OUT THE FRONT DOOR

Niagara County (population 216,000) is in the far western part of New York state and includes the Niagara Falls area. The county is just north of Buffalo and has a border with Canada. The Niagara County SPCA (NCSPCA) is a non-profit located in Niagara Falls that serves the county and has a contract with the city of Niagara Falls (population 50,000) for animal sheltering. The NCSPCA also has agreements with the city of Lockport (population 21,000), and the towns of Wheatfield, Pendleton, and Cambria. The NCSPCA may refuse to renew its contract with the city of Niagara Falls after 2015 due to shelter space and budgetary constraints. The mayor of Niagara Falls has proposed building a new shelter. In January 2012, there was an uproar when a report alleged cruelty and high rates of euthanasia at NCSPCA, and a new board of directors took over in May 2012. The NCSPCA took steps to lower the kill rate, including changing its policy to no longer impound community cats and expanding its hours for adoption. In 2014 the shelter reported a 93% live release rate with an intake of 2574 cats and dogs. I am not listing the shelter as 90% Documented for two reasons. First, it sounds like the owner surrender process, which uses a waiting list, does not have an exception for cases where an owner must surrender an animal immediately. Second, the shelter has an unusually high rate of deaths in shelter care, and when deaths are counted with euthanasias the modified live release rate is only 86%. The high rate of deaths in shelter care may be due to overcrowding in the inadequate shelter building, which would presumably be ameliorated if the NCSPCA no longer serves Niagara Falls after this year or if Niagara Falls builds a new shelter and contracts with the NCSPCA to run it. Niagara County, New York, was originally listed by this blog on August 19, 2013. This post is a revision and update with 2014 statistics.

According to the American Pet Products Association, 70% of dog owners and 57% of cat owners say their pet is like a child or family member (APPA National Pet Owners Survey 2013-2014). Only 1% regard their pets as property. Yet in our legal and economic system, pets are property and nothing more. Virtually the only difference between a cat and a chair in the eyes of the law is that, although you can destroy your chair if you want to, you cannot deliberately and for no reason hurt your cat. The amount of damages you can collect for the death of a pet is limited to the dollar value of the pet. You might have an elderly mutt whom you would not part with for $1 million, but if someone negligently or maliciously kills him, you would be lucky to collect $1 in damages. Everyone knows that this way of looking at pets is outdated, but the system does not change. It is not easy to change centuries of legal precedent. Although the law regards pets as property, legal and governmental systems have made accommodations to protect pets. Judges in divorces sometimes consider the good of the pet in deciding who gets “custody.” States mandate hold times for strays. Cities are more frequently training police officers on how to deal with a protective dog without killing it when they make an arrest. In some jurisdictions lawsuits for emotional distress over negligent harm to a pet are allowed. The stated rationale for these accommodations is that they are protecting people, not pets, but the end result is the same – more protection for pets. These protections have lots of holes – for example, it is perfectly allowable in every state in the union for dog breeders to deliberately breed dogs who have painful and debilitating genetic defects such as brachycephalia. Most No Kill advocates care about all animals, not just shelter animals. Along with our belief that shelter animals have a right to live their lives, we go a step further and extend that belief to all animals. Whether it is an orca at a theme park, a pig being raised for slaughter, a chicken held in a battery cage, or a great ape imprisoned in a cage at a zoo, we believe that animals should own their own lives. A great many No Kill advocates are vegetarian or vegan. And this is important, because as the presence of No Kill supporters in the shelter industry increases, we are transforming the shelter industry itself into a voice for the lives of all animals. Many shelters take in livestock along with dogs and cats. Shelter workers can get to know horses, goats, pot-bellied pigs, and poultry, along with rabbits, rats, birds, lizards, snakes, and many other types of animals. When you are caring for an animal and trying to find a home for it, it doesn’t matter what species it is. There are many national organizations that have been working for decades to change our culture so that it respects the lives of all animals. Change is happening. More and more people are mindful of the cruelties of factory farming, and they are choosing to buy locally from small farmers or not to use animal products at all. Due to consumer demand there are now many products on the market that are not animal tested and contain no animal ingredients. There are excellent substitutes for leather in clothing and furniture. But this change, although it is noticeable, has been very slow. The animal shelter could potentially help fill a gap in advocacy for animals, which is the lack of local institutions that are dedicated to solving local problems. In fact, if animal shelters became more involved in promoting the right of all animals to life, they would be hearkening back to their nineteenth-century roots. The very first animal-protection organizations in the United States were the SPCAs that formed after the Civil War. Those SPCAs spent most of their time trying to stop cruelty to horses and livestock. It was only decades later that most of them got involved with sheltering dogs and cats. Municipal shelters may not be able to do much in terms of activism, and this is a good reason why the ideal situation for a community may be the public-private partnership for animal sheltering. There are IRS limitations on non-profit corporations as to political activism, and any non-profit shelter that wants to expand its assistance for all animals would be wise to get legal counsel to determine what it can and cannot do. But there are a great many things that a non-profit can do, and the need is certainly great. Problems that face animals in our states and communities include commercial puppy sales, tethering, breeding rules, live animal sales, exotic pet regulation, regulations on “nuisance” wildlife trappers, deer culling, and a host of other issues. The animal shelter is well-positioned to be a thought leader on how we regard all animals. In fact, addressing this broader ethical role could help the shelter accomplish its core role of pet protection. In becoming familiar with the broader issues, shelter employees and volunteers will increase their community engagement and raise the profile of the shelter, as well as getting to know government leaders and other influential people in the community. The broader role will also increase the credibility of No Kill, because we will no longer be in the position of having to explain why we are arguing for dogs and cats while ignoring other animals who may have even greater needs. The fox really isn’t that different from the dog, and the cat shares a wild heritage with the raccoon and the deer. The expansion of the animal shelter’s circle of compassion may be the next logical step in the development of No Kill.

Lincoln County, Wisconsin, has about 30,000 human residents and is located in the north central part of the state. The Lincoln County Humane Society (LCHS) is a private non-profit that provides sheltering services for local governments. I spoke to a representative at the shelter who informed me that LCHS has a contract with the county for dog sheltering, and also has agreements with the two cities in the county — Merrill (population 10,000) and Tomahawk (population 3000). She told me that although LCHS is not contractually obligated for cat sheltering or taking in owner surrenders, LCHS provides both services because they view that as part of their mission. The shelter’s website states that, although they do accept owner surrenders, they do not accept aggressive animals. The shelter representative told me that LCHS has an appointment system for owner surrenders, but they make exceptions for cases where a person cannot wait for an appointment. They ask for a donation for owner surrenders but do not require a donation. They do not offer owner-requested euthanasia. LCHS recently posted their statistics for 2012, and they reported a 98% live release rate for the year. Their modified live release rate (which includes animals who died in shelter care in the “euthanasia” category) was 95%. The shelter reports a percentage for each type of disposition rather than the actual number. LCHS’s total intake in 2012 was 1258 animals. This is a high intake (42 animals per 1000 population). LCHS has a TNR program for cats, although the shelter representative told me that they generally cannot release the cats back to the location where they were trapped, due to local opposition. Instead, they have a barn cat program to re-home the cats. I asked the LCHS representative if 2012 was the shelter’s first year of a 90% or better live release rate, and she said that the shelter had followed the same policies for several years but last year was the first time that they had a computer system to track their statistics. She mentioned that Lincoln County is rural and not wealthy, with high unemployment, and that an important part of their program was a Petsmart grant that provides low-income spay-neuter services and vaccinations. The county does not have any breed bans and does not have a mandatory spay-neuter rule. Lincoln County, WI, is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

Douglas County has a population of 47,000 people and is located on the western border of Nevada. The county seat is Minden, which has 3,000 people. Minden is next to Gardnerville, which has a population of 5700. Minden and Gardnerville are both census-designated areas, and therefore are not listed individually in the right sidebar. Douglas County Animal Care and Services (aka the Douglas County Animal Shelter (DCAS)) is a municipal agency that does animal control and has a shelter in Gardnerville that serves the county, Gardnerville, and Minden. DCAS distributes pet food to those who cannot afford it. The Douglas Animal Welfare Group (DAWG) is a private organization that works closely with the shelter and provides many services. When I called DCAS for more information I was told that the shelter has a waiting list for owner surrenders and encourages owners to rehome their pets through social media. DCAS will make an exception to the waiting list for people who cannot continue to care for a pet, but such exceptions are rarely needed. Another aspect of intake management in Douglas County is that cats are considered free roaming. There is an area rescue, the Wylie Animal Rescue Foundation (WARF), that takes in cats, and DCAS and DAWG together fund a TNR program, but community cats are not impounded by DCAS. The DCAS statistician told me that in 2012 the shelter took in 721 animals. They had 360 adoptions (the adoption figure includes a small number of transfers to rescues) and returned 367 animals to their owners. They euthanized 15 animals, for a live release rate of 98%. Douglas County, NV, is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

We now have some solid evidence that managed intake is a better policy for public animal shelters than open admission. Read on for two case studies. In this blog, I’ve documented well over 200 communities that are highly successful at saving shelter animals. Many of these communities have shelters that unconditionally take in any animal that an owner wants to surrender (generally referred to as “open admission”), but many others have instituted a Help Desk, appointment system, or waiting list for owner surrenders (which are aspects of managed intake). In this post are two statistical case studies of communities that have changed their owner surrender policies, and the outcome of the changes. Both of these case studies involve public shelters that are responsible for taking in strays in their jurisdictions. One of the communities instituted an appointment system, and the other adopted a waiting list. Then they kept statistics to see what happened. CASE STUDY #1: LYNCHBURG, VIRGINA. Lynchburg is an independent city in Virginia. It is bordered by three counties — Amherst, Bedford, and Campbell. In October of 2009, the Lynchburg Humane Society instituted a policy that owners who wanted to surrender a pet to the shelter had to make an appointment. The shelter makes exceptions to the policy for people who need to surrender a pet immediately. The Lynchburg shelter director, Makena Yarbrough, contacted the shelters in the adjoining counties and told them if any person from Lynchburg showed up at their shelter with an animal to surrender, the Lynchburg shelter would come get that animal immediately. It has proven to be very rare for Lynchburg residents to try to surrender pets in the surrounding counties; for example, in 2012 the Lynchburg shelter was contacted only 3 times to come pick up a Lynchburg animal. Nor does the data show an increase in strays. In fact, the data show the opposite — for Lynchburg and the three contiguous counties, the number of strays impounded dropped from 4524 in 2009 to 4410 in 2010, the first full year of the new policy (Virginia Department of Agriculture statistics). CASE STUDY #2: DOUGLAS COUNTY, NEVADA. The Douglas County Animal Shelter (DCAS) has a waiting list (subject to exceptions in emergency situations) and the shelter has for years now kept track of what happens to animals on the list. The DCAS statistician told me that 86% of people who were on the waiting list had placed their pets in new homes themselves on follow up. He talked about how the world of animal sheltering is being revolutionized by social media. In the old days costly and seldom-read newspaper classified ads were the primary way for an owner to publicize a pet, but today people use Craigslist and Facebook, where photos and a description of a pet can be seen by hundreds of people. I asked whether there were any instances of people abandoning pets after being placed on the waiting list. He said that has happened in an occasional case over the years, but because of their record keeping they have been able to identify animals who are abandoned and refer the cases to local officials. I asked if there was any possibility that owners who wanted to surrender animals were taking them to Carson City (an independent city north of Douglas County) rather than DCAS, and he said that the Carson City shelter checks identification and only accepts animals from their jurisdiction. The case studies above are relevant to one of the biggest controversies in shelter management today — open admission versus managed intake. The argument made in support of open admission is that if shelters refuse to take in animals upon presentation, most owners will dump their pets in the street where they will be killed by cars or suffer from hunger and neglect. Conversely, supporters of managed intake argue that the great majority of people will not abandon their pets if they are asked to wait until the shelter can help them, and that managing the flow of intake allows shelters to avoid overcrowding and gather information about each pet. Managed intake also allows the shelter to work with the owner to solve problems such as vet bills, finding pet-friendly housing, or behavior issues that have led the owner to want to give up the pet, and thus head off surrender entirely in a large number of cases. And many owners have been happy to rehome pets themselves when helped to do so by the shelter, because then they have the satisfaction of helping to select the new home for their pet. The two case studies presented here provide some strong evidence to support the conclusion that pet owners are responsible and are willing to help the shelter help their pet. There is another reason that shelters should adopt managed intake, though, and that is that shelters actually shape community expectations of responsible ownership by the policies they adopt. If we expect people to abandon animals at the drop of a hat, and we design owner surrender policies with that in mind, then we are actually encouraging abandonment because we are establishing it as a cultural norm. Our cultural expectations for how parents behave toward their children is illuminating on this issue. We expect parents to continue to care for their children even if the parents lose their employment, lose their house, or have a child who is sick or difficult to deal with due to behavior problems. Pets aren’t children, but if we want pet owners to feel more responsibility toward their pets, then it behooves us to to compare society’s treatment of parents with the way we treat pet owners. Society has two ways to encourage parental responsibility. First, there is a diversified network of social services — a “safety net” — to help parents keep their children. Subsidized health care, housing, and nutrition are all available to families in difficulty. The social safety net is far from perfect, but it is rare in our country for a parent to be forced to give up a child due to not being able to provide the basics of life. Second, there are strict laws against child abandonment, and those laws are enforced. Assistance to struggling parents and penalties for child abandonment both serve to reinforce the societal expectation that parents will provide care for their children in spite of any difficulties they may face. The safety net for parents and the penalties for abandonment serve to strengthen and reinforce what parents already want to do, which is care for their children as best they can. Instead of encouraging responsibility in pet owners by providing a safety net and prosecuting animal abandonment, society has traditionally done the opposite and encouraged irresponsibility. The social message conveyed by open admission shelters is that taking a pet to the shelter is the right thing to do when an owner is having difficulty financially or the pet has behavior issues or for any other problem. Every time someone walks into a shelter and says “I want to surrender my pet” and the shelter says “OK, hand him over, goodbye,” the shelter is encouraging owner irresponsibility. It’s a vicious circle — open admission policies encourage people to be irresponsible, and then shelter officials claim that open admission is necessary because people are irresponsible. Traditional shelters go even further toward encouraging irresponsibility by hiding their statistics and not telling people how likely it is that their pet will be killed. They allow the owner to walk away thinking that the shelter will find their pet a good home. Can we change society’s expectations for pet owners to more closely match society’s expectations for parents? The two case studies above indicate that not only is the answer “yes,” but that the public is already way out ahead on this issue. The great majority of pet owners, just like the great majority of parents, want to be responsible. All the shelter has to do is help them. A substantial percentage of people who bring their pet to a shelter do so because of financial, health, housing, or behavior issues. A Help Desk or an appointment system can identify those people and provide help for them to keep their pet. Shelters can recruit volunteers to run their social safety net programs and the programs can be funded by donations or grants. These programs are money savers because they can sharply reduce intake. When shelters decide to adopt managed intake policies, they should at the same time institute a Help Desk or interview procedure to identify cases where intervention can help the owner keep the pet. Another way to encourage owner responsibility is to ask owners to help place their pets. Every shelter should have a marketing program in place, including a presence on social media. Shelters can publicize animals that owners want to rehome, and also show owners how to network for the animal in their own contact lists. Good shelters usually have volunteer professional photographers, and these volunteers can take photos of pets. Shelter marketing volunteers can help the owner write up an accurate and appealing description. In essence, the pet’s owner becomes a foster home for the pet until placed. Douglas County’s finding that 86% of owners find new homes for their pets, mostly through social media, is impressive evidence that social media works. A third way for shelters to encourage owner responsibility is to network for the pet with local rescues. Here again, the shelter’s expertise and knowledge of the local situation can be invaluable. In the interviews I do for this blog it’s becoming more and more common to hear shelter managers say that one way they manage intake is by diverting owner surrenders to rescues. Turning to enforcement, shelters can encourage owner responsibility by monitoring their appointments lists and waiting lists to keep tabs on the animals. This will allow the shelter to identify cases where abandonment is suspected and refer them to law enforcement. Douglas County has shown that it’s possible to track animals and refer cases of abandonment for prosecution. People often refer to animal abandonment as “owner irresponsibility,” but in reality animal abandonment is a crime, and it should be regarded as such. The proper answer to animal abandonment is not to say “people will be irresponsible and therefore we have to have open admission to accommodate their irresponsibility,” the proper answer is to treat abandonment as a serious crime and enforce the laws against it. Douglas County has shown that not only is such enforcement practical, but also that the need for it is rare. Managed intake at animal shelters is just one part of the great wave of change that is occurring to transform public shelters from places where most animals are killed to places where 90% or more leave by the front door. Shelter managers should not be afraid to adopt managed intake, because (1) it is the right thing to do from an efficiency and management aspect, (2) it is the right thing to do in terms of shaping cultural norms about an owner’s duty to a pet, and (3) the statistics we have so far show that pet owners respond in a positive way.

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.

Fort Morgan is a city of 11,000 people located in the northeastern part of Colorado. It is the county seat of Morgan County, which has a population of 28,000. The area is mostly devoted to farming. The city has an animal control service, but animals are impounded by a private agency, the Fort Morgan Humane Society (FMHS). I spoke to the shelter’s operations manager, Tina Gutierrez, who told me that the shelter has contracts with Fort Morgan, Morgan County, Log Lane and Wiggins for stray intake. She said that the county has a deputy assigned to animal control. The shelter accepts owner surrenders subject to a waiting list. Gutierrez told me that she is generally able to counsel owners to be able to keep their pets or, if that is not possible, to find a rescue placement for them. Gutierrez told me that transfers from FMHS go to approved rescues. One rescue she mentioned that has been of assistance to the shelter is Furever Friends, which does adoptions and has a lost and found service. FMHS has a trap-neuter-return program for feral cats. They are neutered and given vaccinations and a full examination. The shelter does not offer owner-requested euthanasia. The state of Colorado collects statistics on animal shelters. According to those statistics, FMHS took in 1302 animals in 2012, which is an intake of 47 animals per 1000 people in the county. The live release rate for 2012 was 92%. If the number of animals who died or were lost in shelter care is counted in with euthanasias, the live release rate was 90%. Gutierrez told me that she had instituted new medical protocols since she took over earlier this year, and she expects the 2013 statistics to be even better. The city of Brush (population 5000), is located in Morgan County, and it has its own shelter and an animal control unit run by the police department. The Brush shelter does not accept owner surrenders. FMHS takes in many animals from Brush who are not reclaimed within the 5-day hold period. Brush is not listed as a 90% community, however, because the Brush Animal Shelter reported killing 56 of the 111 cats they took in during 2012.

[For today’s News Bit and the Running Totals, click here.] Culpeper County is a community of about 47,000 people located in north central Virginia not far from Washington, DC. Its county seat is the town of Culpeper. Culpeper County Animal Services and the Culpeper County Animal Shelter provide animal control and sheltering for the city and county of Culpeper. The shelter’s petfinder listing states that it takes in owner surrenders and does not mention any conditions. I was told in a phonecall to Animal Services that the organizations report combined statistics to the state of Virginia. The shelter transfers a high percentage of its cats to Culpeper Felines and Friends, a local non-profit which also reports to the state. The combined statistics for the three organizations showed an 80% live release rate for 2014. Another local organization, the Humane Society of Culpeper, has a trap-neuter-return (TNR) program that has provided TNR services to the county for over five years. The Culpeper Animal Shelter refers feral cats to this TNR program. Culpeper County, VA, is counted in the Running Totals as an 80%+ community.

In just the last year there has been an enormous increase in communities that are reporting saving 90% or more of their animals, and an even bigger increase in communities reporting 80% or more. Because there are so many communities to report on, I no longer have enough time to do the amount of research needed for my traditional listings. So I have to make a choice — either do as many listings as I can the way I’ve always done them (which would mean most 90%+ and 80%+ communities don’t get listed at all), or change to a new method where I list all reported communities but the listings are not researched in-depth (which would mean that I make listings based on shelter press releases and media reports without independently verifying them and without researching things like shelter policies, other organizations in the community, local controversies, etc.). I’ve decided to go with the second option, because what my readers want is to know about all communities that are doing well, not just a fraction of them. The downsides are that there will be less information in each listing, and that listings will be based on media reports which may not always be correct. I think the number of bad listings will be pretty small, and I will take them down when I find out about them, but there probably will be an occasional one. The way I’m going to implement this is to list in the right sidebar every community that I feature, lumping together 90% Documented, 90% Reported, and Worth Watching. New listings may be full-length features as they are now or shorter posts, depending on how much information the shelter has made available. The right sidebar will be called Notable Communities. Each post will have a notice stating whether it is 90%+, 80%+ or Worth Watching, but the posts will not be separated by those subcategories in the right sidebar. At some point soon I may need to save space in the right sidebar by listing only the most prominent community in a group of communities. For example, listing Williamson County, Texas, and not Round Rock. I will not be able to update listings yearly as I have been doing. That means that people will have to be careful in using the listings on individual communities and may have to do some of their own research to get the latest numbers. As for the Running Totals, my plan is to delete the current count, which is based on number of communities, and go to a count based on human population living in 90%+ and 80%+ communities. I’m going to do a spreadsheet where I will list each 90%+ community and each 80%+ community and its population and post those totals as separate Running Totals. Again, these numbers are going to be subject to the caveat that I will not have checked each community as closely as I used to. In other developments, the News Bits page has become the blog’s most popular feature. I have plans to migrate News Bits over to Facebook eventually, but it may be a while until I get around to that. In the meantime, when a News Bit involves a newly announced 80% or 90% community, I may post it as a blog as well as a News Bit, so that I can link to it in the right sidebar. So over the next month or two the blog may look like a construction zone, and it might even blow up a few times, but hopefully we will come out of it with a better idea of just how successful No Kill really is.

I’d like to say thanks to everyone who commented and sent me e-mails about the blog’s listing criteria going forward. The suggestions were really great and have helped me a lot in making a decision. I’ve decided to go with the idea of asking the non-transparent shelters to provide their statistics to me as an official statement which can be uploaded to the blog. The way I’m going to implement this is to move all communities that do not have their statistics publicly accessible to a separate, temporary page on the blog that I will call “Other 90%+.” Then I will send an e-mail, with a copy of the Basic Matrix attached, to the shelter directors for each of the “Other 90%+” communities and ask that the matrix (or a similar form) be filled out and returned to me within 30 days, along with a statement from the director that the form represents the shelter’s statistics for the year 2013 and that I have permission to post it or link to it on the blog. In the meantime I will reduce the running totals to reflect the smaller number of communities in the right sidebar. There will be quite a drop in the totals, but hopefully it will be only temporary. Communities that do not respond to the inquiry within 30 days will be moved to the Worth Watching page or dropped. In order to keep the requirements for listing uniform across the board, I’m going to require that shelters either list publicly, or send to me for posting, statistics that include at least intake, adoptions, returns-to-owner, transfers, and euthanasias. If I have any question whether transfers are to other 90%+ organizations I will check that with the shelters. If a shelter operates as part of a coalition and coalition statistics are provided, the statistics must be corrected for intra-coalition transfers. This will take some time to implement, so the blog will be a mess for the next few weeks. Thanks in advance for your patience. Even if we come out of this with a much smaller number of communities, I think it will be worth it because we will have much more uniform information about the communities that are listed. For whatever reasons, most shelter directors do not make statistics a priority. That will never change unless we start supporting the idea that transparency is important.

Several public shelters reported progress on live releases this week. The Southern Pines Animal Shelter in Mississippi takes in almost 5000 animals per year and provides animal sheltering for a county of 75,000 people as well as for surrounding counties. They had a live release rate of over 75% for 2014, but in the last 5 months they have been over 90% each month. Shelter manager Ginny Sims attributes the improvement to new programs, fosters, volunteers, and new partnerships. Sacramento’s city shelter, the Front Street Animal Shelter, has made great strides since director Gina Knepp took over in 2011. Now comes word that the Sacramento County shelter has also improved by using adoption specials. Director David Dickenson says the live release rate at the county shelter so far this year is 75%. The Los Angeles Animal Shelter reports a 73% save rate currently, with 85% for dogs and 57% for cats. Best Friends, through its No Kill Los Angeles initiative, is trying to reduce the kill rate for cats with a neonatal kitten program and support for TNR and return-to-field. The City of Calistoga, California, has decided to grant a contract to the Petaluma Animal Services Foundation (PASF) for animal control and sheltering. This article about the process describes how a social media campaign helped to persuade city officials to select PASF over a rival bidder based on PASF’s history of higher live release rates, even though the PASF bid will cost the city slightly more. In transport news, shelter dogs are being flown as carry-on passengers on commercial flights from the Big Island of Hawaii to the Portland, Oregon, area. About 60 dogs have been placed through this program so far. Brent Toellner has two blog posts on length of stay – the importance of managing it, and how to decrease it. And Peter Wolf’s Vox Felina blog is celebrating its five-year anniversary. The fourth in the Maddie’s Fund series of free webcasts on the five initiatives of the Million Cat Challenge is set for Tuesday, April 28, at 9 PM EST. The presenters are Ollie Davidson, program director at the Tree House Animal Shelter in Chicago, and Kathleen Olson, director of a Washington state shelter with intake of over 12,000 animals per year. Both shelters improved the shelter environment and saved more animals after instituting capacity for care programs. Register here. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer is criticizing NYC Animal Care & Control. The AC&C has a five-year contract with the city. The Humane Society of Silicon Valley won the Shorty Award in the Best Social Good category for its “Eddie the Terrible” marketing campaign. PetSmart Charities has an interactive page showing its impact by state. The Center for Shelter Dogs has many webinars covering a variety of topics. The Humane Society of Utah has a cat room with remote-controlled toys that people can operate online through the iPet Companion website. In addition to amusing the cats, the shelter hopes that the promotion will call attention to available cats and help change the perception of the shelter as a sad place.

There’s so much news these days about 90%+ and Worth Watching communities and shelters that I can’t even stay close to keeping up with it by blog posts. So – I’ve added a new feature to the blog, the News Bit page. There will be a News Bit each day, and to make it even easier to find, I’ll put a link to it in a heading in each post. The running total in the blog’s subtitle has been expanded and moved to the News Bit page. In addition to the total of communities reporting 90% plus, I’ve added a total of the human population in those communities. Enjoy!