an alert that referenced a recent article about the St. George shelter referring to problems in the past when the shelter was under previous management. I wasn’t too concerned about the article, because I thought the change in management must have happened before 2013 since the Best Friend’s statistics showed a 97% live release rate in 2013. I was curious about it, though, so I searched the author’s name to find the previous article. Well, it turns out that new management did not take over until the summer of 2013, and the deficiencies described in the article under the old management included heartsticking, along with other serious and cruel practices. It sounds as though the St. George shelter was a nightmare for the first half of 2013, until new management took over and turned it around. Since my listing was for the entire year of 2013, I have deleted the listing. I want to emphasize that St. George now has a new shelter manager and there is ample evidence that they have turned around and currently are saving over 90%. I cannot list them as a 90%+ shelter for 2013, though, because (a) I don’t trust the statistics for the first half of 2013 that were compiled under the old, bad management, and (b) the new management has not gone through a kitten season yet. I hope I’ll be able to re-list St. George next year based on their 2014 calendar-year statistics if their new management keeps up the good work. I also want to emphasize that I think Best Friends provided me the statistics in good faith and that it was my failure to do adequate research that led to the listing being made in the first place. Lots of people provide me with statistics, and I appreciate that because sometimes it’s the only way I have of becoming aware of a good shelter. But it’s my responsibility to check out each situation thoroughly and I failed to do that with St. George. This incident is as good a time as any to ask a question that I’ve been mulling over for a while. Should I restrict listings in the right sidebar to those shelters that have made their statistics available as public information, either by posting statistics online or by submitting them to a reputable database such as Maddie’s Fund or a state agency? I think that shelters are likely to be more careful and accurate with statistics that are made available to the general public than they are with statistics sent privately to a blogger. If I go the route of requiring a public listing of statistics, it will mean delisting quite a few communities who have been sending me their statistics privately. These are mostly small shelters whose websites do not allow for much flexibility. What do you think? Should I get tougher with transparency requirements, or leave things as they are? You can leave a comment or e-mail me at the address listed on the “contact” page above.

This post looks at how No Kill did in the Southeast in 2015. We can break the area down into two regions: Upper Southeast – Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina Deep South – South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi The surprising thing about the southeast in 2015 was that the most inspiring stories came from the Deep South – an area that we have traditionally thought of as terrible for shelter animals. For many years the only real hope for homeless dogs in the Deep South was to be transported to northern shelters, and the only real hope for cats was to avoid being caught by animal control at all. Today, we have communities in the Deep South, including some large cities, that are on the cutting edge of new No Kill techniques. I had the privilege of visiting LifeLine Animal Project’s two open admission county shelters serving the city of Atlanta this past year. LifeLine took over the shelters in 2013, and both are now running at about an 85% live release rate. That’s up very sharply since they took over – a true reversal of what went before. They have all the problems of big-city shelters, including a high intake of pit bulls, and they have very little outside help. LifeLine is an example of what No Kill can do even with few resources. Jacksonville, Florida, is another phenomenal story. They have a great coalition of three partners working together in harmony – the city shelter, the Jacksonville Humane Society, and First Coast No More Homeless Pets. That’s very nice to see because there are so many other cities where egos get in the way of cooperation and people go around with a chip on their shoulder. Scott Trebatoski, who managed the city shelter in Jacksonville before being lured away to Hillsborough County, Florida (where the city of Tampa is located), has been making great strides in a place that was previously a death knell to No Kill attempts. The shelter there has been running at a save rate of over 80%. Another big story of 2015 was Miami, which is now reporting that it was over 90% for the year. Miami is getting a new shelter this year, which should help with even better lifesaving for the almost 30,000 dogs and cats they take in annually. There are success stories in smaller cities in the Deep South too. Gainesville, Florida, has been making steady progress. I don’t think Gainesville is quite to No Kill yet, but one bright spot is the Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where Dr. Julie Levy has been doing great research on TNR and RTF. Huntsville, Alabama (yes, Alabama!) has been running at over 90% lately. Southern Pines Animal Shelter in Mississippi is over 90% (they need donations to shore up their shelter building against a landslide emergency). Columbia, South Carolina, has already cut its kill rate by half, and wants to go the rest of the way to No Kill. A committee has proposed a promising plan, with the exception of mandatory spay-neuter for pit bulls. Hopefully that idea will not make it into the final plan. The upper Southeast did not have the kind of big headline No Kill stories last year that the Deep South had, but progress is being made. Virginia has more and more communities that are No Kill. Three of its communities are examples of the best in No Kill – Richmond, Lynchburg, and Charlottesville. Lynchburg is one of my favorite No Kill stories. The city’s median household income is below average for Virginia and for the United States as a whole, and yet the Lynchburg Humane Society has not only been No Kill for years now, it also opened a state-of-the-art new shelter in 2015. The city of Asheville, in North Carolina, seems to be ramping up to become a No Kill powerhouse. The Foothills Humane Society in Polk County, North Carolina, has reportedly been No Kill for some time now. West Virginia has made it onto the board with the Charleston shelter. Tennessee has a few towns that are doing well, as does Kentucky. But North Carolina, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky have few bright spots. It’s interesting to speculate on why the Deep South has all these cities that are making such fast progress toward No Kill. Whatever the reasons behind the groundswell of progress in the region, though, it’s a great thing to see. One possible problem for the future is that northern shelters may lose their supply of dogs transported from the south. That’s a good problem to have, because it means that northern shelters will be able to start reaching out to more dogs in need, perhaps from overseas. Conclusion I would give the Upper Southeast a D, with the Deep South getting a C-. I would love to give the deep South a higher grade to recognize the rapid progress that is being made, but the majority of shelters there have not joined the bandwagon – yet.

During the last two weeks of the year I’m going to re-run my three-part series on the coming shelter dog shortage and the future of animal shelters. Those posts were by far the most popular this year, with many thousands of readers each. Rather than re-run them on the blog I will post them on Facebook. Please visit the blog’s Facebook page at: http://tinyurl.com/jam9kvm

The Asheville Humane Society (AHS), which handles animal sheltering for the city of Asheville and Buncombe County in North Carolina, has hired a new director, Tracy Elliott. Like many shelter directors these days, Elliott comes from a non-traditional background, having never worked in animal welfare. Instead, his career has been in non-profit management and business. AHS did a nationwide search and selected Elliott from more than 140 applicants. AHS reports that in November and December of last year it had a live release rate of over 90%. The city of Evanston, Illinois, is moving closer to formalizing its relationship with Saving Animals for Evanston (SAFE), a group that has been working with the police department to save 96% of animals, not including returns-to-owner, in the past year. If SAFE is appointed to run the city shelter it will replace the previous operator, which the city terminated due to citizen complaints about its high kill rate. The executive director and the director of operations at the Greenhill Humane Society, which holds the animal sheltering contract for Eugene, Oregon, have graduated from the animal shelter management program taught by Bonney Brown and Diane Blankenburg at the University of the Pacific. The Tri-County Humane Society in St. Cloud, Minnesota, which takes in about 3750 animals per year, is reporting a 97% live release rate so far this year. The director credits their improvement to a new approach to feral cats including barn cat and return-to-field initiatives, low-cost and free adoptions, social media, fosters, and veterinary care. The Charleston Animal Society in South Carolina, which handles more than 90% of the community’s homeless pets, is reportedly running at a 92% live release rate. The Society has a 10-point program, including reducing animal cruelty, a medical fund for treating sick and injured animals, an aggressive lost-and-found program, return-to-field for community cats, vaccination clinics, and humane education. The Elmbrook Humane Society in Brookfield, Wisconsin, is reaching out to help its neighbor, the Humane Animal Welfare Society of Waukesha (HAWS), increase its live release rate for cats. Elmbrook will take adoptable cats to its own adoption facility, and HAWS is offering a return-to-field program for community cats. Waco’s mayor looks back on Waco’s three-year effort to go No Kill in this article. The efforts have included ordinance changes, spay-neuter, fundraising for a new shelter, hiring a full-time veterinarian, and consulting with Target Zero. The shelter and its regional partners report being at a 90%+ live release rate so far this year. The Flathead County Animal Shelter, a No Kill municipal shelter in Kalispell, Montana, recently held an open-house adoption event to showcase a renovation of its facility. The new rooms allow the dogs and cats to be more relaxed, which helps them get adopted more quickly. The director said that animals are getting adopted much more quickly than they were a few years ago. Intake at the shelter is down, which the director attributes to spay-neuter programs and the public becoming better at caring for their pets. The Best Friends super adoption event in Los Angeles last weekend was a big success, with 522 pets finding homes. The adopted pets included one bunny and one pig. The Nevada Humane Society (NHS), which provides No Kill animal sheltering for Washoe County and Reno, took over animal sheltering last year for Carson City. In spite of an old shelter building, the NHS director is reporting a 97% live release rate for Carson City in recent months. The director credits adoption marketing, microchipping, and aggressive return-to-owner efforts, while warning that the save rate may fall some as kitten season sets in. Los Angeles is home to pup-up cafes. The Chester County SPCA, which serves two counties in Pennsylvania and has been reporting live release rates of over 90% for the last 6 months, has received a $60,000 grant from the Petco Foundation. The grant will be used for programs including targeted spay-neuter, free vaccinations, and wellness care. Prince George’s County in Maryland has a draconian pit bull ban and a live release rate of only 64%, much lower than other DC-metro-area shelters. The director of the shelter, Rodney Taylor, wants the ban repealed. In the meantime he is sending pit bulls to other organizations such as the Fairfax County Animal Shelter in northern Virginia, a No Kill municipal shelter. He has also invited Aimee Sadler to teach the staff how to run dog play groups. He wants to get the live release rate to 90%. The long-running concern about whether organizations that do TNR for feral cats in Virginia could be criminally prosecuted has finally been put to rest. Robin Starr of the Richmond SPCA reports that Virginia’s Attorney General has retracted a 2013 opinion letter that interpreted the “return” part of TNR as illegal. Starr and her board had continued with their TNR program in spite of the threat of prosecution, and have now been vindicated. The ASPCA has provided this summary of the recommended capacity for communal cat rooms. Here is a nice article from Arin Greenwood of the Huffington Post about the rapid progress that No Kill sheltering is making. She touches on some of the most important trends, including the growing number of people who are willing to adopt from a shelter, the use of transports to take advantage of the shortage of shelter dogs in some areas, great marketing, and outreach efforts.

“We’ve been begging the city to go No Kill for years and nothing has happened!” How often have you seen a statement like that? Trying to get a city shelter to reform itself can be a challenging experience. It often leads No Kill advocates down a frustrating road of seeking to force out the current leadership on the city council or in the shelter and replace it with No Kill leadership. That approach can work (Austin, Texas and Arlington, Virginia are examples), but I’ve also seen it fail (Tallahassee, Louisville, Macon, etc., etc.). Sometimes there aren’t enough local people to support the cause, sometimes the city leadership is too entrenched to be thrown out by a single-issue campaign, sometimes city leadership does appoint a new director and that director fails. Just a few days ago, local No Kill advocates were unsuccessful in unseating a county commissioner in favor of a No Kill candidate in Manatee County, Florida. In this article I’d like to talk about a different way that I’m seeing more and more in my researches, where local advocates do not have to take to the streets in protest or beg the city council or the municipal shelter to take action. That different way is for No Kill advocates to form a non-profit that takes on the functions that the municipal shelter is not performing properly. There are a large number of non-profits that have been formed in the last several years for the purpose of making a community No Kill, and they are succeeding at an astounding rate. I would say that far more No Kill communities are being formed by this method today than by the older method of trying to force communities to change by protest and political action. It is worth noting that even in Austin there was a combination of methods. One group worked on political support while another group formed a large non-profit – Austin Pets Alive – to partner with the city shelter. One of the functions that this type of non-profit can perform very well is adoptions. There are few municipal shelters that will refuse to allow a reputable non-profit to pull animals from the shelter for rehoming. And if a non-profit does run into resistance from the shelter in releasing animals, that would be a concrete issue that would garner a lot of attention and sympathy from the public. Another thing that non-profits can do very well is TNR. In some places this may require the non-profit to do some work to pave the way, including checking out state laws and local ordinances to see if any of them need revision. But again, revision of cat ordinances is a concrete issue that may be much easier to change than the entire city council or leadership structure of the shelter. There are many other tasks a non-profit could take on, such as pet retention, targeted spay-neuter, microchip clinics, and running volunteer and neonatal foster programs. In addition to the practical effect of saving animal lives quickly and effectively, a non-profit working with the city shelter can build a strong relationship over time that will gradually bring city and shelter leadership on board with the idea of No Kill. In fact, it seems like a logical approach to try formation of a non-profit to work with the city before trying political action. Political action is a bruising process, and if the people seeking change do not prevail, they can poison the well for any future collaborative process. One could argue that the route of using political action to demand change should be used only as a last resort, given that the track record of cooperation has been so much better and given the serious consequences of failed political action. One of the beauties of non-profits is that they can start off small. For example, a non-profit could take on as its first task saving orphan neonatal kittens during kitten season and finding them adoptive homes. Once the group had some experience at adoptions, they could branch out into doing offsite adoption events for the shelter. Then perhaps they could set up a Help Desk in the shelter lobby, staffed by volunteers. Then maybe a targeted spay-neuter effort to reduce the number of pit bulls coming into the shelter. As the group grew and gained community support, they would also be gaining practical knowledge about exactly what needed to be done in their city. Perhaps they would be able to get to No Kill by working with the existing shelter leadership, but if not, at some point they would have the experience and community support to successfully bid on and run the city shelter themselves. Getting to No Kill by starting a non-profit does not have to be a slow process. In Kansas City, Missouri, for example, a non-profit was formed, bid on and won the city contract, and then got to No Kill within six months. That’s somewhat unusual in cities I’ve studied, though. But the non-profit process should not be rejected just because it might not fix all the problems immediately. If the city leaders are recalcitrant and shelter leadership is unresponsive and there is no large groundswell of support among the citizenry, then you have nowhere to start unless you do it yourself. Here is a list just off the top of my head of large non-profits that are currently partnering successfully with city shelters or contracting to do sheltering themselves to raise live relief rates: Austin Pets Alive, the Richmond SPCA, Kansas City Pet Project, the Nevada Humane Society, Dane County Humane Society, Humane Society for Seattle/King County, First Coast No More Homeless Pets/Jacksonville Humane Society, Lifeline Animal Project (Atlanta), and the San Francisco SPCA. This method has also been used in a great many counties and small towns where animal sheltering is done by a non-profit. A variation on this theme is where you have a consortium of non-profits. This method seems to be especially effective in large cities. It is being used with great success in San Antonio, Denver (despite their regressive pit-bull ban), Gainesville, Buffalo, New York City, and Portland. Based on the momentum and trends of the past several years, the future of No Kill certainly seems to be in building non-profits and collaborative groups of non-profits to work with municipalities. This should be an inspiring approach for No Kill advocates who have been trying the political approach for years and getting nowhere. Instead of waiting for the municipal shelter or the city council to change, they can turn their words into actions today and create the change themselves.

One key to the new possibilities is Maggie Asbury, who was elected to the county Board of Supervisors recently. She is animal-friendly and is serious about helping the shelter to change. There are other people on the Board who may be interested as well, but cost is a limiting factor. One commissioner told Rhonda that he would like to see positive changes at the shelter, but he cannot support any increase in funding. The county is currently losing population and its economic situation is not good. On the one hand, the lack of any additional money from the county is a big handicap because the shelter is in an old, dysfunctional building and the current funding for the shelter was reported to Rhonda as being under $200,000 per year. That is an exceedingly small amount of money to operate a shelter that takes in over 2,000 animals per year. On the other hand, No Kill people are used to working around government funding restrictions by raising money in the private sector, so Rhonda is going to concentrate on showing the commissioners some ideas that can be implemented at no cost to the county. One of the most exciting developments in the last two weeks is that a No Kill consultant has offered to help. The consultant is going to make a presentation to county officials and find out if there is enough common ground for their team to be able to work with the county and make a difference. This would be a huge plus for Tazewell County if it proves to be feasible. Rhonda hopes to have her list of free resources available at the meeting as well. The meeting is being planned for later this month or early next month. Particularly important, and one thing that will be a high priority, is having low-cost spay-neuter programs as a centerpiece of efforts in Tazewell County. A few people have contacted Rhonda with some interesting ideas about how this could be done. She has also e-mailed with Matthew Gray of HSUS, the Virginia state representative, about the Pets For Life program, but is still trying to set up a time to speak to him. Another very exciting development is that local shelters in Virginia are making offers of help to pull animals from the county shelter. Rhonda has been contacted by the Richmond SPCA and by Debra Griggs of the Virginia Federation of Humane Societies. This would be huge, because one of Rhonda’s biggest problems in facilitating transports out of state are the associated costs. Transporting animals in state, to shelters that are well equipped to do their own quarantine, would be much cheaper as well as easier on the animals. Tazewell County has a large number of puppies that Rhonda has had difficulty in helping because of the expenses associated with puppies. Help from shelters within Virginia could save many of these puppies as well as the older dogs. A wild card in all this is that management at the shelter is in flux since the former shelter director retired. Rhonda is hopeful that new shelter management will embrace outside help and be enthusiastic about increasing the live release rate. Several other things have happened. One No Kill leader suggested to Rhonda that it would be worthwhile for her to start attending the HSUS Expo or Best Friends national conferences. She would love to attend both, but will have to see if finances will allow. In the meantime she will be able to attend the Virginia Federation conference next spring in Charlottesville.  She is continuing to work to place dogs that her rescue group, Tazewell ARC, has in their shelter. She also recently had a breakthrough in getting local teenagers interested in volunteering for the rescue. She sees young people as the key to changing attitudes about animals in the community. One thing that is becoming clear to Rhonda is that there is far more help available, at both the state and national level, to a public shelter than to a rescue. This is not surprising, since the organizations and grant agencies that support No Kill naturally see the public shelter as the most important piece of the puzzle in lifesaving. Rhonda is trying to maintain a balance between her focus on the shelter and her work with Tazewell ARC rescue. The photo above is a montage of over 100 dogs that Tazewell ARC has helped so far this year, and Rhonda hopes there will be many more in the future.

Today, on the first day of the new year, it’s time to take a look at how No Kill is doing nationally. I can’t tell the story of every successful program in 2015 because there were far too many of them. There is one national campaign that stood out, though, because in sheer numbers it is on pace to rival some of the greatest No Kill accomplishments ever. Like Mike Arms’ Home 4 the Holidays event, which has racked up over 1.2 million adoptions since it started in 1999. And Petfinder, established by Betsy Banks Saul and Jared Saul in 1996, which is currently instrumental in some 1.5 million adoptions every year. The campaign that is rivalling those great accomplishments is the Million Cat Challenge.* The Million Cat Challenge was launched on December 10, 2014 by two well-known shelter veterinarians, Dr. Kate Hurley and Dr. Julie Levy. Both have been very involved in the development of the underlying programs that became part of the Challenge. When Kate and Julie presented their ideas for cat management at a plenary session at the 2013 HSUS Expo, the groundswell of positive reaction was so great that they were inspired to start the Challenge to capture that momentum. The Challenge is set to run for five years, from the beginning of 2014 to the end of 2018, and the goal is to save 1,000,000 cats who otherwise would be killed in shelters. The animal shelter organizations that have signed on to the Million Cat Challenge have been responsible for saving almost 400,000 lives in the program’s first two years.** The Challenge had a very good year in 2015, with over 265,000 lives saved by its member organizations and 180 new shelters enrolled. And the program is growing fast, so we can expect the next three years to be even bigger – perhaps exponentially bigger. That rate of lifesaving compares well with the early years of Home 4 the Holidays and the early days of Petfinder, and it puts the Million Cat Challenge in the ballpark with the most exceptional No Kill efforts thus far. The Million Cat Challenge has five key initiatives, but it is perhaps best known for its return-to-field (RTF) program for community cats. RTF was a key concept in Rick DuCharme’s Feral Freedom program in Jacksonville, where it first gained national attention. It has also been a part of Dr. Levy’s Operation Catnip at the University of Florida for many years and was used by other programs as well. RTF is often thought of as similar to trap-neuter-return (TNR) for feral cats, but it is a broader concept. The typical situation for TNR is where a feral cat caregiver traps some or all of the members of a feral cat colony and takes them to a clinic where they are given a health check, vaccinated, sterilized, and then returned to their colony. RTF, by contrast, can apply to cats who are brought to a shelter by animal control, or by an individual for any reason. The question is not whether a cat is feral or tame, but whether, after vaccinations and sterilization, it can safely be returned to where it was found. The RTF concept recognizes the unique nature of cats and how they live in communities. RTF gives the shelter an additional way of saving the lives of cats, to go along with TNR for feral cats and traditional adoption/transfer for tame cats. The Million Cat Challenge has other very important programs too, including managed admission, alternatives to admission, managing capacity, and removing barriers to adoption. One of the advantages of the Challenge is that the participants are free to adopt as few or as many of the key initiatives as they want. And the initiatives themselves are things that do not require a lot of skills or money. The way the Challenge works is that a shelter signs up and agrees to report its statistics in the first quarter of each year. The report has two parts. One part is actual statistics from the previous year. The second part of the report, the “challenge,” asks shelters to pledge the number of additional lives that will be saved in the current year. The calculation of the lives saved by the Challenge for any given year is the comparison of lives saved to the baseline year of 2012. The ticker of lives saved that is on the Challenge website shows the confirmed increases from previous years as well as the estimated numbers of additional, program-based saves for the current year. The breakout, paradigm-changing success of the Million Cat Challenge helped make 2015 a very good year for No Kill. Getting huge numbers of cats safely out of shelters is good for dogs, bunnies, and other homeless pets too, because it means that shelters have more time and space to work on getting their remaining animals adopted. And four of the Challenge’s five key initiatives can have application to all animals in the shelter, not just cats. With programs like the Challenge doing so well, we can confidently say that the state of No Kill as we start 2016 is good. *The Million Cat Challenge is a joint program of the UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program and Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida. **As of January 1, 2015 there were 143 shelters enrolled in the Challenge, with pledges to save 118,020 cats. As of December 28, 2015, there were 323 shelters enrolled, with actual saves for 2014 and pledged saves for 2015 totaling 384,784 cats.

Jacksonville is a city of 837,000 people on the northeast coast of Florida.  It is the largest city in Florida and the 12th largest city in the United States. The city is located in Duval County, which has a population of about 865,000. The governments of the city and county were consolidated in 1968. The Jacksonville metro area has over 1.3 million people, which is the 4th largest metro area in Florida after Miami, Tampa-St. Petersburg, and Orlando. The Jacksonville Animal Care and Protective Services Division (ACPSD) is a city-run department that handles animal control and sheltering for the city and Duval County. The shelter accepts owner surrenders with no noted restrictions except for a small fee. It does not perform owner-requested euthanasia. ACPSD works closely with two large non-profits in the city. The Jacksonville Humane Society (JHS) takes in some strays and adoptable owner surrenders and pulls animals from ACPSD. First Coast No More Homeless Pets (FCNMHP) offers low-cost spay-neuter, vaccinations, and veterinary care, and does over 30,000 spay-neuter surgeries per year.  FCNMHP collaborates with ACPSD and Best Friends Animal Society in a program called Feral Freedom  that  has made Trap-Neuter-Return the default solution for feral cats in Jacksonville. In 2014 the city of Jacksonville and Duval County became one of the largest No Kill jurisdictions, with a live release rate for ACPSD of 92%. If animals who died or were lost in shelter care are counted as euthanasias, the modified live release rate was 90% for 2014. Combined shelter statistics for ACPSD and JHS have been provided by JHS, but are not in the format I use for calculations. JHS’s live release rate was even higher than ACPSD’s, though. Total intake for ACPSD and JHS for the year was 17,099, which is about 20 animals per 1000 people. That intake number does not include the feral cats who go through the Feral Freedom program. At the 2014 Best Friends national conference, the Jacksonville coalition presented a playbook detailing how they got to No Kill. For years they have had a heavy reliance on spay-neuter programs, including their model feral cat program, to bring down intake. The coalition is also doing a lot of adoptions – ACPSD and JHS did over 10,000 adoptions in 2014. That is 12 adoptions per 1000 people. 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. Jacksonville-Duval County is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

Ventura County is located in southern California, northwest of Los Angeles. The population was 823,000 at the 2010 census. Its median household income is above the national average. Ventura County Animal Services (VCAS) has two intake shelters, and in 2014 they achieved a 91% live release rate with an intake of 9000 animals, according to a recent report from VCAS. This followed orders from the Ventura County Board of Supervisors in 2012 that VCAS become No Kill. Changes that VCAS made after the 2012 directive included starting foster and volunteer programs, seeking out rescues to work with, adding a veterinarian who was on board with treating the treatables, and play groups and pack walks for dogs. Tara Diller was hired as director in February 2014. Diller stresses taking animals out into the community rather than waiting for people to come in to adopt. A non-profit called Paw Works, founded in January 2014, has been helping with fosters, adoption events, and transports. In their first year they rescued over 770 homeless animals in Ventura County. They have a group of volunteer pilots, Air Paws, that do transports, and a barn cat program. Ventura County is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.