Rappahannock County, Virginia, borders the Shenandoah mountains west of Washington, DC. It is a rural county with 7400 residents. The county provides animal control and owns the animal shelter building, but contracts out operations to the Rappahannock Animal Welfare League (RAWL), a private non-profit. RAWL describes the arrangement as follows: “Within the delegation of responsibilities, Rappahannock County employs the animal control warden, provides and maintains an accessible kennel and office on county property, and pays RAWL a fee to operate the facility. From that point, RAWL assumes the balance of the responsibilities: staffing, management, daily care, supplies, veterinary trips, inoculations, arranging the reclaim of lost animals and coordinating adoptions.” RAWL primarily takes in dogs. In addition to the dogs impounded by animal control, it accepts owner surrendered dogs subject to a waiting list. If the owner is a resident of Rappahannock County and cannot wait, RAWL will take in the dog immediately. Rappahannock’s animal control, which is part of the sheriff’s department, does not pick up cats unless they are sick or injured. They treat the sick and injured cats and try to re-home them. A private rescue, RappCats, accepts owner surrendered cats subject to a waiting list when they are full. I spoke to a representative of RappCats, who told me that they have a small shelter for cats. They work with people to help keep cats in their homes or colonies. In 2012, RAWL took in 253 dogs and had a live release rate of 96%. RappCats did not report its statistics to the state of Virginia in 2012. In 2013 both RAWL and RappCats reported to the state. The combined statistics, with intake of 371 cats and dogs, showed a live release rate of 96% for 2013. No animals were reported as having died in shelter care.

“No Kill” is a loaded term. Some people love it, some people hate it, and a lot of people are just confused by it. How did this happen, and should we try to do anything about it? The first organization to popularize the term “No Kill” in a big way was North Shore, back in the 1970s. North Shore was a limited-admission private shelter that used very innovative marketing techniques to place dogs and cats that it pulled from open-admission public shelters. Some people were upset over the term “No Kill” because they thought the implication was that open-admission shelters were “kill” shelters. So the term “No Kill” was controversial right from the start. It did not help that the term is made up of two negative words, “no” and “kill.” As the years went by more and more private, limited-admission organizations began calling themselves No Kill. By 1990, “No Kill” was synonymous with “limited admission.” The general belief was that only organizations that could limit the number of animals they took in could avoid killing for time or space. Meanwhile, shelter intake nationwide had been falling sharply since the 1970s, and by the 1990s shelter intake was down in some places to the point where the idea of a No Kill community could take shape. In 1994, the San Francisco SPCA and the city of San Francisco signed the historic Adoption Pact that guaranteed a home to all healthy animals who went into the city’s shelter system. Rich Avanzino, the head of the San Francisco SPCA, began to use the term “No Kill” in a new way to refer to an entire community, including the open-admission shelter for the city. Avanzino wanted to expand the Adoption Pact to include treatable animals, and he defined the term “No Kill” to mean that all healthy and treatable animals in the community would be saved. When the Adoption Pact was signed he hoped that San Francisco would be No Kill very shortly. At the first No Kill conferences held by Lynda Foro in the mid-1990s one of the questions that came up was whether “No Kill meant no kill.” In other words, did “No Kill” mean never killing an animal? The answer was that the term “No Kill” was meant to distinguish between killing and true euthanasia. Putting to death an animal who was terminally ill and suffering, or vicious, was true euthanasia, but killing a healthy or treatable animal was simply killing. The idea that workers in traditional shelters were morally culpable for “killing” animals had always been an implication of the No Kill term, but now the implication was verging on an open declaration. At the time that Avanzino was pursuing the goal of saving all the healthy and treatable animals in San Francisco, people in other parts of the country were working toward the same goal for their communities. Communities in the states of Colorado and New Hampshire were examples. Both of those states, like San Francisco, had populations with progressive, socially responsible views. By the year 2000 San Francisco, New Hampshire, and Colorado were all saving about 75% of their shelter animals. This was a great achievement at a time when the specialty of shelter medicine was in its infancy and most shelters did not have the capacity to prevent infectious diseases, care for orphan neonatal kittens, or routinely treat conditions like ringworm or heartworm. Many of the most progressive communities, like the ones represented by the state federation in New Hampshire and many of the communities in Denver, refused to use the term “No Kill.” Those communities used a model of cooperation and coalition building, including working with traditional public shelters. They felt that, however much they might agree with the goal of saving shelter animals, the term “No Kill” was divisive and would hurt their efforts to work together. In the 2000s shelters continued to get better at lifesaving, aided by the growth of the internet, the development of the specialty of shelter medicine, and the use of marketing and community-engagement techniques. In 2007 Nathan Winograd, in his book Redemption  (page xi of the 2nd edition), proposed the idea that about 90% of shelter animals were healthy or treatable. This idea was popular and many people found it easier to think in terms of “90%” rather than “healthy-treatable.” So now we had three ways to define No Kill: (1) as limited admission shelters taking in only animals that can be placed in homes, (2) as communities saving all healthy and treatable shelter animals and euthanizing the unhealthy and untreatable ones, and (3) as communities saving 90% or more of shelter animals and euthanizing 10% or less. None of these definitions addressed the problem that many of the shelters and communities that qualified as “No Kill” rejected the term. In recent years a fourth definition of No Kill, that No Kill should literally mean that no animal is ever killed, has been put forward by some people. In the view of these people, vicious animals should be given sanctuary care and terminally ill animals should have hospice care to make them comfortable until they die naturally. In other words, these people reject the premise of early No Kill advocates that No Kill did not mean no euthanasia. At the same time, some proponents of the idea of No Kill as a percentage have argued that the percentage of healthy-treatable animals is really 95% to 100%, not 90%. Other people have argued that shelter populations in different communities have different characteristics, and that 90% is too high to be realistic for some communities. With the increasing use of social media in recent years by some No Kill advocates to reach members of the public who are unfamiliar with how animal shelters work, the rhetoric has sometimes taken on an overtly hostile tone. It is not unheard-of to see people on social media referring to people who do shelter euthanasia as “murderers.” Social media lends itself to hyperbole and much of this is just letting off steam, but it’s easy to understand why many people who are trying to build and maintain community coalitions have continued to distance themselves from the “No Kill” term. And therein lies the fundamental problem with the “No Kill” term. Regardless of exactly how we define shelter success – as saving all healthy-treatables, as saving 90%, or in some other way, the “No Kill” term does not capture the universe of shelters or communities meeting that standard. Let’s say that we manage to agree on a definition of No Kill as referring to communities that save 90% or more of their animals. Our definition will fail at its purpose of defining those communities because a great many of them will refuse to identify themselves as “No Kill.” Is it any wonder that the public is confused when so many community shelters that meet the definition of No Kill deny that they are No Kill? So what should we do about this? The ongoing controversy and confusion over “No Kill” that has now lasted for some 40 years is part of the growing pains of the shelter reform movement. Early No Kill advocates failed to recognize the fact that massive pet overpopulation in the 1970s and 1980s put open admission shelters in a no-win position. Conversely, when shelter intake fell by the 1990s to a point where high save rates became possible in many communities, the traditional shelter establishment was slow to realize that the world had changed. Leaders in many local communities were able to get past the misunderstandings and work together, but unfortunately we did not have any leadership at the national level that was able to realize what had happened and bring the two sides together. Instead, we had further polarization. Fortunately, that is now changing. In the last year or two we have had some encouraging signs that the leaders of virtually all of the important national organizations that are interested in animal sheltering are moving forward with an emphasis on coalition building that (1) includes all stakeholders and (2) promotes new ideas that work. Look, for example, at the supporting organizations of the Million Cat Challenge. Perhaps it’s time to ditch not only the “No Kill” term, but the concept that the shelter world is divided into the savers and the killers.

Grand County is in north central Colorado and had a population of 15,000 people as of the 2010 census. Municipalities in Grand County include Granby (population 1700), Kremmling (1400), and Winter Park, a resort town with a permanent population of 1000. I spoke to an official at the Grand County Animal Shelter (GCAS), located in Granby, who told me that the county sheriff’s department runs the shelter. GCAS serves the entire county, including the towns, and there are no other shelters in the county. Grand County Pet Pals (GCPP) is a private non-profit that assists GCAS and maintains the GCAS website. Grand County is also home to Mountain Pet Rescue (MPR), a foster-based rescue located in Winter Park. MPR specializes in transporting heavy-coated dogs of the working breeds in from out of state. These dogs are popular in the Colorado mountains and MPR reports that there is a shortage of them. GCAS charges a $20 fee for owner surrenders. Sometimes they ask people to wait to surrender animals if the shelter is full, but they always make exceptions if the owner cannot wait or if they think the animal would be better off impounded. Their general rule is to accept owner surrenders only from their jurisdictions, but they have occasionally made exceptions in the past and taken surrenders from outside the jurisdiction. They do not have a TNR program, but they have live traps that they lend to people who trap ferals. The shelter then neuters the cats and places them as barn cats. Shelters in Colorado report their statistics to the state’s Department of Agriculture each year. In 2012, GCAS took in 309 dogs and cats. This is an intake of 21 pets per 1000 human population. If MPR’s intake is counted, the intake is 45 pets per 1000 population. GCAS’s live release rate for 2012 was 98%. The live release rate was 97% if animals who died in shelter care are included with euthanasias. MPR also submits statistics to the state. In 2012 they took in 354 dogs, of which 301 were transported in from out of state, and they took in 6 owner-surrendered cats. They had a 100% live release rate, which drops to 99% if the 4 dogs who died in their care are counted against their live releases. In 2013, GCAS took in 266 animals and had a 99% live release rate. They had no animals die in shelter care and did not report any owner-requested euthanasia. MPR reported taking in 515 dogs and 9 cats in 2013, with a 99.8% live release rate. MPR’s live release rate was 99.6% if the one dog who died in shelter care is counted against the live release rate. Grand County was originally listed by this blog on December 12, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

New Hampshire is a small state in New England with a cold climate and mountainous terrain. The state has a population of 1,300,000 people as of the 2010 census. The largest city in the state, Manchester, has a population of 100,000. The capital city, Concord, has 43,000 people. Animal shelters in the state belong to a private organization called the New Hampshire Federation of Humane Organizations (NHFHO). The federation was formed in 1979, and the eight founding members are the major intake shelters in the state. NHFHO currently lists 16 members in the shelter-rescue category. The shelters report their statistics to the NHFHO, but the Federation does not make statistics on individual shelters available to the general public. Instead, it makes aggregate data for all shelters available. For 2013, the NHFHO report showed a 91% live release rate with intake of 14,434 cats and dogs. The live release rate was 90% if owner-requested euthanasias and animals who died or were lost in shelter care are counted with euthanasias. For the 2012 calendar year, the NHFHO released aggregate data that showed a 91% live release rate. New Hampshire is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

Right now several states still have gas chambers in active use in animal shelters. Reformers are working hard in those states to get gas chambers banned, but they are running into local resistance in many places. It is puzzling that there is still any opposition to getting rid of gas chambers, because all of the leading national organizations that have weighed in on the issue say that euthanasia by injection (EBI) is the preferred method of euthanasia for shelter dogs and cats. The textbook “Shelter Medicine for Veterinarians and Staff” notes that the Association of Shelter Veterinarians, ASPCA, HSUS, and the American Humane Association (AHA) “all recommend EBI of sodium pentobarbital as the only acceptable method for euthanasia of dogs and cats in animal shelters.” The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), in its 2013 Euthanasia Guidelines, says that “the preferred method of euthanasia” in animal shelters is EBI. The Euthanasia Reference Manual published by HSUS states that EBI is the best of the available euthanasia methods for shelter animals, and lists gas chambers among the methods that “are not considered to be humane euthanasia, and should never be permitted in a shelter setting.” The National Animal Control Association states that EBI using sodium pentobarbital is the “only method of choice” for humane euthanasia of shelter dogs and cats, and it “condemns”  the use of gas chambers. The people who want to continue using gas chambers in shelters generally rely on three arguments. None of those arguments stand up to scrutiny and none of them are accepted by experts in the field. The first argument is that gas chambers are safer for the humans involved when they are dealing with aggressive or feral animals. This argument seems plausible at first glance because people tend to think of EBI as requiring handling of the animal, while the gas chamber just requires pushing a button. But what this argument ignores is that the technician has to handle the animal to get it into the gas chamber in the first place. EBI is actually safer than the gas chamber for the technicians because a press gate or squeeze cage can be used to restrain an animal for the few seconds required to give a pre-euthanasia sedative. The restraint technique is used in TNR to get feral cats ready for surgery, and it is both safe for the technicians and as humane as possible for the cats. Anyone who has seen experienced people preparing feral cats for surgery will realize how much more humane the restraint-sedation technique is than stuffing a fully conscious, struggling, terrified animal into a gas chamber. And speaking of danger to the human technicians, gas chambers are dangerous things to have in any building. The “Shelter Medicine for Veterinarians and Staff” textbook notes that carbon monoxide exposure has been documented in the death of one shelter worker and the illness of another. Gas chambers that leak low levels of carbon monoxide can cause serious health problems in shelter personnel. There is no way to tell if a chamber is leaking without monitoring it, because the gas has no smell or taste. And handling the gas is dangerous because it is explosive. The second argument made by those who want to keep using gas chambers is that EBI is more expensive. This argument is factually incorrect. AHA did a study of costs of EBI versus gas chambers and found that EBI is cheaper – far cheaper, in fact. The 2009 study found a cost of $4.66 per animal for the gas chamber versus $2.29 for EBI. Sodium pentobarbital is a controlled substance, but the majority of states allow direct registration for animal shelters to obtain the drug. Concern about the ability of shelters to get sodium pentobarbital without having to go through a veterinarian should never be a barrier to banning gas chambers, because if a state lacks direct registration it could be instituted at the same time as the ban on gas chambers. The third argument made by people who want to keep the gas chamber is that a gas chamber is emotionally easier on shelter personnel because they do not have to look at and touch the animal as it dies. Again, the experts in the field do not agree with this reasoning. Many studies have found that performing euthanasia is stressful for shelter workers regardless of the method used. The key is how workers deal with the stress. If they distance themselves from their emotions by distancing themselves from the animal’s death, it is harder on them in the long run. Being able to feel the sadness and tragedy of an animal’s death is actually a sign that a shelter worker is coping with his or her emotions in a healthy way rather than ignoring them or shutting them off. I suspect that what is really occurring with resistance to getting rid of gas chambers is just resistance to change, and a desire not to have to go through the learning curve of adopting a new method. Those concerns should not stand in the way of banning gas chambers. When every national organization with expertise on the issue, including the AVMA, has expressed the clear opinion that EBI is superior to the gas chamber in all respects, that should be the end of the debate.

In the summer of 2000 she had a life-changing experience when she went with her parents on a vacation to Greece. She was dismayed by the number of street dogs and cats she saw. People told her that the dogs and cats had caretakers who fed them, but they had no homes and she could see that not all of them had enough food. One night as she and her parents were leaving a restaurant she saw a starving dog huddled in the street. She fed that dog and others that she saw, but was overwhelmed with the magnitude of the need and a feeling of helplessness. When Makena returned to the United States she began to think seriously about what direction she wanted to take in life. She decided that she wanted to work on animal welfare, and the memory of the starving dog she saw in Greece led her to decide to help homeless animals. That fall, she quit her promising career in marketing and took a job with the Richmond SPCA as its Director of Education. In a few months she was promoted to Director of Operations. The Richmond SPCA in the early 2000’s was one of the best places in the United States for a person who wanted to make a difference for homeless animals. The Richmond SPCA CEO, Robin Starr, had visited the San Francisco SPCA during Rich Avanzino’s tenure and was implementing his No Kill programs in Richmond. Makena stayed at Richmond for 7 years before moving in 2007 to another groundbreaking No Kill shelter, the Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA. She was associate director there for two years, working with Susanne Kogut. In 2009, a board member for the Lynchburg Humane Society (LHS) contacted Makena for advice. Lynchburg is an independent city in Virginia, about an hour southwest of Charlottesville and considerably more rural and blue-collar. LHS had the animal sheltering contract for the city and had been running the shelter for decades. Lynchburg’s live release rate was only 51% in 2008. The LHS board members had read Nathan Winograd’s book Redemption and decided that they wanted to shake things up and improve, and that was why they contacted Makena. One of the things Makena recommended was that LHS hire an executive director, since the only leadership the shelter had was the part-time oversight of a board member. The board agreed, and offered Makena the job. She took over in July 2009. LHS had some major obstacles in the way of improving its live release rate. The shelter building was very old and cramped, and almost impossible to sterilize. The staff had been doing things the same way for so long that it was hard for many of them to change. One of the first things Makena did was to ditch the shelter’s overly restrictive adoption requirements and institute open adoptions. She tripled donations to the shelter in two years. She instituted TNR and managed-admissions programs, and oversaw the takeover and successful restructuring of a failing spay-neuter clinic. In 2010, her first full year as director, the live release rate was 84%, and by 2011 LHS’s live release rate was over 90%. Makena continued to innovate, and was one of the early adopters of the new cat paradigms after reading the California draft whitepaper in 2013. LHS is now a member organization in the Million Cat Challenge. Perhaps Makena’s biggest single accomplishment to date has been the new LHS shelter, which just opened in March. She set an ambitious fund-raising goal for the shelter of $4.8 million, and exceeded that goal by raising $5.2 million. The great majority of this money was from private donors, as the city’s contribution to the building is only a modest fee to lease the stray-hold area. Makena’s marketing background has helped her keep the shelter in the public eye. Last summer LHS was runner-up in its division in the ASPCA Rachel Ray challenge. Makena used the competition aspect of the contest to get the city cheering for the shelter. She hopes to continue that kind of intensive marketing this year. The new shelter should help in the effort, as it is in a better location and provides a much better experience for visitors than the old shelter. Makena also wants to expand the help that LHS is already providing to the county and other nearby jurisdictions, and do more work on helping owners keep their pets. The guiding principle for Makena and her board is to try new things. A new idea may not always work, but you won’t know until you try it. It is that attitude that has taken LHS from a failing traditional shelter to one of the most innovative No Kill shelters in the nation. Makena will be presenting a talk about LHS at this summer’s Best Friends National Conference in Atlanta.

One of the big things that sets No Kill apart from traditional animal sheltering is that No Kill treats the treatables. The development of shelter medicine over the last 15 years has helped make it possible to give shelter animals the same chance at treatment as animals with homes. But that’s only the beginning of the advancements shelter medicine has made and is making. Shelter medicine is just now beginning to mature as a specialty, and its practitioners are going beyond simply treating shelter animals to developing protocols for all aspects of shelter care. Fifteen years ago there was no shelter medicine specialty and most people thought that a shelter job was the bottom of the barrel for a veterinarian. The first formal class in shelter medicine did not take place until 1999. It was a cooperative effort between the ASPCA and Cornell University and was taught by Dr. Jan Scarlett and Dr. Lila Miller. Also in 1999 Maddie’s Fund awarded a grant for the first shelter medicine residency program, at the University of California at Davis. The resident was Dr. Kate Hurley, who is now head of the UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program. Another big milestone was the formation of the Association of Shelter Veterinarians (ASV) in 2001. In 2002, UC Davis started its pioneer shelter medicine program. In 2004 a textbook of veterinary medicine was published. Today many veterinary schools have shelter medicine programs or residencies or both, shelter medicine classes are offered as continuing education at conferences, and there are over 1500 members of the ASV. Just last April, the executive board of the American Veterinary Medical Association unanimously voted to recognize shelter medicine as a specialty. Maddie’s Institute is the “academic division” of Maddie’s Fund, and it has produced and made available a series of informational videos and webcasts on shelter medicine and other topics. As Rich Avanzino says, shelter medicine is a hybrid between herd medicine and companion animal care. Infection control in an animal shelter requires looking at the shelter population as a whole, but shelter veterinarians may also go to great lengths to save individual animals. Shelter veterinarians must balance the cost considerations common to herd medicine with the focus on the life of each individual that governs companion animal medicine. Shelter medicine specialists are involved today with so many aspects of sheltering that it’s hard to imagine how shelters ever got along without them. Shelter vets have developed protocols on infection control, including vaccinating on intake. They are making big changes in how temperament is evaluated in shelters. Housing for mental and physical health, shelter flow-through, length-of-stay, and capacity control are all issues that shelter medicine has influenced. TNR programs are dependent on help from the veterinary profession. One of the most exciting new directions in No Kill is the Million Cat Challenge, which is run by Dr. Hurley and Dr. Julie Levy of the Maddie’s Shelter Medicine program at the University of Florida. Another phenomenon we are seeing is that academic shelter medicine programs can work in their local communities to raise live release rates. The University of Florida program is a good example, as it has worked with the Alachua County and Gainesville shelter system for years. The University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine has a program, Operation Catnip, that does TNR for feral and unowned cats. The involvement of shelter medicine programs has helped expand the scope of what shelters can do. Fifteen years ago it would have been highly unusual for a shelter to even attempt to treat a parvo pup, for example. Today such tough cases are much more likely to be treated and saved. Shelter medicine specialists can also serve an important primary or supporting role in consulting. The Irvine, California, shelter has been the subject of a lot of criticism in the last several months, and the city brought in a shelter-medicine consultant who trained at the UC Davis program to weigh in on the issues of euthanasia and behavior evaluations. There have been some bumps in the road. Because shelter medicine is so new and because it is a hybrid type of practice, it does not always fit neatly into existing rules and expectations. An example of this has been the controversy in Texas over the powers of shelter veterinarians. Hopefully problems like these can be worked out expeditiously now that the importance of shelter medicine in lifesaving is beyond question.

The specialty of shelter medicine, which has grown at a fast pace from its beginnings 16 years ago, is critical to No Kill. Shelter medicine has been key not just to medical treatment of the treatables, but also to reducing shelter stress through housing and enrichment, fixing behavior problems, preventing disease, designing shelter buildings, and developing programs for shelter flow-through and capacity control. It is no accident that No Kill and shelter medicine have grown in parallel over the last 16 years. The field of shelter medicine is growing so fast that it’s hard to keep up. But one way to get a good grounding in the subject is to read “Shelter Medicine for Veterinarians and Staff,” Second Edition (2013), edited by Lila Miller and Stephen Zawistowski. Dr. Miller, who is often referred to as the founder of shelter medicine, was the first African-American woman to graduate from Cornell’s veterinary college, at a time (1977) when the profession was beginning to diversify. She, along with Dr. Jan Scarlett, taught the first formal class in shelter medicine at Cornell in 1999. Dr. Miller was a co-founder of the Association of Shelter Veterinarians (ASV) in 2001. She co-wrote the textbook “Infectious Disease Management in Animal Shelters” with Dr. Kate Hurley. She has been with the ASPCA since 1977, and is its director of veterinary outreach. In 2008 she received the American Veterinary Medical Association’s Animal Welfare Award, and in 2014 she received the ASV Meritorious Achievement Award. Dr. Zawistowski has a PhD in behavior and genetics from the University of Illinois. He has written, co-written, or edited several books in addition to the shelter medicine text, including a history of the ASPCA (“Heritage of Care”) and a textbook about companion animals (“Companion Animals in Society”). His research work has been published in several journals and he is a founder and co-editor of the “Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science.” He has served for many years as Science Advisor to the ASPCA, and is a well-known speaker on animal welfare subjects. He was a founder and officer of the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy. Their textbook lists 51 contributors, including Dr. Kate Hurley, Dr. Julie Levy, and Dr. Jan Scarlett. It has an 80-page introductory section that includes articles on shelter statistics, design, management, and legal issues, among other topics. Following are sections on husbandry, infectious disease, animal cruelty, shelter programs, behavior, and sterilization. Individual articles cover everything from stress and quality of life for shelter animals to population management to wildlife and equine care to animal hoarding to foster care to behavior enrichment to community cat management to pediatric neutering, along with all the other topics you would expect in a shelter medicine text. Although this text is written for shelter veterinarians and staff, it has lots of valuable information for anyone who is interested in shelter issues. People who are trying to reform shelters from the outside may not always realize the complexity of issues that shelters face in trying to save animals. The sections on proper care of the various species found in animal shelters covers almost 200 pages, for example. The spay-neuter section is over 100 pages. The chapter on foster care shows not only how valuable foster programs are but how many factors must be considered in setting up and running foster programs. The extensive section on disease control shows the planning and constant vigilance that is required to keep animals healthy in the shelter environment. The cost for this textbook is modest given its size and the amount of information it contains. As a non-professional, I learned a lot about the intricacies of modern shelter management from it, and would recommend it for anyone who is interested in shelter issues. Animal shelter management is a field that is changing at dizzying speed, and this textbook provides a good way to get an overview of the issue.

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

This Tuesday, April 21, at 9PM EST, Scott Trebatoski is giving a free webinar on Return to Field (RTF) for community cats. The webcast, presented by Maddie’s Fund, will have a 20 minute presentation and a 40-45 minute Q&A session, and did I say it’s free? Go ahead and sign up even if you cannot participate live, and Maddie’s will send you an e-mail with a link to watch it on demand as soon as it’s available. There has been quite a bit of controversy over RTF programs, with some people believing that such programs discriminate against cats or make it less likely that owned cats will be reunited with their owners. I’ve even seen comments from some people who believe that RTF is just a way for shelters to artificially jack up their live release rates. Trebatoski’s webinar is a chance for people who have reservations about RTF to talk to an expert and find out what RTF is really about and why it works so much better for cats than the traditional shelter approach. By the way, Hillsborough County, Florida, where Trebatoski is now director, is replicating the success of his previous city, Jacksonville. Since Trebatoski became director in Hillsborough a year ago, the live release rate has rapidly increased and in the last few months has been pushing 90%. In March 2015 the live release rate was 89% using the traditional calculation and 87% including animals who died or were lost in shelter care. Intake in March was 1,137 dogs and cats, and average length of stay was under 7 days. Hillsborough County includes the city of Tampa, and has an estimated population of about 1.3 million people. In more RTF news, the state of Arizona has passed a law that exempts cats from the state’s mandatory 3-day hold period on the condition that they are sterilized and returned to field. Francis Battista of Best Friends has posted a blog on this new law and its importance to the Best Friends-PetSmart Charities community cat initiative in Pima County, Arizona. The blog has a nice summary of why RTF programs lead to better outcomes for cats (including a much higher chance of being reunited with their families) than traditional hold times. HSUS’s Animal Sheltering magazine has an article in the March/April 2015 issue about the Chico, California, city shelter’s adaptation of the new cat paradigms to their local circumstances. The shelter first got buy-in for the program by consulting with the city government and the community. Owner surrendered cats now go to a local non-profit. The city shelter takes in sick or injured stray cats and orphaned kittens, and refers healthy community cats for TNR. Cat euthanasia dropped from 1,273 in 2011 to 88 in 2013, while cat intake dropped from 2,839 to 442. This program allows the shelter to concentrate on the sick, injured, and orphan stray cats who really need their help, while the healthy stray cats who are doing well remain in the field where many of them have homes. The Charleston (South Carolina) Animal Society’s new kitten intensive care unit is now open. The society takes in 2500 kittens each year. The news about dogs this week was mostly scientific and medical. Scientific American and Science magazine are reporting on research showing that when dogs and people gaze into each others’ eyes, both species have an increase in neurochemicals that are important in bonding. In other words, your dog really is feeling love for you when he or she looks into your eyes. The canine flu outbreak in the Chicago area has been identified as caused by an H3N2 subtype. This is the first identification of an H3N2 subtype outside of Asia. Currently available canine vaccines are for the H3N8 subtype, and it is not known if there is any cross-immunity. The H3N2 virus can also infect cats. The Koret Shelter Medicine Program has made this list of resources available. Maddie’s Fund has a new article on treatment of parvovirus in a shelter setting. In other shelter and rescue news, Salt Lake County, Utah, is reporting that it had a 93% live release rate in 2014. The Jacksonville Humane Society has started a campaign for funds to build a new permanent shelter to replace the one that burned down in 2007, killing 86 animals. The HSUS is making an initial investment of $600,000 in programs to improve the situation for street dogs in Puerto Rico. And Dogster has a nice interview with a caring ACO officer in Atlanta to celebrate ACO Appreciation Week.

The headline this week is that the Million Cat Challenge hit 250,000 cats saved under their program – 1/4th of the way to their goal of saving 1 million cats. Since it’s a five-year goal, they are looking very good to hit the goal early. The way it works is this. When a participating shelter signs up, their progress is measured against the baseline year (2012) by the greater of two numbers – reduction in cat euthanasia or increase in cat live releases. By having the alternatives, a shelter can get credit for for pet retention or diverting cats to TNR or RTF programs, as well as for increasing adoptions. The program has Five Key Initiatives, and a shelter can choose which ones it wants to implement. The Million Cat Challenge now has 263 participating shelters. That’s pretty good for only a little more than 6 months in existence. There is a lot more going on from this effort than can be gleaned from just looking at the website. Many large jurisdictions in the country (and in Canada) have started to implement the ideas behind the five initiatives. These concepts were considered revolutionary when some of them were endorsed in the California draft whitepaper less than two years ago, but they have rapidly been accepted and supported by the leadership of the shelter industry and are well on their way to becoming mainstream. It’s very possible, in my opinion, that in the 4+ years remaining in the Challenge, we will see not just 1 million, but all healthy and treatable shelter cats saved by these methods. The cat cafe phenomenon hit a new high this past week with an article on Vox about the DC cafe, Crumbs & Whiskers. For DC residents and many people in other parts of the country Vox is a must-read, so this is great publicity. A related idea to cat cafes is to get cats into workplaces, as with Seattle’s popular Kitty Hall program. The Humane Society of Broward County in Florida has rolled out a program called Office Cats that sends adoptable cats and their luggage to small businesses in the area. Neighborhood Cats is offering a “see-through” rear release door for cat traps, for those wily ferals who say “no thank you” to regular traps. The ASPCA Cornell Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Conference is being held from July 31 to August 2 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Dr Stephanie Janeczko, one of the presenters, has tips for transporters, including the critically important health requirements you need to know before taking transport animals across state lines. Baton Rouge has been struggling to go No Kill since 2011. The early efforts were not as successful as people had hoped, but the community kept at it and progress has been made. Now the Companion Animal Alliance (CAA), which runs the city shelter, has announced that a state-of-the-art new shelter building will have its groundbreaking next year. The new shelter will be located on land leased to CAA by Louisiana State University, near the LSU veterinary school. The architectural firm that was selected to design the shelter visited Portland, Oregon, to get ideas for the new building, and CAA officials have visited other shelters as well. The cost for the new building will not be known until the design is finished, but the fundraising campaign is scheduled to begin this fall. The Waco, Texas, effort to go No Kill has been very successful so far (the city shelter is running at an 88% live release rate for 2015), and now the shelter building is getting a $2.5 million makeover. The city has supplied $1 million of the cost and the rest has been raised by private donations. Since this is a renovation and rebuilding on the site of the current shelter, officials will have to accommodate the animals currently in residence and coming in the door, in spite of temporarily reduced space. The shelter is asking for fosters to help tide it over during the renovation. The new building will be set up for better animal care and disease prevention and will also have a new adoption center, a veterinary clinic, and play areas. Maddie’s Fund’s essential blog, Chew On This, has been relocated. The Maddie’s blog may be the single most useful blog going for people who are actually running shelters and want practical, professional guidance they can use. Speaking of Maddie’s Fund, it has now made 2013 statistics available for the shelters that report to it under the Asilomar Accords format. The data is in the form of a comparative database. Here is a nice feature about Colorado Animal Rescue and the Aspen Animal Shelter, two of Colorado’s many No Kill shelters. Steve Dale raises the interesting question of whether the veterinarian who allegedly shot a defenseless cat in the head with an arrow in Texas would have been indicted for animal cruelty if it had been a puppy that was killed instead of a cat. Delaware state and local officials are rallying and discussing how to handle animal control and sheltering after the First State Animal Center and SPCA dropped a bombshell last week with their announcement that they are getting out of their contracts in September. The contracts cover animal control and sheltering for all three of the state’s counties and the city of Wilmington. First State made the decision to end its contracts early because it was concerned that its employees, who have been looking for other jobs since the state announced its intention to take over animal control, would resign and leave it without enough staff to service the contracts.

Montmorency County, Michigan, is located in the northern part of Michigan’s lower peninsula, and has about 10,000 residents. Up until 2009, the county sheriff’s office handled animal control. The Elk Country Animal Shelter (ECAS) is a 501(c)(3) organization that supported the county shelter for years and finally took it over entirely in April 2009. Animals were kept in outdoor kennels at the sheriffs office and ECAS’s first order of business was to create a shelter building where the animals could be indoors. The shelter accepts owner surrenders and does not list any restrictions on surrenders on its website. Here are the live release rates for the county as reported to the state of Michigan for the four years since ECAS took over the shelter: 2009 — 97% 2010 — 97% 2011 — 97% 2012 — 97% The shelter’s mission was endangered in 2012 when a contract dispute with the county caused ECAS to stop formally taking in strays. Volunteers for the shelter went out on their own time and rescued strays and took them to a neighboring shelter. Fortunately the dispute only lasted a couple of weeks, and on April 11, 2012 the county approved the funding asked for by the shelter.