OUT THE FRONT DOOR

Hastings, Minnesota, is a city of 22,000 people located near the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin, about 30 miles from Minneapolis. The nearby city of Rosemount, Minnesota, also has a population of 22,000. The impound facility for the two cities is Shamrock Animal Hospital. Animal Ark is a non-profit organization headquartered in Hastings which has a shelter that contracts with Shamrock to take in animals who are not returned to their owners. Animal Ark also accepts owner surrenders without geographic limitation, subject to a waiting list. In 2013, according to statistics sent to me and posted on Facebook, Animal Ark’s live release rate was 99%. Their intake was almost 700 cats and dogs. Shamrock does not report its statistics, although the Animal Ark director said that he was unaware of any impounded animal euthanized at Shamrock in recent years. Animals that come into Shamrock with medical and behavioral issues are transferred to Animal Ark along with the healthy ones. Hastings and Rosemount, MN, are counted in the Running Totals as 90%+ communities.

When people talk about the San Francisco model of No Kill, they are usually referring to a set of programs that were developed by Richard Avanzino and his team at the San Francisco SPCA in the 1980s and early 1990s. The team developed lots of programs, but some of the most important were fostering (1980), mobile adoptions (1980), animal behavior (1983), pediatric spay-neuter (1989), landlord-tenant assistance (1991), and Feral Fix (1993). Underlying all of these programs and extending through the 1980s and 1990s were the volunteer program, modern marketing, community engagement, provision of veterinary care, and spay-neuter efforts. Avanzino says that the volunteers were particularly important because many of the programs grew out of ideas originally suggested by volunteers. A lot of attention has been devoted to the San Francisco programs, and rightfully so, because they have proven to be the foundation of No Kill. We can accurately say that No Kill, as far as the programs were concerned, was in place in San Francisco by 1993. But there is another piece of the puzzle that is often overlooked by people who focus solely on the programs, and that is the importance of cooperation in making No Kill work in San Francisco. Up until 1989 the San Francisco SPCA held the contract to provide animal control and sheltering for the city. In that year, the SPCA gave up the contract and the city created its own agency to do animal control and sheltering. From 1989 on, the role of the SPCA was to support the city shelter, not to be the city shelter. It turned out that the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. The two agencies – the San Francisco SPCA and the new city Department of Animal Care and Control – were so effective that the live release rate for the city increased substantially. In 1994 Rich was able, in spite of initial resistance, to get the city to agree to sign the historic Adoption Pact. The Adoption Pact guaranteed a home to every adoptable dog and cat that entered the shelter system in San Francisco. “Adoptable” meant healthy and of reasonably good temperament. Animals who were old, blind, deaf, or handicapped were considered adoptable if they were medically healthy. The fact that the city agency did the work of animal control and basic sheltering meant that the SPCA could focus on saving the animals who were not adoptable due to health or behavior conditions. In addition to taking in overflow of healthy animals that the city shelter could not place, the SPCA saved many of the treatable animals as well. The combined system had more resources (because the city was paying its share), and the division of responsibility allowed the agencies to increase their efficiency. The years since 1994 have shown us that the San Francisco programs by themselves can work well in smaller communities, especially if those communities are progressive and the shelter is a private humane society. In a community of up to 150,000 or so people, a single organization can do very well just by implementing the programs. Examples that come to mind are the shelters in Otsego County (MI), Charlottesville (VA), Lynchburg (VA), and Tompkins County (NY), all of which operate as the sole shelters in their communities. In larger cities, though, what we usually see is a cooperative effort with at least two large agencies working together. A few example are Jacksonville (the city agency works with the Jacksonville Humane Society and First Coast No More Homeless Pets), Washoe County (the city agency works with the Nevada Humane Society), Austin (the city agency works with Austin Pets Alive! and the Austin Humane Society), and Richmond (the city agency works with the Richmond SPCA). Informal consortiums of many organizations and agencies working together have also been effective. Examples are New York City and the metro areas of Denver and Portland, Oregon. The bottom line is that the San Francisco programs are important, but efficiency derived from sharing of tasks is also an important component of No Kill success, especially in larger communities. Indeed, cooperation may be the fastest, surest way for most large communities to get to No Kill. No Kill advocates who are frustrated with a slow pace of progress in their communities may want to look at the structure of sheltering locally. Does the agency that handles animal control and sheltering have enough support? If not, what can advocates do to provide that support? No Kill seems to require an infrastructure that is strong enough to allow the No Kill programs to be deployed, and in larger cities that may mean that the shelter should not have to go it alone.

Until recent years, public animal shelter buildings were designed with the idea that a high percentage of the dogs and cats taken in would be killed. In a traditional, high-kill shelter the owner surrenders were often killed immediately, and unclaimed stray-hold animals were killed after a few days. Many traditional shelters made a small number of select animals available for adoption, but even those animals were killed if they did not get adopted quickly. Under such circumstances, the thinking was that the health and comfort of the animals was not a big concern because they would not be in the shelter for long. Efficiency was more important in shelter design than concern for the animals. That meant locating the shelter near a landfill and building a big loading dock in the back to make it as easy as possible to load dead animals and haul them away. In fact, this blog’s title, “Out the Front Door,” is taken from a phrase that Rich Avanzino used in the San Francisco SPCA’s 1995 Adoption Pact brochure. The brochure characterized No Kill in San Francisco as a change from animals being “quietly euthanized and taken out the back door” to “going out the front door” into loving homes. As the mission of animal shelters changed, their design began to change too. Sheltering animals with the purpose of having them leave the shelter alive required much more attention to disease control. This meant that animals could no longer be packed together into small spaces, and that quarantine areas were needed. Air exchange became very important. In old-fashioned shelters cats were often kept in banks of small cages near or even in sight of the dog runs, something that could not be tolerated in a modern shelter. Cleaning methods included hosing down runs with dogs in them, or housing animals on grates, both of which are unacceptable in a well-designed building. The old style of shelter building made it very difficult to provide a good customer experience. All these defects of traditional shelter buildings had to be changed in shelters built for No Kill. Today, No Kill shelter design has become a thing. The cost of a new shelter can be substantial – even relatively small shelters can cost in the $4-5 million range. But these costs can frequently be offset, and private humane societies in particular have been extremely successful at fund-raising for new shelters. It is more challenging to persuade municipalities to invest in a new shelter, since cities and counties today have many infrastructure needs. It isn’t hopeless, though. One possible answer for a city or county is to have a non-profit organization raise money to turn over to the local government for a new shelter. Another would be a ballot measure to approve a millage earmarked for a new shelter. For shelter operators that cannot afford a new building and where fund-raising is not practical (for example, if the city or county owns the land and the building and is not interested in building a new shelter) a lot can be done to cheaply retrofit the existing building. An outdoor space can be landscaped as an area for adopters to get to know dogs or to see how their current dog gets along with a potential new family member. The entry to the shelter can be expanded and transformed from institutional to welcoming. A shelter I visited last week opened up one wall in the entry so that visitors can see into the operations area and be quickly greeted. In the opposite wall a large window was added to give a view into a cat playroom, which had been converted from storage closets. One area where retrofitting an old shelter seems to fail in many cases is with “grey area” animals. At around an 80% live release rate, the difficulty level in saving animals seems to ratchet up. As I’ve heard from more than one shelter director, after 80% the job of getting to No Kill can get exponentially harder because the animals remaining to be saved are ones that have serious issues. The goal of No Kill is to save all healthy and treatable animals. What seems to happen around the 80% or 85% mark is that the answer to whether a remaining animal is treatable may be “yes, but . . . .” These animals may need extensive rehabilitation for medical or behavioral issues, or need a special home. Grey-area animals can include those who are more susceptible to infections, such as young kittens and animals with skin disease. The ideal thing is to get those animals out of the shelter and into foster homes as quickly as possible, but fosters are not always available. Even with retrofitting it can be very hard to save those animals in an old-fashioned shelter. In such cases a modern shelter designed with disease control in mind can be a lifesaver. This was the result with the Lynchburg Humane Society when they built their new shelter (see photo above). Dog behavior cases are another group of grey-area animals who are hard to accommodate in an old, poorly designed shelter building. A crowded, older shelter may have to co-house dogs, and some dogs cannot tolerate this. Even if the shelter has enough space to allow a dog to have its own run, the dog may still deteriorate from stress and noise. A dog that might have been just fine behaviorally in a modern shelter may become aggressive or a stressed-out basket case in the environment of an old-fashioned shelter. People can be amazingly creative in making an old shelter building work in the world of modern sheltering, but there are limits to retrofitting. Since the purpose of animal shelters has changed so dramatically in the last 25 years, one of the goals of No Kill should be making sure that the local shelter building is reformed along with the mission. Shelter animals deserve safe, humane housing while they wait for placement. And a new shelter building can be the capstone of a community’s effort to go No Kill. A new shelter building can symbolize, in bricks and mortar, the community’s commitment to the type of sheltering that sends animals out the front door alive, healthy, and happy.

In my last blog post I discussed the fact that some parts of the country already have a shortage of shelter dogs, and observed that if trends continue we will have a nationwide shortage of shelter dogs in the not-too-distant future. What are the numbers to back that up? The HSUS estimates that we currently have an intake of about 7 million animals per year into shelters nationwide. Since the year 2000, shelter intake has been fairly stable in spite of a rapidly growing human population. Shelter outcomes include about 3.5 million adoptions and 2.7 million killings of healthy or treatable cats and dogs per year.  If we assume that half of the total 6.2 million adoption and euthanasia outcomes are dogs (in reality dogs are likely to be less than half, since the return-to-owner rate is much higher for dogs), that is about 3.1 million dogs per year who are in the shelter system and looking for homes. That means we would need a total of, at most, 3.1 million dog adoptions in 2015 to zero out shelter killing of healthy or treatable shelter dogs — i.e., to make demand meet supply. In 2013, Colorado shelters were able to adopt out 10.5 dogs per 1000 people. The United States currently has a population of about 320 million people. If Colorado’s adoption rate could be replicated in the United States as a whole in 2015, shelters would adopt out 3.4 million dogs. That is more than the supply of about 3.1 million healthy or treatable shelter dogs that will be available for adoption in 2015. Colorado had an overall live release rate of 89% in 2013. Right now Colorado is ahead of the pack with its live release rate, but the rest of the country is catching up at a very rapid clip. Big metro areas that are now over 80% include Seattle, Portsmouth, San Francisco, Washington DC, Atlanta, Richmond, Denver, Austin, Salt Lake City, Jacksonville, and Fairfax County in Virginia. New York City is close to 80%. Big cities that are making rapid strides include San Antonio and Tampa. Entire states in the northeast are at No Kill, including New Hampshire and (by estimate) Maine and Vermont. No Kill is happening much faster than most people think, and I would be surprised if the majority of the United States population is not living in a No Kill city within 5 years. Given these statistics, it’s very reasonable to conclude that we will have a shelter dog shortage in the United States in 5 years or less. A comment to my previous post suggested that demographic changes in the United States, specifically the aging of the population, might reduce the number of future adoptive homes for shelter dogs. That is possible, but it seems unlikely. According to surveys done by the American Pet Products Association, the number of owned dogs has been trending up since 1988, the number of households owning dogs has gone up in all but one measurement period since 1988, and 35% of people who acquire a dog obtain it from a shelter, rescue group, or by adoption (not purchase) at a pet store venue. The Pew Research Center has projected that population growth in the United States will continue to be strong between now and 2050, with most of the growth coming from immigration. Although the population over age 65 will continue to grow, that segment will be only 19% of total population by 2050. I think the combination of the continued growth of the human population, combined with the continued popularity of dog ownership and adoption as a means of pet acquisition, means that the outlook for growth in the number of adoptions is bright. How bad will the shelter dog shortage be? The projected population of the United States for 2020 is 337 million. At a rate of 10.5 dog adoptions per 1000 people per year, that would mean 3,538,000 shelter dogs would be needed to supply the demand 5 years from now. While the demand for shelter dogs will be going up, though, supply will be going down. No Kill cities reduce intake with pet retention and spay-neuter programs, and further reduce the number of impounded animals needing adoption by increasing return-to-owner and return-to-field numbers dramatically. Effective pet retention programs can reduce owner surrenders by one-third, and effective return-to-owner programs can increase dog reclaims to 60% or more of strays. If No Kill continues to spread, it is not at all outside the bounds of possibility that the number of shelter dogs needing adoption will be less than 2 million in 2020. Indeed, the number could be even less if spay-neuter programs further decrease intake. At that point we would be short at least 1.5 million shelter dogs each year to meet the demand for adoption. We don’t want those 1.5 million dogs in 2020 to be acquired from commercial breeders, which is why we need to start thinking now about how to supply that demand. So what could go wrong? One way for this projection to fail would be if the No Kill momentum that is currently sweeping the country stalls. No Kill right now is a juggernaut, though, and I cannot imagine it stalling anytime soon. A more likely possible roadblock to continuing increases in pet ownership is the cost of pet maintenance. With incomes stagnant and veterinary costs seemingly increasing rapidly, it may be possible that some people who want to acquire pets in the future will decide not to due to costs. However, if costs do become a significant factor in the decision to acquire a pet it will hurt shelters less than commercial dog breeders. Adopting a dog from a shelter is much cheaper than buying one from a breeder, and No Kill shelters offer support systems for owners who are having trouble paying for pet food or veterinary care. A nationwide shortage of adoptable dogs is not something that animal shelters in the United States have ever faced. When people have thought about No Kill for dogs, they have thought about getting to a 90% or better live release rate. Now we need to start thinking beyond that to the entire market for dogs. What place do animal shelters want to have in the dog market of the future?

I thought it would be interesting to catch up on how big cities are doing. Of the 30 United States cities that Wiki lists as having the highest populations, 6 are well established as No Kill cities: Austin, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver (although it still has that pit bull ban), and Portland. And 7 cities are making credible efforts to get to No Kill, meaning they have strong programs in place and are making progress. Some of these are in the 80% range or have hit 90% and the only question is sustainability. The cities are New York, Los Angeles, San Antonio, San Diego, Washington DC, Boston, and Baltimore. I debated including Las Vegas on this list, but decided not to because its serious effort is pretty recent. That’s a total of 13 of the most populous 30 cities — which is 43% — that are either No Kill or have credible efforts in place to get there. In addition to the cities, there are high-population counties that are No Kill or have credible efforts, including Fairfax in Virginia and Hillsborough in Florida. The most amazing thing about this list of 30 cities is that only 5 years ago none of these cities were No Kill and only a few had credible efforts in place to get there. If we see as much progress in the next 5 years as we did in the last 5 years, the great majority of our largest cities will be No Kill by 2020. It’s not all good news, and some of  the top 30 cities are notoriously bad places for homeless pets. Memphis is on the list of the 30 most populous cities, as are Houston and Detroit. It’s becoming clearer as time goes on that No Kill is easier to achieve in progressive cities, and Memphis, Houston, and Detroit are not known for being progressive. The job of shelters in non-progressive cities is harder both because they do not get as much community and government support and because they tend to have less progressive leadership within the shelter. Detroit seems to be making a comeback, though, and there are some really encouraging signs of progress in Houston. I haven’t heard a single positive thing about Memphis. You can to a great extent gauge how desirable a city is as a place to live by how well it is doing at saving shelter pets. Certainly most people would choose New York, Washington DC, Austin, Seattle, Denver, or Portland over Memphis, Louisville, or Oklahoma City as a place to live. Cities that are not doing well at saving shelter pets are typically doing badly on many other metrics of what makes a city great. Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States after New York, has a particularly strong No Kill effort underway. That effort was the subject of an interesting article this past week from Best Friends, which is spearheading the effort there. Los Angeles has a large land area and a mild climate, which is a setting for huge kitten seasons. Best Friends reports that in 2014, 61% of the animals killed in the shelter system in Los Angeles were kittens. Kittens under 8 weeks, in particular, do not do well in shelters, and Best Friends plans to massively expand its kitten-nursery efforts as the key to further progress. Some of the 13 cities that are doing well are part of formal metro coalitions. Portland and Denver fall into that category, and have very strong regional coalitions. The San Diego effort includes the entire county. Even if there is no formal coalition, No Kill seems to have an effect on nearby cities. Austin, Jacksonville, and San Francisco have all offered significant help to neighboring communities. Working together regionally really seems to help No Kill efforts.

A great debate has been raging for several years now about how to control the number of feral cats. On one side of the debate we have wildlife conservationists who argue that the domestic cat is an invasive species that is slaughtering native species and must be eradicated in the same way that other invasive species are eradicated – by killing them all. On the other side we have No Kill advocates who argue that trap-and-kill programs do not work and that feral cat numbers can be managed and gradually reduced by trap-neuter-return (TNR). The two sides have been battling for years, with wildlife biologists successfully opposing TNR in some places. Underlying this debate is an assumption that has, as far as I can tell from reading the non-paywalled literature, never been addressed in any systematic way. That assumption is that feral cats in the United States are like other “invasive” species such as starlings and Burmese pythons, in that their numbers are rapidly increasing. We see projections that one feral cat can have hundreds of thousands of offspring in a few years, for example. The label “invasive” itself designates a non-native species that comes into an environment and takes over, squeezing out native species by its rapid reproduction. Think kudzu. What do we know about feral cat population numbers in the United States? The most accurate answer to that question is “nothing.” Over the years various estimates of feral cat populations have been made, often in the range of 60 million. One recent study that attracted a lot of attention estimated that there were from 30 to 80 million un-owned domestic cats in the United States. This estimate was made in a 2013 article by Scott R. Loss, et al., published in the journal Nature Communications. It is often referred to as the Smithsonian study. The Smithsonian study did not report any original research on the number of un-owned cats in the United States; instead, it made estimates ostensibly based on five other studies. The authors of the paper acknowledged, however, that: “No precise estimate of the un-owned cat population exists for the United States . . . .” Because they had no good data on numbers of un-owned cats in the United States, they used data from other countries to estimate what the population might be in the United States. The wide range in this estimate, and the lack of data from the United States, resulted in numbers that I would characterize as “guessing.” But in spite of the lack of data on the feral cat population nationwide, there are useful things we can say about feral cat distribution and their numbers over time. First of all, as to distribution, domestic cats are a commensal species, and as such their numbers are heavily dependent on the human population. As a commensal species, feral cats live primarily in the cities and suburbs. This is an extremely important fact about feral cats that has been given virtually no attention in connection with control measures. There is no evidence whatsoever that feral cats exist in sufficient numbers to cause damage to populations of native species in wild areas of the territorial United States, away from human habitation. Nor is there any evidence that feral cat numbers in wild areas are increasing. The commensal nature of the cat, and its dependence on its association with human habitation, means that feral cats are not an invasive species in the classic sense of over-running natural habitat and crowding out native species. Since feral cats require resources that they find in human habitations to reach high populations, efforts to control those populations must concentrate in cities and suburbs. We do not need to be concerned about most wild areas, because they have very few feral cats. In the cities and suburbs where feral cats live, there is not a black-and-white line between feral and tame cats. Although feral and tame cats may be very different behaviorally, they are denizens of the same urban habitat and their populations intertwine. In many colonies you will find feral and tame cats living side-by-side. Therefore, what we are really interested in for purposes of designing control programs is the number of free-roaming cats (aka community cats), whether they are feral or tame. The two important facts discussed above – that cats are commensal and that the population we are interested in for control purposes is free-roaming cats, point us to an important data source that has been completely overlooked in discussions about the feral cat “problem” – historical animal control data. That data shows us that the population of free-roaming cats in the urban areas where cats actually live has been plunging since the early 1900s. All we need to do to “control” the free-roaming cat population is to figure out what we have been doing right and do more of it. Free-roaming cats were apparently not considered a problem in American cities until the latter half of the 19th century. In fact, there are references in historical documents to cat shortages. Large numbers of horses and dairy cows were stabled in cities throughout the 1800s, and you could find cats in every stable. Horses ate grain, and cats deterred rodents from getting to the expensive grain. It was not until around the end of the 19th century that the number of cats grew large enough in New York City, Boston, and other large cities that systematic efforts to control their numbers were made. In New York City, that job fell to the ASPCA. The ASPCA has made their intake and euthanasia numbers available for selected years in the period from 1894, when they were awarded the responsibility for animal control in New York City, to 1994, when they gave up that responsibility. During that 100-year period, the vast majority of animals who were taken into shelters in the city were taken in by the ASPCA. The ASPCA is to be congratulated on their willingness to make this data available, because it is the sole source of shelter intake data that we have that goes back to the early 1900s. The cat-intake numbers from the ASPCA official reports are astonishing. In 1895 the ASPCA took in 24,140 cats. That number rapidly went up as the ASPCA ramped up its animal control operation. In 1914 the intake number was 177,234, and in 1928 it was 217,774. In 1934 the cat intake number peaked at 219,506 cats. According to unofficial reports, the numbers in some years may have been even higher. One report was that the ASPCA killed 303,949 cats in 1911 (Forbush, The Domestic Cat). But the number of cats impounded by the ASPCA fell sharply from 1934 to 1946, and in 1946 the ASPCA impounded 155,312 cats. The decline continued, and in 1965 the number was 75,858. In 1994, the number was 27,366. The number of cats impounded in New York City continued to decline after the city took over animal control in 1994, and in 2014 cat intake was 18,784. Meanwhile, the human population of New York City increased from 5.6 million in 1920 to 8.5 million today. If we pick 1920 as a base year and compare it to 2014, we see a dramatic fall in cat intake numbers in New York City, both in absolute numbers and numbers relative to the human population. The number of cats impounded by animal control fell from about 200,000 per year in 1920 to 18,784 in 2014. That is a decline of 91% in absolute numbers. The decline relative to human population was from 36 per 1000 people in 1920 to about 2 per 1000 people today, a 95% drop. Now, some people (particularly wildlife biologists, I suspect) would criticize these numbers as meaningless. They would argue that the numbers are for only one city and that enforcement as to cats may have changed over the years. These are valid criticisms, but I do not think they invalidate the evidence of a plunge in free-roaming cat numbers. As to the objection that the numbers are from only one city, we have quite a lot of national data showing a fall in shelter intake across the United States. This fall in intake has been particularly well-documented for the years 1970 to 2000. It is not the quality of data we would ideally like to have for scientific study, but it is consistent across a large number of shelters. Those estimates are that shelter intake nationwide, of cats and dogs, was some 26.5 million in 1970 and about 9 million in 2000. As to the objection that animal-control enforcement may have changed over the years, changes in enforcement up to at least the year 2000 were in the direction of more enforcement against cats, not less. And in any event, we are not looking at a subtle finding here. Plunges in the number of cats impounded on the order that we have seen in the United States is hardly likely to be solely due to changes in enforcement. Additional evidence that the number of cats in cities has cratered comes from ecological studies that were done in the 1980s. Cat densities of from 725 to 1813 per square mile were found by researcher James Childs in Baltimore neighborhoods in the early 1980s. I am not aware of any more recent ecological surveys of cats in cities, but such numbers of free-roaming cats would surely be very rare in cities today. So, what happened? Why did the number of free-roaming cats in our cities fall off a cliff? One thing that did not cause the decline in numbers was shelter killing. In spite of massive killing, the numbers of cats impounded in New York City throughout the early 1900s continued to rise. The explanation for the fall in the number of cats was changes in the environment. The great decline in cat intake that we saw in New York City from roughly 1920 to 1945 correlated with the period of time after horses and dairy cows disappeared from the cities. Cats lost their jobs protecting stables, and as the stables disappeared a huge chunk of the food and shelter resources that cats had relied on disappeared with them. Also in the early 1900s, cities began to make organized efforts to improve public health. In addition to getting livestock out of town, cities made big efforts to clean up the streets and get rid of abandoned buildings. Less trash in the streets and fewer abandoned buildings equaled fewer resources for free-roaming cats. Another enormous change happened in the 1970s as safe, humane techniques for spaying and neutering were perfected and veterinarians began to recommend sterilization for owned pets as a routine part of healthcare. This trend accelerated in the 1990s as pediatric spay-neuter became accepted, and today a very high percentage of owned cats – estimates are over 90% – are sterilized. As more and more owned cats were sterilized, there was less and less seeding of the free-roaming cat population by owned pets. Another factor in the period from 1970 to 2000 was that residences began to secure their trash better. Photographs of Baltimore from the 1970s show alleys full of metal trash cans tipped over by dogs, with the lids scattered around. Today we have garbage cans with locking lids that are much harder for animals to open. What part did TNR have in all this? TNR did not become widespread until recently, and it may be too early in the process to evaluate long-term effects of TNR on the population of cats in cities and suburbs. However, TNR should further decrease the seeding of the free-roaming cat population. If we could do TNR on a substantial percentage of the population of free-roaming cats in the cities and suburbs, we should see the same type of decline that we saw in feral dog populations from 1970 to 2000. What more can we do? A 1989 paper by Calhoon and Haspell found that it was the availability of shelter that limited the number of cats in Brooklyn, and that supplemental feeding did not increase cat numbers. If we are serious about reducing the number of feral cats, we need to reduce urban blight, including getting rid of abandoned houses, garages, cars, etc. In the suburbs people must secure their outbuildings. TNR can help transition cats who are affected by these measures so that they can live out their lives in comfort. For example, when people complain about feral cats in their neighborhoods, we could trap, sterilize, and relocate the cats to a safe place, and then counsel the people to secure anything on their property that could potentially serve as shelter for cats. But really, probably the best thing we can do is just relax. The trend in the number of free-roaming cats has been sharply down, and that trend is continuing. Since cats live mostly in the cities and suburbs, and since populations in those areas have been falling precipitously, we have a system that is actually working very well. We just need to be a little patient, and keep doing what we are doing. The only thing that might slow us down is the bird conservationists. The bird conservationists see what we are doing as all wrong, and they want us to be forced to throw out everything we’ve worked hard for since 1970 and replace it with catch-and-kill programs. This reminds me of the people who advocate mandatory spay-neuter. Mandatory spay-neuter actually results in fewer animals being sterilized, because such rules drive people underground. Similarly, catch-and-kill programs will result in people hiding feral cats, and being afraid to reveal their presence to anyone. This will mean that fewer feral cats will be sterilized, thus setting back all our gains. Large numbers of feral cats live on private property, and the bird conservationists do not seem to realize that no government can give them the right to go on private property to kill feral cats. The most effective way to protect our current success from the bird people may be to continue to grow our networks of feral cat caregivers. The reason the bird people have not succeeded so far in setting the clock back is that no mayor or city councilmember in his or her right mind is going to propose a mass extermination of cats. As long as our network is strong, that will continue to be the case. Wildlife conservationists have succeeded in derailing TNR efforts in some places, and that is a shame, but TNR, since it can be done by people on their own property, can exist even where formal programs are banned.

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.

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.