OUT THE FRONT DOOR

Gogebic County in Michigan and Iron County in Wisconsin are located across the state boundary from each other at the western end of Michigan’s upper peninsula. Gogebic County contains the town of Ironwood, which has over 5,000 people. Together, the population of the two counties is over 22,000 people. The “Helping Orphaned Pets Everywhere” (H.O.P.E.) animal shelter, located in Ironwood, contracts with Gogebic and Iron counties  to provide sheltering for lost, stray, and abandoned animals and cruelty cases. The shelter also accepts owner surrenders “as space permits.” I called the shelter for more detail on the owner surrender policy and was told that if someone needs to surrender a pet and cannot wait, the shelter will take the pet even if they are full. A 2009 article about the shelter states: “Animals are not euthanized except in cases of unrelievable suffering, terminal illness or a known history of being a threat to the public.” The state of Michigan collects statistics on all animal shelters in the state and posts them online. The report for H.O.P.E. for 2013 can be accessed here (scroll down to Help Orphaned Pets Everywhere). Intake in 2013 was 407 cats and dogs. The live release rate was 98%, with no reported owner-requested euthanasias. All animals adopted out were spayed and neutered. The shelter reported a 99% live release rate in 2012, with an intake of 472 cats and dogs. In 2011, H.O.P.E. reported a live release rate of 98% with an intake of 401 cats and dogs. Gogebic County, MI, was originally listed by this blog on June 4, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Jim Bouderau always liked animals, and as a teenager he worked for a veterinarian and thought about becoming a vet himself. Ultimately, though, he found a career he loved in the hospitality industry. When he moved to Ithaca, New York, in 2005, it was for the purpose of opening and managing a hotel. Among the people Bouderau met in Ithaca were board members of the SPCA of Tompkins County. The SPCA is a private, open admission shelter that serves the county and the city of Ithaca, as well as most of the other municipalities in the county. Bouderau was impressed by the work the shelter was doing, and joined the SPCA’s board of directors. In early 2011 when former director Abigail Smith left to take over as director of the Austin Animal Center, Bouderau was on the search committee to find a new director. The committee did some thinking about what they wanted in a new executive director, and decided that the one area where they had the most need going forward was connecting with major donors. The SPCA of Tompkins County had an illustrious history in No Kill dating back to 1999, when the board, impressed by the work that Rich Avanzino had done at the San Francisco SPCA, adopted a resolution to go No Kill. In 1999 and 2000 the shelter’s live release rate was 75%, which was one of the highest in the country at that time for an open admission shelter. When Nathan Winograd became director in 2001 he increased the live release rate to over 90%, and Abigail Smith continued that high save rate during her tenure. No Kill had come at a cost, however, and the SPCA was spending about twice as much per county resident as it had spent in the days before No Kill. The good news about No Kill is that any increased costs can potentially be offset by increased donations, since residents are usually happy to support a No Kill shelter. By the late 2000s, the SPCA was doing well in fundraising in terms of its annual fund and its direct-mail program, but it was lagging in major gifts. Once the search committee had identified major gifts as the biggest need for the new director to fill, they decided that they really needed to hire a local person who would have the contacts within the community for that effort. Bouderau ultimately stepped forward for the job, thinking that he would serve as director for a period of one to three years, just long enough to get the major donors program on a firm footing. That was in May of 2011, and now, more than four years later, Bouderau is still the executive director. He has achieved the goal of putting the SPCA on a solid financial foundation, and the shelter’s income now matches its expenses. He decided to stay on, though, because he “absolutely loves” the job and finds it more fulfilling than anything else he has done. Bouderau jokes that being a shelter director is similar to running a hotel because he’s still in the business of lodging. Joking aside, there is a great deal of similarity in what is needed for both jobs. Running an animal shelter, like running a business, requires skills in facility management, financial management, and human resources. Bouderau is an example of something that we frequently see in successful No Kill shelters, which is directors who have little or no experience in animal sheltering but are able to succeed because they are good managers. Bouderau’s background is in business, but we have also seen successful shelter directors with backgrounds in marketing and law. Bouderau attributes a lot of the SPCA’s success to the community of Ithaca. He notes that it is a progressive community with residents who are very receptive to forward-thinking ideas like No Kill. As one example of the support the SPCA gets from the community he points to the SPCA’s relationship with the Cornell shelter medicine program, which was one of the first such programs in the country. In 2012 the shelter formalized a relationship with Cornell in which a team of four veterinarians, including Dr. Elizabeth Berliner, the head of the shelter medicine program, provide veterinary care at much less than market rates for the SPCA. Two of the four veterinarians are interns or residents – graduate veterinarians who want to learn more about shelter medicine – and the benefit for the Cornell program is that the interns and residents get hands-on experience in a working shelter. The program allows the SPCA to save animals who require very complex care. It also provides a 24-hour on-call service for animal control officers to help them triage injured and ill animals in the field and decide if the animals can be cared for at the shelter or need to go straight to the Cornell hospital. The next big goal that Bouderau wants to tackle, now that he has the shelter on a sustainable financial basis, is to rebuild the old shelter on the SPCA’s 12-acre campus. The original shelter building is very old. In 2004 a new adoption center was completed, and that provides a bright, modern place to welcome people looking for pets. Most of the work of the shelter is still done in the old building, though, and it needs to be replaced. Tompkins County is a microcosm of what makes for a great shelter system. It has a progressive community that supports the shelter, a private non-profit with a forward-thinking board that contracts for animal control and provides open-admission sheltering, access to the latest in shelter medicine, and last, but far from least, an executive director with the right skills for the job.

The mayor of Seattle proclaimed the second annual Seattle Kitty Hall on July 10th. The proclamation renames the City Hall for an afternoon of welcoming the kitties. One of the “whereas” clauses in the proclamation tells prospective cat owners to head to the Seattle Animal Shelter and adopt. This year city hall welcomed 11 kittens from the shelter, and people were wrapped around the building waiting to get in. And what would the news be without more cat cafes? Brother Wolf has received unanimous approval from the city commission in Asheville, North Carolina, to build a cat cafe downtown. A vote by the city council is set for September. As Brother Wolf founder Denise Bitz said, “cat cafes are being built all over the country.” A college student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has raised $15,000 of her $138,000 goal to open Nebraska’s first-ever cat cafe. Both of the planned cat cafes will follow the model of having two rooms side-by-side, one for serving the coffee, the other for mingling with the cats. In Million Cat Challenge news, the Challenge staff are having a celebration this Wednesday, July 22, at 3PM EST on their Facebook page, to mark a quarter million cats saved. The counter for cats saved by participating shelters can be seen here. Another big news item on the Million Cat Challenge front is that the shelter serving Edmonton, Canada – the Edmonton Humane Society – has joined the Challenge. It’s the first shelter in western Canada to join, and it’s big – they take in almost 13,000 cats every year. This post on the Maddie’s blog has a great discussion of why managed admission is an important concept, and how to get started in implementing it. The Delaware situation just got stranger. This article provides a good overview of the background of the situation – in a nutshell, a non-profit, First State Animal Center and SPCA, has been providing animal control and sheltering by contract for Delaware’s three counties and the city of Wilmington, but a state agency recently received authorization to hire its own animal control officers and take over animal control and related functions in the state as the contracts expire. On July 6, it was reported that First State had announced that after the transition it would not house any strays picked up by state officers and would only take in owner surrenders. Everyone thought that this transition would happen gradually over the period of 6 to 18 months that the existing contracts still had to run. Then on July 13th the First State board of directors voted to cancel its contracts effective September 15th, which leaves the state scrambling to get a system for animal control and sheltering in place in two months. The good news is that First State plans to become a No Kill agency. The question is what will happen to the state’s strays, confiscated animals, etc., in this unexpectedly abrupt transition. The city of Austin recently hired Tawny Hammond, the former director of the Fairfax County Animal Shelter in northern Virginia, as its Chief Animal Services Officer. She started work in Austin on June 15th. Now Austin has announced the hiring of another Fairfax County Animal Shelter executive, Kristen Auerbach, as Austin’s Deputy Chief Animal Services Officer. Auerbach was previously the assistant shelter director in Fairfax, and has been serving as interim director there since Hammond accepted the job in Austin. In other Austin news, Hammond wants to make sure that dogs at the shelter get enough walking time. Hammond says the shelter should be like summer camp for its canine residents, and to help create that atmosphere the shelter is holding information sessions to try to increase the number of dog walkers. Two examples of shelters working to increase their return-to-owner rates are in the news. One shelter has added a new program, and the other has partially removed a barrier that never should have been there in the first place. The new program is from the Franklin County Dog Shelter and Adoption Center that serves Columbus, Ohio. Dog wardens who pick up stray dogs are now posting a letter-size bright yellow sign at the location where the dog was picked up. The sign identifies the dog and has information on how it can be reclaimed. The Franklin County shelter has a new director, Kaye Dickson, who has only been on the job a few months, and this is one of her initiatives. It will be interesting to see how it works. The other shelter is the Rio Rancho Animal Control Shelter in New Mexico, which noticed an increase in reclaims after it cut its reclaim fee in half. Most people were previously paying $250 to reclaim an animal, and everyone now pays $125. Hopefully the penny will drop for the city and they will realize that they will be even better off if they cut the fee to zero and get more animals out of the shelter quickly.

Rifle is a small town of about 9000 people in Garfield County, Colorado. The Rifle Animal Shelter, which is assisted by the non-profit Friends of the Rifle Animal Shelter, takes in several hundred animals per year. I spoke to a shelter representative who told me that the shelter has contracts with the cities of Rifle and Parachute to take in strays, and accepts owner surrenders with no restrictions except a small fee. The shelter and the Friends reported a combined 98% live release rate in 2010 and again in 2011 (scroll down in the linked documents). The shelter and Friends reported no owner-requested euthanasia in either year, and the live release rate was not significantly lower with animals who died or were lost in shelter care included in with euthanasias. The Rifle Animal Shelter also reports its statistics to the state of Colorado. In 2012, the shelter took in 769 animals and had a live release rate of 99%. For 2013, Rifle reported to the state of Colorado that it had an intake of 1200 animals. Of those, 926 were adopted out. The live release rate was 99.4%. If animals who died in shelter care are counted with euthanasias, the live release rate was 97%. Rifle is one of a group of communities in the area west of Denver that report to Maddie’s Fund and the Asilomar Accords as part of the Northwestern Colorado Coalition. Other members of the coalition are Summit, Garfield, Pitkin, and Eagle counties and the cities of Aspen and Glenwood Springs. The coalition reported an overall 97% live release rate in 2010 and 98% in 2011 (see pages 1-2 in the links). Rifle, CO, was originally listed by this blog on May 6, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

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.