OUT THE FRONT DOOR

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

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

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

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

In the great majority of cities and counties in the United States stray dogs are not a major problem. In the last 40 years there have been big changes in how dogs are treated, and today most people get their dogs spayed or neutered and would never think of letting them roam the neighborhood by themselves. In most places today, when a dog is out by itself it is usually lost or has escaped from its yard. It is less often a situation where the dog is truly homeless or where its owners are deliberately allowing it to roam. But there are a few places in the United States where stray dogs are apparently still a problem. I have heard repeatedly and from credible sources that there is a stray dog problem in Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, and parts of the desert southwest, as well as on a few Native American reservations. In those places there are reportedly large numbers of free-roaming dogs. Some of them are probably truly homeless; others may have homes but they are only loosely attached to those homes and they spend most of their time roaming. You may have noticed that I said “apparently” and “reportedly.” I can’t be any more definite about the existence and extent of the stray dog problem because, as far as I can tell, no one has ever made a count of the free-roaming dog population in any of those places. We have to rely on anecdotal evidence and imprecise methods such as trying to estimate the number of free-roaming dogs from the number of dead dogs picked up by animal control or sanitation departments. Nevertheless, the anecdotal evidence indicates that the problem itself is real, even if we don’t know the extent of the problem. In Dallas people have complained for years about stray dogs in the southern neighborhoods of the city. In the past year, reporting on the stray dog issue has increased. The gist of the media stories is that people who live in the affected neighborhoods in the southern part of the city are fed up with Dallas animal control for what they see as failing to do its job, and they want the stray dog problem solved. People who live in the affected neighborhoods describe themselves as being intimidated by packs of dogs, and there have been reports of bites by strays. The City Council appears to have been listening, as it had a meeting September 2nd where it heard complaints about the issue and tasked a committee with finding answers. On September 14th, the City Manager, the Assistant City Manager, and the director of Dallas Animal Services (DAS), Jody Jones, filed a report with the committee. Jones has been trying to deal with the situation by having employees go to neighborhoods where the problem is the worst and counsel residents about keeping their dogs under control and getting them sterilized. Increasingly, the city government is becoming impatient with DAS for what it sees as a failure to deal with the stray dog problem. This story quotes one council member as calling Jone’s program “fluff and talk.” Another story quotes a council member as suggesting that feral dogs should be shot from helicopters (yes, really). And this story describes the increased pressure on the shelter to act on the problem. One of the people who has been writing about the issue and urging action recently said that if the shelter does what the city is demanding and starts impounding the strays en masse, a lot of dogs are going to be killed by the shelter. I suspect that some No Kill advocates will say that the shelter director should pick up all the strays and find new homes for them. It seems unlikely that the shelter director would be able to do that. In the first place, Dallas is notorious in the animal-shelter world for failing to adequately fund its shelter. The city has increased its funding for the shelter in recent years, but shelter officials report that they have a hard time keeping animal control officers because of low pay and high stress. In the second place, even the best No Kill shelters in the United States would have a very difficult time withstanding an onslaught of truly homeless dogs, with their problems such as heartworm infection, lack of socialization, behavior issues, need for sterilization, etc. We do not know the extent of the stray dog problem in Dallas, but if the reports are anywhere close to accurate, a thorough sweep could temporarily double the shelter’s intake – or more. And if the problem is not solved at the street level, then the increase in shelter killing will not be temporary. A frequent reaction by No Kill advocates when a city is in trouble like Dallas is to ask for a change in shelter leadership. Perhaps another director could do better, although it seems likely that any director, no matter how talented, would struggle with the situation in Dallas today. When Katrina happened, animal welfare organizations all over the United States rallied to save animals who otherwise would have died. Katrina changed how disaster-relief services look at pets, with the result that the response for pets in the recent flooding in South Carolina will be very different from what it would have been 10 years ago. The stray problem in certain places across south-central and southwestern states is not the result of a natural disaster, but it is similar in that officials in some of the affected cities do not have the capability to deal with the issue in a humane way. It certainly looks as though stray dogs in Dallas are about to face their own Katrina. But the situation is not hopeless. The animal-welfare community in the United States proved during the Katrina disaster that it was capable of mobilizing quickly and providing targeted help that saved thousands of pets. There is no reason that a similar effort couldn’t save the stray dogs of Dallas. We are watching a possible slow-motion disaster getting ready to unfold in Dallas as the city moves to force DAS to start mass street-sweeps and killing. The animal-welfare community has the proven capacity to ward off that catastrophe. Some of the programs that large national organizations and charities could implement in Dallas include: (1) holding areas where rounded-up stray dogs could be temporarily housed and evaluated, (2) transport (after the expiration of the stray-hold period) of dogs who are healthy and socialized to other cities for adoption, (3) treatment in situ or transport to treatment facilities for dogs who need more help, and (4) intensive neighborhood programs along the lines of HSUS’s Pets For Life to help keep the problem from recurring. If an intervention like this could be done, the first three programs would probably be needed for only about 3 months – maybe even less if it turns out that the problem is not as bad as it sounds. The 4th program would need to be done on an ongoing basis. The alternative is to continue to allow Jody Jones and DAS to struggle on in isolation with a problem that they very likely cannot solve on their own. No Kill is often criticized as unrealistic. We’ve all heard variations on the theme of “my city can’t go No Kill because we have too many homeless animals” or “not enough money” or “pet owners who are irresponsible and just don’t care.” Sometimes those complaints have a grain or more of truth. But No Kill is strong enough now as a proven national force to start reaching out to places like Dallas that have real problems, and help them set things right. Once that is done, hopefully those places will be able to continue on their own. We have the power to stave off the impending tragedy in Dallas – it’s just a question of whether we have the will.

No Kill advocates rarely address financial issues in animal control and sheltering. That’s natural enough, because we believe that the primary reason shelters should want to save animals is that it is the right thing to do. When we do address finances we tend to look at it by comparing the revenue of kill versus No Kill shelters. Again, natural enough, because that is the most direct way of looking at how much No Kill costs. But there is another way of looking at animal shelter finances, and that is to ask what incentives are created by the method of funding. Although outcomes can have a big effect on the funding of private animal shelter organizations, outcomes may be having little or no effect on the funding of their municipal counterparts. And that is the problem we have to attack when dealing with municipal shelters. Municipal animal shelters and dog pounds started out back in the 1800s with payment for the employees based on the number of animals they impounded. This payment system has persisted up to today in many places, with cities funding animal control and sheltering entirely or in part based on the number of animals impounded. Outcome for the animals impounded is not a consideration in funding in these cities. Since space in shelters is limited, this funding method creates a very powerful and direct motive for shelter directors to have as much turnover in the shelter population as possible. That means getting animals out the door as quickly as possible. Killing is the fastest way to get an animal out the door, since an animal can be killed as soon as the hold time is up, and another animal put in its place. If funding is entirely based on intake, then the shelter director does not care if the shelter loses money on the disposition. The holy grail for a shelter funded on intake is to keep length of stay as short as possible, regardless of how that is done. We as advocates have been stressing the fact that it can be cheaper to adopt out an animal than to pay the cost of killing it and disposing of the body, and that the cheapest thing of all is to keep animals from coming in the door in the first place. Those arguments are not going to impress a shelter director who is paid based on intake numbers, though. That shelter director is not going to care whether he or she makes money on each animal “transaction.” The only thing that matters is intake, because the cost effectiveness of disposition does not affect the money they receive from the municipality. When a shelter is funded based on intake, the director has a very powerful incentive to oppose any measure that would reduce intake. Help desk? No way. Diverting cats to a community cat program? Not going to do it unless they can be impounded first. Returning animals in the field? Forget it. Spay and neuter? Shelter directors will give lip service to spay and neuter, but how enthusiastic will they be about it when a successful spay and neuter program will reduce their funding? Funding a shelter based solely on intake is also a motive to label as many animals as possible “unadoptable” due to bad temperament. If an animal has a bad temperament it will be killed as soon as the hold time is up. Then the shelter can take in another animal and make more money. When I first started looking at shelter statistics, I thought the ridiculously high number of “behavior” killings in traditional shelters was just a way to disguise killing for time or space. It is that, but it is also a way to institutionalize a short length of stay. All the incentives connected with funding shelters based on intake are wrong. We advocates wonder sometimes why traditional shelters are so reluctant to change. Maybe we should be looking at the incentives that are in place due to the way the shelter is funded. Private, non-profit shelters, even those with contracts to run municipal shelters, are not as subject to these bad incentives because they do not need to rely solely on the municipality for their income. They have an incentive to save as many animals as possible because their ability to fundraise depends in large part on how well they do at saving animals. This is one reason why so many No Kill communities today have their animal sheltering done by a non-profit. So, how to fix this? I think we need to consider whether the way we as advocates have approached the issue of finances is the best approach. We have tried to argue that No Kill is cheaper, but we have done so on the basis of what amounts to anecdotes and best-case scenarios. City officials are not going to be swayed by slick brochures prepared by advocates. Before they will believe that No Kill is cheaper than catch-and-kill they would need to see professionally audited comparisons prepared by neutral auditors, and I’m not aware that any such audits have been done. There are so many moving parts to No Kill transitions, and cities are so different, that I’m not sure such audits even could be done in a meaningful way. Personally, I think we should be arguing based not on whether live releases are cheaper, but on what the tax payers want. The evidence I’ve seen, based on the success of ballot measures to support better animal sheltering with tax dollars, is that people overwhelmingly want their local shelters to save animals and they are willing to pay for it. Another sound argument is that there are intangible benefits to No Kill that are not captured by a dollar-and-cents analysis. This argument is supported by the fact that the best cities in the country are overwhelmingly either already No Kill or working on getting there. Local advocates who are trying to reform shelters might want to make record requests to educate themselves on exactly how the local shelter is funded, and do surveys on what local people would be willing to spend in tax dollars on life-saving sheltering, before approaching city officials. Instead of berating traditional shelter officials for being evil people, we should look at the incentives they are working with, and try to change those incentives when they are bad. One final note – a very quick way to change the incentives is for local advocates to start their own non-profit to take over the municipal sheltering contract or pull large numbers of animals from the shelter. A non-profit animal shelter that is supported in part or entirely by public donations makes money by saving animals’ lives and does not have to deal with the perverse financial incentives that afflict city shelters. This approach can work even in a city where tax payers are not willing to pay for a better municipal shelter, where current shelter management is so bad that it’s abusive, or where city officials turn a deaf ear.

Benzie County is in western Michigan, along the shore of Lake Michigan. It is a rural county with lots of parks and trails, and has a population of about 16,000 people. The county has the distinction of being the smallest in Michigan in land area, and it has a correspondingly small animal shelter. Benzie County Animal Control provides both animal control and sheltering services for the county. It accepts owner surrenders for a small fee. A non-profit, the Animal Welfare League of Benzie County, has spay-neuter and education programs and provides medical care for injured animals. In 2013 the county took in 419 animals. The great majority of them were returned to owner or adopted. The live release rate for the year was 98% (scroll down to “Benzie County” in the link). Benzie County has done well for several years, but 2013 showed an improvement. In 2009, the shelter took in 538 animals and had an 80% live release rate. In 2010, it took in 381 animals and improved to a live release rate of 93%.  In 2011, the live release rate was 92% with an intake of 428 cats and dogs. Intake was 359 in 2012, with a live release rate of 92%. Benzie County, MI, was originally listed by this blog on June 1, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

I’d like to thank everyone for their patience while the blog has been undergoing changes the last three months. I’ve still got some tweaking and editing to do, but the blog is mostly back together again now, with the running totals, a re-worked right sidebar, and a couple of new pages. The right sidebar now lists 144 communities that have been at or above a 90% live release rate for at least one year and make their statistics publicly available. This category – 90% Documented – is the one I’m going to concentrate on, and the other categories (90% Reported and Worth Watching) will not be updated as frequently. Please keep in mind that “the list” on this blog is not a comprehensive list of 90%+ communities. For one thing, it would take a whole team of people working 40-hour weeks to identify, research in depth, write up, and update all the communities that are either at 90%+ or closing in on it. And it’s complicated because everyone has a different idea of how to calculate 90%, or whether that should even be the standard in the first place. The list should therefore be viewed as illustrative, not definitive. In other news, I’m very involved right now in writing a book on the origins of the No Kill movement. This project has included doing about 3 dozen interviews so far, reading 40 or so books (most of them very obscure), and sifting through about 5 reams of documents, not to mention what I’ve found online. It’s a fun project but it’s much bigger than I thought. It’s amazing how far the history of No Kill reaches back, and how many people have been crucial in making it what it is today. Needless to say, this has been keeping me extremely busy!

Clear Creek (9100 residents) and Gilpin (5400 residents) are small counties in a mountainous area west of Denver. Clear Creek has two towns of 1000 or more population: Georgetown (1100), and Idaho Springs (1900). Gilpin has a few small towns of 600 people or less. Both counties are part of the greater Denver metro area. The Clear Creek/Gilpin County Animal Shelter, which is called Charlie’s Place, serves both counties. It is located in the town of Dumont in Clear Creek County. The shelter was named for a favorite dog owned by the donor of the land for the shelter. I spoke with Sue LeBarron, who has been director of the shelter since it opened 5 years ago, and she told me that the shelter accepts owner surrenders from Clear Creek County and Gilpin County with no conditions. Charlie’s Place helps neighboring shelters by taking in surrenders from other jurisdictions in the area when they can. They also have a transport program where they take in dogs from out of state that are at high risk of euthanasia. The shelter is supported by a non-profit, the Friends of Charlie’s Place (FOCP). A newsletter reporting on 2013 stated that FOCP had helped in the placement of over 180 animals in 2013, redesigned the shelter’s exercise park, helped with pet retention and adoption initiatives, and organized fundraising events. FOCP also pays the expenses of animals transferred in from out of the shelter’s jurisdiction. LeBarron told me that feral cats are uncommon in the area, and when they are impounded the shelter seeks to place them as barn cats. The shelter does offsite adoption events for domesticated cats. It offers low-cost microchipping, vaccination clinics, and low-cost and free spay-neuter services. Charlie’s Place reports its shelter statistics to the Colorado Department of Agriculture. For 2012, the shelter reported taking in 485 dogs and cats, which is an intake of 33 animals per 1000 people. The shelter transferred in 116 dogs from out of state and 31 dogs and 9 cats from in state, which accounts for the relatively high intake per person. Without the transfers, the intake per 1000 people was 23. The Colorado reporting form has no category for fosters, so Charlie’s Place reports fostered animals in the “other” category. The shelter’s live release rate for 2012 was 99%. For 2013, the shelter took in 455 animals and again had a 99% live release rate. They had no deaths in shelter care. The shelter once again helped animals from outside its jurisdiction, transferring in 136 dogs and 7 cats. Clear Creek and Gilpin Counties were originally listed by this blog on November 22, 2013, based on their 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

The Cache Humane Society is located in the Cache Valley, an area of northern Utah and southeast Idaho that has over 100,000 residents. The shelter’s website states that it is open admission and is the only shelter serving Cache Valley. In 2014 Cache Humane Society became one of 50 (now 52) participants in the No Kill Utah program (NKUT). NKUT was launched by Best Friends in 2014. The shelter reports that it has been at a live release rate of over 90% in each of the last three months and is over 90% for the year so far. Director Roland Bringhurst says he has been pursuing the No Kill goal since he took over two years ago. The problem area has been cats, and the shelter has started TNR and barn cat programs to bring up their live release rate. There were several more stories this week about new animal shelter buildings. This really seems to be a trend. Some of the venues for new shelters are Broward County, Florida; the Animal Shelter of the Wood River Valley (which says it is the first No Kill shelter in Idaho); The Tree House Humane Society in Chicago (their planned facility sounds wonderful); Denton, Texas (their new shelter helped them hit a 90% live release rate); Aiken County, South Carolina (they are now able to keep the animals healthy); Johnson City, Tennessee (their new shelter is more than four times bigger than the old one and has a donated electronic sign that will feature adoptable animals); and Haywood County, North Carolina (they had an 80% live release rate last year and hope to do even better). Maddie’s Pet Adoption Days on May 30 and 31 were an enormous success, with almost 5300 dogs and cats adopted from over 100 locations by 89 participating organizations. Maddie’s reports that in many locations people were lined up before the doors opened. The Sacramento County animal shelter has opened up a catfe. It’s official – the town of Calistoga, California, has formalized a deal for animal sheltering services from the Petaluma Animal Services Foundation (PASF), which runs the No Kill shelter in Petaluma. Dubuque County, Iowa, has also approved its proposed deal with Whispurring Hope Rescue to take over most animal control duties in the county and adopt out animals. Oftentimes companion animals who are used in research are not given much thought because the public never knows about them.  A new law was passed in Nevada that protects animals that survive the laboratory in good enough condition to be rehabbed and adopted out. Before the law was passed, such animals were often killed when their usefulness to the laboratory ended. The Nevada Humane Society will be taking in the animals and rehabbing them and finding them homes. NHS director Kevin Ryan says 96% of them are Beagles. The Animal Foundation, a non-profit, recently won the contract to continue running the shelter for Clark County, Nevada, over a strong competing bid made by No Kill Las Vegas (NKLV). The Animal Foundation has now put forward their plan to go No Kill. The bad news is that it’s a five-year plan. The good news is that they are going to be working on a TNR program with Best Friends. NKLV leader Bryce Henderson said that the plan is a giant step in the right direction. NKLV has 1600 members and their ability to put forward a credible bid for such a large contact (the shelter took in about 34,000 dogs and cats in 2014) was impressive. San Antonio Pets Alive! has taken in 700 animals since April, an unusually high volume due to the recent flooding in Texas. SAPA adopted out 6,000 pets last year.

We tend to think of a 90% or higher live release rate for a shelter as indicating that the shelter is doing its job successfully. That’s not always the case. Here is a look at two open-intake municipal shelters that, although they have similar live release rates, are very different in performance. The first shelter has a 92% save rate so far in 2014. Out of its total live releases this year it has adopted out 25%, returned 16% to owners, and transferred 59% to rescues. The second shelter had a 91% live release rate for 2013. It adopted out 67% of its live releases, returned 16% to owners, and transferred 17%. The thing that really leaps out at you from those numbers is that the first shelter relied heavily on transfers to achieve its high live release rate (59% of total live releases) and adopted out only 25%. Those percentages were very different with the second shelter, which relied heavily on adoption (adoptions were 67% of its live releases) and transferred only 17%. The first shelter is essentially being propped up by rescues in the community. There is nothing at all wrong with a shelter looking to the community for support, and in fact the most successful communities I see are ones where there is lots of community support. But the shelter must do its share. It is possible for a community to carry a bad shelter to a 90% or higher live release rate, but it is a monumental struggle, it takes a lot longer than it needs to, and it is less sustainable. When a community has to carry the shelter on its back, you wind up with a lot of exhausted and angry rescuers. When you look at social media for the rescuers in the first community you see a constant stream of statements such as: “Mary found this dog but cannot keep it and does not want to take it to the shelter! Please help!,” or “This cat is on the shelter kill list for tomorrow! Needs a rescue commitment,” or “This puppy has a skin condition which means the shelter might kill it – she needs a foster!” With the second shelter things are very different. Rescuers are not overworked and are not being asked to do the shelter’s job for it. The second shelter is in a high-intake area and it struggles, but when it calls for help the community knows the need is real, and the community is able to respond because they are not already stretched to the breaking point. Most of all, with the second shelter the rescuers in the community look at it as a partner and friend, not an enemy. So does this mean we cannot trust shelter statistics to tell us whether a shelter is doing a good job? Not at all – but we have to look at statistics in the context of the community. If we see a high transfer rate for a particular shelter, is that because it has an established partnership with a high-volume adoption partner (a good thing)? Or is it because the shelter is simply not making an effort at adoptions and is putting the responsibility off on local rescues? A good live release rate is the threshold requirement that a shelter should meet, but how it got to the high live release rate is the next question. By the way, I’m not at all opposed to transports, where a shelter in an area with little demand for shelter animals sends dogs to an area with higher demand. I think transports are great because there are now areas of the country that have a shortage of dogs. But there is a difference between moving animals around the country to equalize supply and demand, and the shelter making local rescuers do its job for it.

Routt County is located in northwest Colorado, bordering Wyoming. The population recorded in the 2010 census was 23,500. The county seat is the city of Steamboat Springs, which has 12,000 people. Steamboat Springs has a city-run animal control and shelter called the Steamboat Springs Animal Shelter (SSAS). SSAS serves the entire county, including all the incorporated and unincorporated towns. I was told in a telephone call to SSAS that Routt County has its own animal control officers but contracts with Steamboat Springs for strays to be taken in by SSAS. The shelter official told me that SSAS takes in owner surrenders for the city and the county. Once in a while the shelter gets full, and when that happens they ask owners who want to surrender animals if they can wait. If the owner cannot wait, SSAS takes the animal immediately. The shelter gets support and volunteer help from the Routt County Humane Society (RCHS). A newsletter that is no longer available online described how RCHS volunteers staff the shelter to extend the hours that it is open to the public, and raise funds for spaying and neutering and medical care for shelter animals. RCHS covers the veterinary care and the spay-neuter expenses of 90% of the animals that SSAS takes in. As an example of an animal that would not have survived without medical care provided by RCHS, the newsletter describes the case of a 4-week-old puppy who stopped nursing and required several days of intensive care before he recovered. RCHS also provides assistance for low-income families to spay and neuter their pets. The most recent RCHS newsletter reports that 90% of stray dogs and 10% of stray cats impounded by SSAS are returned to their owners. Although the return-to-owner rate for cats may not sound too good, it’s about 5 times higher than I usually see. Dogs with extraordinary expenses that were saved recently by RCHS included a dog that was so malnourished that both its front legs broke not long after impoundment, and a dachshund that had to have all her teeth extracted. Both are now doing well. The Colorado Department of Agriculture collects information on the statistics of animal shelters in the state. The 2012 report submitted by SSAS shows a total intake of 625 animals. Intake per 1000 people was 27. The live release rate was 98%. One animal died in shelter care, but if that is counted in with euthanasias it does not change the live release rate. The Colorado reporting form does not separate out owner-requested euthanasia. In 2013, SSAS total intake was 635 animals, with a live release rate of 99.3%. If the two animals who died in shelter care are counted in with euthanasias, the live release rate was 99.0%. Routt County was originally listed by this blog on October 24, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.