Teller County is located in central Colorado and is part of the Colorado Springs metropolitan area. Teller County’s population is 23,000 people. The county seat is Cripple Creek, which has a population of 1200. The largest city in Teller County is Woodland Park, which has a population of 6500. The Teller County Regional Animal Shelter (TCRAS) takes in strays and owner surrenders for the county and the city of Woodland Park. Animal control in Teller County is provided by the sheriff’s office. Woodland Park has its own animal control division. The city of Cripple Creek has its own animal control and shelter, the Cripple Creek Animal Shelter (CCAS). A page on the the TCRAS website describes how TCRAS was formed in the year 2000 specifically to avoid having the county send its animals to a kill shelter. Like many progressive shelters, TCRAS does not impound stray cats (see this post by the president of HSUS for more information on recommended community cat policy). I spoke to an official of TCRAS who told me that the shelter takes in owner surrenders from Teller County on a space-available basis. An animal control officer with CCAS told me that they accept owner surrenders from their jurisdiction with no conditions other than a $75 surrender fee. The Colorado Department of Agriculture collects statistics each year on animal shelters in the state. In 2012, TCRAS reported an intake of 757 animals. Its live release rate was 99% (98% if animals who died in shelter care are included with euthanasias). CCAS reported an intake of 38 animals with no euthanasias or deaths in shelter care, for a live release rate of 100%. CCAS had 2 transfers, which the animal control officer told me went to TCRAS. In 2013 the shelters had the same live release rates as in 2012. TCRAS reported to the state of Colorado that it took in 818 animals. Of those animals, 746 were adopted or reclaimed and 9 were transferred. Eight animals were euthanized and 5 died in shelter care The live release rate was 99%, or 98% if animals who died in shelter care are included with euthanasias. CCAS took in 37 animals, all dogs, returned 33 to their owners, adopted out 3, and transferred 1, for a live release rate of 100%. Teller County was originally listed by this blog on October 19, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

There is a lot of news this week, so let’s get to it: Miami-Dade County Animal Services has announced that it achieved an 81.5% live release rate for dogs and cats in 2014! The shelter had an intake of 27,000 animals. A $4 million budget increase has allowed the shelter to implement a raft of new programs that are having an effect. In other news from Miami, the shelter is now using the Finding Rover face recognition app for lost dogs. Hillsborough County Pet Resources Center, the open admission shelter for Hillsborough County, Florida, is running at an 85% live release rate so far for its 2014-2015 fiscal year (counting animals who died or were lost in shelter care with euthanasias). This covers the 5 colder months, so we can’t guess what the rate for the entire year will be, but things are looking good. Two years ago the live release rate for Hillsborough County, which has a population of 2 million and includes the city of Tampa, was only 46%. When current director Scott Trebatoski started a year ago, he made a lot of changes to adoption procedures, all designed to make the process as smooth and attractive to adopters as possible. He has also repaired relationships with local rescues. Tampa has proven to be a very tough venue for No Kill in the past, so it is encouraging to see this progress. The Clermont To The Rescue Humane Society just started running the Clermont County Animal Shelter in Ohio on January 1st this year. Clermont County has about 200,000 people and is part of the Cincinnati metro area. Manager Eva Devaughn reports that in the first two months under new operation, the shelter has euthanized only 7 cats and dogs, all based on a veterinarian’s recommendation. West Virginia has certainly not been known as a promising venue for No Kill, so every ray of hope in that state is important. The Huntington-Cabell-Wayne Animal Shelter is reporting that it has saved 85% of its dogs this year and has just started a TNR program for feral and community cats. In more West Virginia news, the Mercer County Animal Shelter reports that it has not killed any animals for space in the last 2 months. The shelter is transporting at-risk pets out of the area. Actually, a group of volunteers is doing transports for the shelter, including networking to find receiving rescues and, twice a month, driving 12 to 20 hours round trip. In 2014 the volunteers saved over 1300 animals. Mercer County’s population is 62,000 and its median household income is $26,600, about half the national average. One in five people in the county live in poverty. In more transport news, PetSmart Rescue Waggin’ is helping the Vincennes Animal Shelter in Indiana. PetSmart has picked up animals for transport four times since the arrangement was made in January, and the shelter now has empty cages. Vincennes is a small town in the southwestern part of the state. The town’s population has been declining, and it has no significant population centers near enough to be an easy drive for potential adopters. North Shore Animal League’s Tour for Life rolling adoption event to assist shelters across the United States is celebrating its 15th year. The Brown County, Indiana, shelter is reporting a 98% live release rate for 2014, which is a repeat of its great performance in 2013. A flashback: Seattle’s mayor noted in a recent proclamation honoring the city’s spay-neuter clinic that the Seattle shelter took in 18,401 animals in 1982 and killed 45% of them. Last year, intake was 3,344, and Seattle euthanized only 7% of them. The HSUS Expo is almost here – starting March 30th in New Orleans. In recent years the Expo has become an important event for No Kill leaders, and a lot of them will be there. The only conference that seems to draw more No Kill leaders is the Best Friends National Conference, which will be held this year in Atlanta, Georgia, July 16-19. Austin, Texas, is facing possible changes in the rules that govern shelter vets. The city of Waco, which has been running at a live release rate of over 90% in 2015, is entering the home stretch in its effort to raise $2.5 million for a new shelter. The campaign has raised $2.3 million so far. ACCT Philly took in about 28,000 animals in 2014 and had a 74% live release rate. Adoptions and fosters both showed increases. A 74% live release rate is nothing to cheer about, but Philadelphia has been a very hard case for No Kill for a very long time, and it’s nice to see things at least moving in the right direction.

Friedrich Engels, one of the original philosophers of communist political theory, once said that there would be no need to abolish the state by force because it would wither away once the principles of social and economic justice were broadly understood. Somewhat similarly, many people feel that once the “pet overpopulation” problem is solved, animal shelters will wither away, or at least shrink to very small agencies that deal only with emergency situations involving sick, injured, and dangerous animals. I believe this idea of the animal shelter withering away, which was originated by No Kill critics but is shared by many No Kill advocates, is actually an assault on the core values of No Kill. Before we can have this discussion we need to define “pet overpopulation,” and right away we have an important philosophical divide. Many people (including me) think the proper definition of “pet overpopulation” for cats and dogs is when there are more cats and dogs needing homes in a given year than there are homes for them. The people who believe in the withering away of the animal shelter, however, define “pet overpopulation” somewhat differently, as anytime you have adoptable animals coming into an animal shelter. Since the year 2000, animal shelter intake has stayed roughly the same nationwide (as best we can tell from the limited statistics available) at about 7 million cats and dogs per year. People who define pet overpopulation as adoptable animals coming into animal shelters believe that we need to concentrate on reducing that 7 million number. People who look at it as a supply and demand issue disagree, and feel that what we need to do is balance intake with live dispositions. Further reduction of intake is only needed if the number of available homes is insufficient for the current intake. Since the year 2000, supply and demand for healthy and treatable shelter dogs in the United States have been in rough balance. For cats, TNR has grown dramatically and we now also have the new breakthroughs of SNR and balancing cat intake with shelter capacity, which have obviated the need for killing healthy or treatable shelter cats. Since this is the case, I believe we need to change our efforts away from further increases in spay-neuter targeted at pet owners, and toward placing shelter animals in the available home or field situations, including emphasizing adoptions, return-to-owner, transports, TNR, and SNR. Note that I did not say we should “reduce” spay-neuter efforts aimed at owned pets. Those efforts are still important, but spay-neuter rates of owned pets are very high already, on the order of 80-95%, and we have just about squeezed all the juice out of that orange. We can probably get some additional benefit from micro-targeting by zip code and going door-to-door in neighborhoods where pit bulls are being bred, but otherwise, a maintenance effort for spay-neuter of owned pets is all we need. Obsessing over the idea that we need to make the animal shelter wither away by doubling down on spay-neuter will be a waste of time and resources. But this issue goes far beyond the proper place of spay-neuter. It has broader implications that go to the heart of what No Kill stands for and what the future of No Kill will be. We have replenishment of the dog population from sources that we cannot control. For dogs, we have commercial breeders who sell large numbers of dogs to individuals. Even with good pet retention programs, sometimes these owners will want to or have to give up their dogs. We will never get everyone to spay and neuter their dogs, so there will continue to be some surprise puppies. And sometimes dogs will get lost and their owners either won’t look for them or will look in the wrong places. Rather than keep knocking ourselves out trying to make the world of dog owners perfect, which is never going to happen, we might as well accept that we are going to have a certain number of dogs a year who need rehoming. Cats are a completely different story than dogs, but cats also are going to need continuing sheltering. There is a reservoir population of feral cats that replenishes the supply of cats. There are virtually no feral dogs in United States cities anymore, but there are lots of feral cats everywhere. Because cats can live in the wild we will never be able to reduce the feral cat population to zero, any more than we could reduce the raccoon or squirrel populations to zero. Rather than thinking of this as a bad thing, we should welcome it. Rather than looking at 7 million animals a year going into shelters as a problem we need to fix (which may be futile since we haven’t figured out how to fix it in the last 15 years) we should look at it as an opportunity to maintain a safety net and a compassionate marketplace for pets. In a recent article I posited that the number of people adopting dogs will continue to rise, causing a shortage of adoptable dogs. If this happens, instead of celebrating it perhaps we should attempt to find dogs to meet that demand. Some people who believe in the withering away of the animal shelter think that private organizations will take over specialized duties that used to belong to the animal shelter. For example, one organization might do TNR and SNR, while another organization serves as a clearinghouse for lost pets, another one rehabilitates dogs with behavior problems, etc. While the policies are good, I think the idea of completely separating these functions into different entities is a bad idea. Animal control and sheltering are a “natural monopoly” in the same way that utilities and cable service are natural monopolies. The reason that communities have historically had animal control and sheltering concentrated in one entity, or in a small number of entities that work closely together, is precisely because the efficiencies of that arrangement are so high. It is fine to have separate groups that do TNR, behavior rehabilitation, etc., but we also need a central clearinghouse so that each small group does not have to reinvent the wheel by doing all the associated tasks of animal impoundment, record keeping, evaluation, handling, etc. separately. Dogs and cats would be hurt by fragmenting the animal care system, because it would fragment and weaken their safety net. The safety net for dogs and cats depends above all on people communicating and networking — on community engagement. The shelter is a natural place for that network to form. The behaviorist who wants to get routine health screening for dogs being rehabilitated knows the veterinarians. The people who do TNR have met city council members at the shelter’s yearly fundraiser, and they know who will be sympathetic to the cats when changes in ordinances are being discussed. The SNR people can coordinate much better with the Lost and Found people if they know them personally and work with them every day. Getting consensus on changes that are needed is much easier when everyone is in touch with the big picture. Centralized shelters also serve as a magnet for media exposure and attracting new people and donations. People who would never think about donating to a pet retention group will donate to the shelter, which can then funnel money to pet retention. Fundraising, which is of course a critical aspect of the safety net, is much easier with one strong local presence that gets a lot of publicity, and publicity is much easier for the shelter to get than it would be for a bunch of small, specialized groups. Publicity is also key to attracting adopters and new volunteers and fosters. Perhaps the most important reason that the withering away of the animal shelter would be a bad thing is that it would mean giving up the shelter’s place in the pet market. We need a marketplace for pets where the suppliers are concerned above all with the welfare of the pets they are supplying. As I discussed in the post about the coming shelter dog shortage, we as animal advocates have to start thinking about what we want the pet marketplace of the future to look like. If the shelter withers away, then where will people go when they want a pet? If there is no shelter where they can adopt, then they will go to commercial breeders, including backyard breeders and puppy mills. The withering away of the animal shelter, if it happens, will be a bonanza to people who want to breed cats and dogs for money. In 2012, about 35% of dog and cat acquisitions were from animal shelters or rescues (which generally acquire their animals from shelters or as owner surrenders) or places like PetSmart and Petco that provide space for shelter and rescue animal adoptions. (Data courtesy of the American Pet Products Association.) That’s more than 1/3 of the pet market that is currently held by animal shelters, either directly or indirectly through rescues. If shelters wither away and give up this market to commercial breeders it will be a disaster for dogs and cats, because there will no longer be any suppliers in the pet market who actually care about the well-being of pets. Rather than continuing to obsess over cutting shelter admissions more and more we should be obsessing over increasing this market share as much as we can. Today there is something of a trend for people to adopt pets rather than buy. We need to spend our time trying to encourage the public’s desire to adopt, instead of spending our time trying (futilely) to further increase spaying and neutering of owned pets. The No Kill movement in particular needs to think about where we want to go with animal sheltering, and we need to fight back against the idea that the most desirable state of affairs is for the animal shelter to wither away because it is no longer needed. The core idea of No Kill has always been to connect the person who wants to adopt with an animal that they can adopt. Continuing to do that in the future will require No Kill to start consciously thinking about the structure we want to see in the pet market and No Kill’s place in the pet market.

Baltimore is an independent city in Maryland with 622,000 human residents. The Baltimore metro area has about 2.7 million people. Animal sheltering is provided for the city by the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS) (not to be confused with the Baltimore County animal shelter). BARCS takes in more than 11,000 animals per year. BARCS is a non-profit that was formed in 2005 from the old municipal shelter for the purpose of working with the city’s animal control. Jennifer Brause was the founder of BARCS and has been its executive director since 2006. At the time of the takeover, the city shelter had a save rate of only 2% (not a typo). The shelter accepts owner surrenders on a drop-off basis, with the only requirement being to provide identification and complete a questionnaire about the pet. BARCS accepts owner surrenders from outside its jurisdiction for a fee. BARCS does not post its statistics on its website, but it reported a 78% live release rate in 2013 and stated in 2014 that it was running at 80% as of September. Baltimore was one of the cities that was featured at last year’s Best Friends national conference, and here is the playbook that the Baltimore shelter prepared for the conference. The playbook details the shelter’s plans for further improvement. (The playbooks for other cities that were featured at the 2014 conference are at this link.) BARCS has teamed up with the Baltimore Humane Society and the Maryland SPCA, which is headquartered in Baltimore, to form the Baltimore Animal Welfare Alliance. The three shelters cooperate on adoption events, neighborhood-level targeting of spay-neuter efforts, and balancing shelter capacity. Baltimore is counted in the Running Totals as an 80%+ community.

Alpena County is located in the far northern part of Michigan’s lower peninsula, bordering Lake Huron. It is a predominantly rural county with a population of 30,000. The county seat is the city of Alpena, which is a vacation spot with a permanent population of 10,000. Alpena County has an animal control division that reports to the state of Michigan (scroll down in the link). The Huron Humane Society (HHS), located in the city of Alpena, also reports to the state of Michigan. I spoke to a representative of HHS who told me that they have a contract with the county to take in all the animals transferred by animal control and they take in strays directly from the public. The representative told me that HHS also takes in owner surrenders from the public, subject to a waiting list when the shelter is full. The representative did not know if any exceptions could be made to the waiting list for people who have to surrender an animal immediately. There is a small fee for owner surrenders who are up-to-date on vetting, with a higher fee if HHS will have to supply the vetting. In 2012, Alpena County animal control reported that it impounded 115 cats and dogs, returned 53 of them to their owners, transferred 57, and euthanized 4. HHS reported an intake of 450 cats and dogs, with a live release rate of 90%. If we combine the statistics for both organizations, the live release rate for the county for 2012 was 91%. Alpena County is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

Longmont, Colorado, is a city of 86,000 people located north of Denver in Boulder and Weld counties. The Longmont Humane Society (LHS) serves as the municipal shelter for strays who are taken in by Longmont Animal Control or found within the city limits of several nearby towns, including Frederick (population 9000). LHS split off from the Humane Society of Boulder Valley (HSBV) several years ago. According to a representative of HSBV, Boulder County Animal Control takes strays to Longmont that are picked up in the unincorporated area of the county near Longmont, whereas the rest of the strays in the county go to HSBV. According to the representative, Longmont and HSBV both receive strays from the nearby town of Erie (population 6000). LHS accepts owner surrenders from its service area, but states that it may ask owners to wait if the shelter is full. It charges a small fee for surrenders. It also accepts owner surrenders from outside its service area, including out of state, if space is available. LHS reported a live release rate of 87% in 2011. In December of 2011 the shelter announced the appointment of Liz Smokowski as executive director. Ms. Smokowski has a master’s degree in business administration. The shelter’s 2012 annual report stated that in 2012, Smokowski’s first full year as director, LHS increased its live release rate to 94% and decreased its cost per animal by 10%. The report stated that over 850 active volunteers supplied 60,895 hours of service. LHS also submitted a report on 2012 statistics to the state of Colorado, and this report shows a 94% live release rate as well. The shelter has posted full statistics for 2013 on its website. LHS took in 3536 cats and dogs in 2013, an increase from its intake of 3430 cats and dogs in 2012. Its live release rate improved to 95%. If owner-requested euthanasia and animals who died or were lost in shelter care are counted in with euthanasias, the live release rate is 93%. The 2013 annual report noted that LHS had taken in 238 animals displaced by severe flooding in September of 2013. Longmont, Colorado, was originally listed by this blog on May 4, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Otsego County is located in a rural area in the northern part of Michigan’s lower peninsula, and has a population of about 23,000 people. Otsego County Animal Control is the municipal agency that provides animal control and sheltering services for Otsego County. The shelter is supported by the Friends for Life organization, which provides a range of services including Petfinder listings and foster homes. A new shelter building was completed in January 2012 after funds were approved by local taxpayers. I called the shelter to ask about the owner surrender policy, and was told that Otsego County residents do not have to make an appointment or pay a fee to surrender an animal. The shelter appreciates people calling ahead if they wish to surrender an animal, but does not require advance notice. The shelter takes in stray cats as well as dogs. I was told that the county does not have many feral cats, but if they get a call about feral cats they offer TNR. They also sometimes relocate cats through a barn cat program. In 1999, the county adopted a resolution supporting the concept that no adoptable companion animal should be killed. The resolution “was also founded on the belief that ONLY those animals received in a condition of terminal illness or mortal injury that are beyond clinical redemption and/or animals that are deemed aggressive and/or dangerous and cannot be successfully rehabilitated with available resources should be humanely destroyed.” Friends For Life reports that the shelter had a “reclaiming/adoption” rate of 99.5% in 1999 and 98.75% in 2000. I was not able to find statistics for the years from 2001 to 2006, although partial statistics from 2001 and 2002 indicate the shelter had a 90% or higher live release rate in those years. The Michigan state database shows that the shelter reported live release rates as follows from 2007 through 2013: 2007 — 91% 2008 — 95% 2009 —  96% 2010 —  95% 2011 —  95% 2012 — 95% 2013 — 96% Intake for 2013 was 885 cats and dogs. All adopted animals were sterilized. There was one owner-requested euthanasia, but the live release rate does not change if that is counted with euthanasias. (Note: The form that Otsego County Animal Control submitted to the state of Michigan for 2012 contains an error in that it states that 197 cats and dogs were sold for research. I spoke to a shelter official who verified that this was a mistake on the form, that no animals were sold for research, and that the 197 number was for returns-to-owner.) Otsego County, MI, was originally listed by this blog on May 27, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Asheville is a city of almost 90,000 people located in the mountains of western North Carolina. It is the county seat of Buncombe County, which has a population of 248,000. Asheville has become a mecca for retiring baby boomers and is growing rapidly. The city, county, and a non-profit called the Asheville Humane Society (AHS) have a cooperative arrangement for caring for homeless animals. The city and county both have animal control units that enforce ordinances, pick up strays, and respond to complaints. The Buncombe County Animal Shelter (BCAS) in Asheville houses strays for their hold period, and if they are not reclaimed they go to the AHS Nancy Hiscoe Clark Adoption and Education Center for placement. AHS contracts with the city and county to run BCAS, and BCAS and the AHS adoption center are located side-by-side on a modern campus. The shelter accepts owner surrenders with no fee and no appointment required. AHS and the shelter offer many programs. Brother Wolf Animal Rescue is a non-profit that has operated in Asheville since 2007. It has an adoption center that is open 365 days a year and houses up to 100 animals. Brother Wolf has a Help Desk and a pet pantry, and it takes in some owner surrenders. The Humane Alliance of Western North Carolina has provided low-cost spay-neuter in the area since 1994, and reports that it has sterilized 350,000 animals. The Humane Alliance partners with BCAS, PetSmart Charities, and the Mimi Paige Foundation to provide trap-neuter-return for community cats. AHS and the shelter are part of the Million Cat Challenge. A news report on January 29, 2015, stated that BCAS took in 5900 animals in 2014 and euthanized 16% of them. The shelter adopted out about 3000 animals, returned about 960 to their owners, and transferred about 800. Buncombe County is counted in the Running Totals as an 80%-90% community.

Chippewa County, Michigan, is on the eastern edge of the Upper Peninsula. It has about 40,000 residents, including the county seat of Sault Ste. Marie. The Chippewa County Animal Shelter used to be high kill, but after local citizens got involved and asked for change the county hired a new shelter director, Holly Henderson. In answer to an e-mail inquiry I sent to Henderson, I was told that the shelter takes in strays from both the county and the city of Sault Ste. Marie. The shelter takes in owner surrenders, although in situations where the animal is not at risk, the shelter may ask the owner to first place a listing on the shelter’s Facebook page and attempt to re-home the animal. Henderson told me that the owner surrender policy is flexible, and if the staff get the feeling that the animal is better off at the shelter, they will accept it even when they are full. They also immediately take in the ones who are not spayed or neutered, so the shelter can be sure they are altered before going to a new home. The shelter reported a live release rate of 99% in 2013 with an intake of 1238 animals (scroll down in the link to the Chippewa County page). With owner-requested euthanasia counted as part of total euthanasia, the live release rate was 98%. The 2012 live release rate was 98%, with intake of 1076. If owner-requested euthanasia was counted with euthanasias in 2012, the live release rate was 97%. For 2011, the shelter reported a live release rate of 97%, with an intake of 959. In 2010, the shelter reported a 97% live release rate from an intake of 1,000 animals. Henderson credits volunteers for much of the shelter’s success. She said that Friends of Caring Animal Shelters (FOCAS) and Guardian Angels for Animals had provided support to the shelter’s mission, and the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians had made a $10,000 grant for a spay-neuter program. Chippewa County, MI, was originally listed by this blog on April 16, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Kirby, Texas is a community of about 8,000 people in the San Antonio metro area. The city has a municipal agency, Kirby Animal Care Services, that handles animal control and sheltering for the city. The shelter describes itself as open intake and states that “no animal from our community in need is EVER turned away.” The city hired Christie Banduch in June of 2011. Before Banduch was hired, the shelter had a live release rate of 4% (that’s not a typo). In an e-mail to me, Banduch described the challenges she faced when she took over as including workload (she was the sole employee at that time for a facility with an intake of up to 100 animals per month), location (the shelter was hard to find and did not show up on GPS), and sanitation (the shelter was filthy and there were no cleaning supplies, vaccines, or dewormers). Banduch was able to turn things around right away, and statistics she sent me show that in her first full year running the shelter the live release rate shot up to 83%. In Banduch’s second year running the shelter (July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013) she reported a live release rate of 92%, with an intake of 839 animals. If animals who died or were lost in shelter care are included with euthanasias, the live release rate was 91%. The shelter has good relationships with rescues, who pulled 215 dogs and 240 cats during the fiscal year. Banduch recently sent me uploadable statistics for calendar year 2013, which show an intake of 1040 cats and dogs, with a live release rate of 95%. There were no animals lost in shelter care in 2013. If animals who died are included with euthanasias, the live release rate is 94%. Here is a link to the 2013 statistics: Kirby TX 2013 statistics Kirby, Texas, was originally listed by this blog on July 5, 2013, based on their 2012-2013 fiscal-year statistics. This post is a revision and update with calendar-year 2013 statistics.

The state of Virginia has posted a statistics summary for 2014 for the public shelters and intake rescues that report to it. With a little modification, these statistics can be used to calculate a live release rate for the state as a whole for the year and make some other conclusions as well. First of all, net intake (intake with intra-state transfers subtracted out) was down for the third year in a row. It was 194,408 in 2014 versus 214,159 in 2013 and 224,145 in 2012. That’s an average shelter intake in 2014 of 23 pets per thousand people (PPTP) for the state, down from 27 PPTP in 2012. The 2014 PPTP number of 23 is right about average for the nation as a whole. Virginia has a large metro area near the District of Columbia with low PPTP, though, so that means that some shelters in more rural areas of the state still have high intake. The live release rate for the year, again leaving intra-shelter transfers out of the calculation, was 71%. This is up from 65% in 2013 and 61% in 2012, so that’s good news. What is not so good is that all or almost all of the reduction can be accounted for by the lower number of animals coming in to the shelter. That means that the main reason the Virginia numbers are improving on average is that fewer animals are coming in, not that more animals are getting out alive. Adoptions have increased only slightly at 88,897 in 2014, 87,836 in 2013, and 85,194 in 2012. Those are adoption-per-thousand-people (APTP) rates of about 11. While a rate of 10 or more APTP is considered high for traditional shelters, No Kill shelters often have substantially higher APTP. The entire state of Colorado, for example, had an APTP of 17 in 2013. The return-to-owner (RTO) rate for Virginia shelters in 2014 was 30% of strays, although that number may be a little overstated because Virginia has a rather large “other” intake category that may include some strays. The breakdown by species is 49% RTO for dogs and 6% for cats. Those rates are better than for traditional shelters. Some No Kill shelters have even higher rates, but Virginia’s RTO numbers are not bad. Why is Virginia lagging behind Colorado, which had an 89% live release rate in 2013 and may well have gone over 90% in 2014? (We won’t know Colorado’s numbers for 2014 until the PACFA reports come out, which usually happens in June.) I don’t know for sure, but I suspect the reasons are differences in climate, terrain, economics, and possibly public attitudes toward animals. Colorado’s climate and terrain are more hostile to free-roaming pets than Virginia’s, which would presumably lead to less reproductive success. Virginia is very much a have and have-not state when it comes to wealth and education levels. Virginia has a lot of wealthy people, but they are concentrated in the District of Columbia metro area. Shelters in rural areas of the state have less money and less access to talent. The same stratification between northern Virginia and the rest of the state exists in education levels, and may affect the value that people place on the lives of dogs and cats. Given the lackluster current performance of many Virginia shelters, what can Virginia do to get to No Kill? First of all, they need to improve cat live releases. In 2014, Virginia shelters killed 43% of the cats they took in. In the old days of pet overpopulation back in the 1970s, spay-neuter for owned pets was an all-hands-on-deck effort, and rightly so. Today, our problems are different, because the great majority of people have already spayed and neutered their owned pets. Today what we need to work on most of all, and what should be the all-hands-on-deck effort for our generation, is TNR/SNR for community cats. Virginia is killing tens of thousands of cats each year – almost twice as many cats as dogs. If Virginia shelters were able to implement the 5 initiatives of the Million Cat Challenge, the number of cats killed could be dramatically slashed. Nothing is easy in animal sheltering, and there are legal and institutional barriers to the new cat paradigms in many places, but this is where the potential for a big payoff lies. Virginia’s live release rate for dogs in 2014 was 81%. Virginia is right on the I-95 and I-81 transport corridors, so I was surprised to see that only 7.5% of dogs who were taken in by reporting shelters during 2014 were transported out of state. Of course it’s better to place animals in the community when possible, but it may be a long wait for change in some rural shelters and transports can save the dogs right now. The Virginia Federation of Humane Societies is working on a program to increase transports. Differences in climate, terrain, wealth, and education occur all over the United States, and they make No Kill much harder to achieve in some areas than others. The great thing about transports and the Million Cat initiatives is that they can work anywhere, even in the have-not areas. You do not need a lot of money or local talent to start using managed admission, capacity control, or transports. SNR can be expensive, but there are more and more grant programs for SNR as the large national organizations see the spectacular results such programs have achieved.

The South Platte River flows northward through Denver. An area just south of the city of Denver is known locally as the South Platte Valley, and it contains several small cities. The Humane Society of the South Platte Valley (HSSPV) is a non-profit that was formed in late 2009 to provide animal sheltering services for Englewood (population 30,000), and Littleton (population 42,000). The shelter has formal contracts with Englewood and Littleton, which account for more than 80% of the animals it takes in. The shelter also contracts with unincorporated Arapahoe County and Cherry Hills Village (population 6000). HSSPV accepts owner surrenders with a $100 fee. In a recent article, HSSPV director Leslie Maisonneuve said the shelter is successful at adoptions because it has many offsite adoption events and is careful to match adopters and adoptees. The shelter has a training specialist who works with animals before adoption and is available for consultation after adoption. In 2013, an organization called People Helping Pets put “virtual shelter” kiosks in the community that feature adoptable cats and dogs. Statistics on the HSSPV website show a 95% live release rate in both 2010 and 2011. HSSPV reports its statistics to the state of Colorado, and in 2012 it took in 1550 animals with a live release rate of 96%. In 2013, the shelter reported an intake of 1943 animals with a 96% live release rate. South Platte Valley, CO, was originally listed by this blog on April 21, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.