OUT THE FRONT DOOR

The city of Portland, Oregon, has a population of 584,000 people. It is the county seat of Multnomah County, which has 735,000 people. The Portland metro area (which includes part of the state of Washington) has almost 2.3 million people. The Animal Shelter Alliance of Portland (ASAP) is a coalition of six organizations, some of which are municipal and some private, that provide animal sheltering in the Portland metro area. The municipal members of the coalition (shelters that are responsible for stray intake) are Multnomah County Animal Services (MCAS) (serving the city of Portland and Multnomah County), the Bonnie L. Hays Shelter (BLH) (serving Washington County), and Clackamas County Dog Services. The private members of the coalition are the Oregon Humane Society, the Humane Society for Southwest Washington (HSSW) (which works with Clark County Animal Control), and the Cat Adoption Team. Together these six organizations serve four counties — Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, and Clark — containing about 2 million people. ASAP estimates that its six members care for 90% of the animals needing sheltering in the four counties. Coalitions such as ASAP are becoming a trend, as more and more municipal shelters seek out and work closely with private partners. In such situations you have to look at the community coalition as a whole, rather than the individual shelters, to get an accurate idea of what is going on. For example, the Clackamas County municipal shelter does not pick up stray cats and does not accept owner surrendered cats, but it offers cats for adoption that have been taken in by other area organizations. Conversely, the Cat Adoption Team takes in cats but not dogs. MCAS and BLH accept owner surrenders only when they have room, but owner surrenders are accepted by HSSW and OHS. The ASAP coalition increased the live release rate for the metro area from 62% in 2006 to 79% in 2011. Maddie’s Fund reported that the coalition had an 85% live release rate for 2012, with a combined intake of almost 32,000 animals. The coalition’s live release rate first exceeded 90% in 2013, with a live release rate of 91% for an intake of just over 30,000 animals. If owner-requested euthanasia and animals who died or were lost in shelter care are counted with euthanasias, the live release rate was 86% for 2013. (The ASAP statistics are linked here.) With ASAP’s service area of about 2 million people, it was the largest metro area in 2013 to report a 90% or better live release rate under the standard calculation. Multnomah County’s live release rate for 2013, calculated separately on MCAS intake alone, was 87%. It is not unusual, when you have a coalition, for a shelter that does animal control intake to have a lower live release rate than other intake shelters in the coalition, since animal control generally involves the most difficult situations such as hoarders, dog-fighting busts, etc. When other shelters in the area of the animal control shelter are doing intake of owner surrenders, it can artificially depress the success rate of the animal control shelter. In 2014, Both MCAS and the coalition as a whole improved their live release rates (the full coalition Asilomar statistics are not posted as of this writing.) MCAS has reported 90.2% for 2014, and ASAP as a whole has reported a 93% live release rate for 2014 (see header in link). The Portland metro area is counted in the blog’s running totals as a 90%+ community.

Augusta County, Virginia, is located in the Shenandoah Valley area west of Charlottesville. Its population was 74,000 in the 2010 census. The county contains two independent cities: Staunton (population 24,000) and Waynesboro (population 21,000). The total population of the county and the two cities is 119,000. In 2011, the Shenandoah Valley Animal Services Center (SVASC) took over animal sheltering for Augusta County, Staunton, and Waynesboro. The shelter took in 2447 animals in 2013, the most recent year for which full statistics are currently available. Animal control officers for Augusta County, Staunton, and Waynesboro immediately return or euthanize a few of the animals they pick up, but the great majority go to SVASC. The Augusta Regional SPCA, located in Staunton, also takes in animals – 1337 in 2013, including 464 owner surrenders and 240 transfers.  There are several rescues in the county, including Augusta Dog Adoption, Cat’s Cradle, and the Mosby Foundation, that take animals from SVASC. SVASC’s full statistics for 2014 are not yet available online from the state system, but the shelter recently reported to the media that its live release rate increased to 94% in 2014 from 82% in 2013. Augusta County is one of the places where it is very difficult to calculate a live release rate even with the state reports, due to multiple intake shelters and transfers among shelters. SVASC’s current shelter is inadequate, and the three jurisdictions it serves have committed $420,000 to expand the shelter this spring. The expansion will add cage space, six isolation rooms, and separate areas to house puppies and small dogs. Augusta County, Staunton, and Waynesboro are counted in the Running Totals as 90%+ communities.

Brown County is located in eastern Wisconsin, bordering the Green Bay area of Lake Michigan. Its population is 248,000 people. Its county seat is the city of Green Bay, which has a population of 104,000. The Bay Area Humane Society (BAHS) is a private non-profit that provides animal sheltering for the county and all of its cities and towns, except for the city of Green Bay. BAHS accepts owner surrenders subject to a waiting list when they are full. BAHS used to provide animal sheltering for the city of Green Bay. In June of 2013, though, Green Bay officials began sending animals picked up by animal control within the city limits to a veterinarian’s office for the stray hold period. Recently the city has been considering moving animal control and sheltering back to BAHS. BAHS reports its statistics in the Asilomar Accords format. In 2014 the shelter took in 3780 cats and dogs and had a 94% live release rate. If owner-requested euthanasias and animals who died in shelter care are counted as euthanasias, the live release rate was 91%. Owner-requested euthanasias dropped considerably in 2014 from previous years. In 2013, BAHS intake not counting owner-requested euthanasias was 4640 and the live release rate was 88%. In 2012, the shelter took in 5043 cats and dogs (not counting owner-requested euthanasias), and the live release rate was 85%. Brown County is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

King County, Washington, has a population of almost 2 million people, and its county seat is Seattle. Many of the people in the county live in the suburbs of Seattle. In 2008, the county reported a live release rate of 77%, substantially better than in previous years. A consultant submitted a scathing report on the shelter, however, which at that time was known as King County Animal Care & Control. The consultant concluded that, among other things, animals were often left without food and water for substantial periods of time. The county council then decided to make changes. In July of 2010, the county implemented a regional plan for animal control, breaking the county up into four regions which each had their own animal control staff. Animal sheltering was consolidated at the county shelter in Kent, Washington. A new manager was appointed. The new entity was know as Regional Animal Services of King County (RASKC). RASKC accepts owner surrenders on a space available basis. RASKC serves the unincoporated area of King County and 25 cities and towns. For 2011 and 2012, RASKC reported a live release rate around 85%. A complicating factor in evaluating the live release rate for King County is that the Humane Society for Seattle/King County (HSSKC), a private organization, accepts owner surrenders (by appointment). HSSKC and the Seattle Animal Shelter report to Maddie’s Fund as a coalition, and their most recent available online report (2010) shows a 91% live release rate for the coalition as a whole, with HSSKC at 94% and the Seattle shelter at 85%. HSSKC separately reported a 96% live release rate for 2011. For the calendar year 2013, RASKC reported an 89% live release rate for cats and dogs. If owner-requested euthanasia and animals who died or were lost in shelter care are included with euthanasias, the live release rate was 86%. The shelter also euthanized some livestock, wildlife, and small animals, including bats for rabies testing. If all these euthanasias are counted with cats and dogs, the live release rate was 83%. In 2014, the live release rate declined to 86%, or 84% if animals who died or were lost in shelter care are counted with euthanasias. The live release rate might well be over 90% if the owner surrenders from King County that go to HSSKC were counted in RASKC statistics. HSSKC’s yearly intake is around 6,000, so it is a major player in the area. Since HSSKC serves both the city and the county, it would be helpful to have a consolidated report for all three entities that accounted for transfers among the three entities. At any rate, the Seattle metropolitan area appears to be one of the safest large metros in the nation for animals. King County is counted in the Running Totals as an 80% to 90% community.

Now that shelters in Virginia have filed their reports with the state for 2014, we can see how the top communities did compared with previous years. One thing to note is that the Virginia reports count owner-requested euthanasia in the euthanasia category. Lynchburg, Augusta County, and Nelson County are not included in this article because I have previously posted their updates for 2014. Charlottesville and Albemarle County The Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA (CASPCA) is a private non-profit that has the contract for animal sheltering for Albemarle County and the town of Charlottesville. The combined population of the city and county is about 118,000 people, although that total does not include non-resident students who attend the University of Virginia. For 2014, CASPCA and animal control matched their 2013 live release rate of 96%. If animals who died in shelter care are counted with euthanasias, the live release rate was 94%. Fairfax County Fairfax County is in northern Virginia near Washington, DC, and has 1,082,000 human residents. The Fairfax County Animal Services Division (FCASD) is the municipal agency providing animal control and sheltering for the county. The shelter reported an 87% live release rate for 2014 (86% including animals who died at the shelter). This is better than it sounds because shelters in northern Virginia have traditionally offered end-of-life euthanasia for pets who are incurably ill, and their owner-requested euthanasia numbers are therefore higher than usual. The shelter recently abolished its former policy of having extra requirements for the adoption of pit-bull-type dogs. Fluvanna County Fluvanna County is southeast of Charlottesville, and it has 26,000 residents. A private organization, the Fluvanna SPCA, contracts with the county for animal services. The Fluvanna SPCA’s live release rate increased to 96% from 93% in 2013. The rate was 95% if animals who died in shelter care are included with euthanasias. King George County King George County is between Washington, D.C., and Richmond, and has 24,000 residents. Animal control and sheltering are provided by a county agency, King George County Animal Control (KGCAC). An enthusiastic group of volunteers known as the King George Animal Rescue League partners with KGCAC to pull animals from the shelter. KGCAC reported a 96% live release rate in 2014, up from 91% reported in 2013. The rate was 95% if animals who died in shelter care are included. Powhatan County Powhatan County, Virginia, has about 28,000 residents and is part of the Richmond metropolitan area. A municipal office, Powhatan Animal Control, handles animal control and sheltering. Powhatan’s live release rate was 94% in 2014, down slightly from 96% in 2013. The rate was 93% if animals who died in shelter care are included. Conclusions From This Data Overall, it is notable that when communities achieve No Kill they tend to stick to it. Many communities have double-digit increases in live release rates on their way to No Kill, but I don’t recall ever seeing a community have a double-digit decline in live release rates once No Kill was achieved. This is a good argument for the fact that a No Kill public shelter system adds value to a community. Residents like to have an animal shelter that is a safe haven for homeless pets, and once they have it they don’t allow it to deteriorate.

Is it a good idea for No Kill advocates to try to get states to pass laws mandating various aspects of No Kill programs? The devil is always in the details, and I think some of these efforts might be good, and others not so much. The subject is too big and complex for a single blog post to cover all the permutations, so I’m just going to talk about some general considerations with legal mandates A legal mandate is only as good as its enforcement mechanism. If the law just makes broad general pronouncements, such as, for example, “shelters must make every reasonable effort to rehome adoptable animals,” it will be hard to enforce. If the law provides that regulations be drafted to enforce a more granular level of control, then we have to persuade the rule-making agency to do a good job. Even if those hurdles are cleared, we may have problems of unfunded mandates. One trend in regulation generally is to try to move away from “command and control” and toward incentives. An example of this is the cap and trade approach for industries that release carbon to the atmosphere. How can the No Kill movement encourage laws and regulations that set up incentives for good shelter performance rather than trying to create good outcomes by outside control? One example of a good incentive is laws that require shelters to report their statistics to the state. These laws do not set up any mandatory performance standards, but they encourage better performance simply by making information about performance available to the public. These laws are especially effective if the state collects the data and makes it available in an online database, allowing for easy comparisons of shelters. Another example of a good incentive would be a state level program where a governor selects an outstanding shelter in the state to be recognized with an official proclamation, perhaps also recognizing a couple of runner-ups. The winners could be selected by a group of respected No Kill leaders advising the governor, and the criteria would be how well a shelter is doing. Perhaps consideration could be given to the conditions under which the shelter is operating by making the award be on the basis of “most improved.” If the national organizations got together behind such a program and generated a lot of incentives for the winners, and a lot of publicity, this could potentially be a very effective motivator. Awards like this can also be a way to increase community engagement, as entire communities get together to compete for an award. Both of the examples cited above – reporting and proclamations – are the type of thing that can actually get through a legislature and be signed by the governor. One advantage of the incentive approach over the performance mandate is that it is much easier to get incentives enacted and carried out. Mandatory rules can generate unintended consequences. No Kill advocates are pretty much uniformly opposed to mandatory spay-neuter, because it has the unintended effect of motivating people to avoid licensing their pets and maybe avoid taking their pets in for health care. What unintended consequences could mandatory performance standards for shelters have? By taking away a shelter’s flexibility to deal with its individual circumstances, can we actually make their job harder without making their performance better? What data, if any, do we have that command and control laws work to improve shelter performance? I have seen many claims for number of lives saved by the few shelter-performance laws that are in place, but no data to back up those claims. As a practical matter, no state legislature is going to adopt a law at this point in time requiring shelters to meet really high performance standards. The danger with encoding the lower standards that legislatures are actually likely to pass is that once these lower standards have the imprimatur of law it may be hard to change them. One way to avoid this might be to ask states to approve very tough standards for shelters, but make them goals rather than mandates. Saving homeless animals has always, in our country, been a separate function from animal control. The purpose of animal control is to protect the public from nuisance and dangerous animals. The purpose of animal sheltering is to find new homes or other humane dispositions for impounded animals. The first municipal animal shelter that was ever created (way back in 1870) was run by a private organization, and the beauty of private organizations has always been that they can spend their own money to save animals. Since animals are property under our law, it is very hard for legislators to justify laws that would require the public to spend more on treating or rehoming a homeless animal than its economic value (which, in the case of shelter animals, is usually nil). So, when we think about requiring public shelters to meet performance standards for lifesaving (going beyond animal control), the question of how that can be funded by the government arises. If we decide that legislation to compel veterinary treatment and rehoming is a good idea, how can we fund enforcement? One way is to ask citizens to pass a special funding measure (bond or tax) specifically for the purpose of improving lifesaving. As one final consideration, I think we have to ask if we need to go down the legislative route at all, given that No Kill momentum right now is so great that shelters are changing rapidly because they want to, not because they have to. We have a limited amount of money and person-power to spend promoting No Kill. Are those resources better spent in lobbying for laws that have not yet been proven to work and could have unintended consequences, or in helping and persuading more shelters to get on the bandwagon voluntarily? There are arguments on both sides. My own opinion is that some of the approaches I’ve outlined above would be no-brainers (state reporting laws and governmental proclamations), and special funding proposals are certainly worthy of consideration, while for other approaches it may be that our efforts would be better spent in other ways.

Cedaredge (population 2300) and Orchard City (3100) are located in Delta County in western Colorado. Development in the county has been primarily along two river valleys, following the Surface Creek and North Fork rivers. Much of the rest of the county outside the river valleys is mountainous and very sparsely inhabited. Cedaredge and Orchard City are in the Surface Creek valley, which is served by the Surface Creek Shelter (SCS), located in Cedaredge. Cedaredge has its own animal control, which takes in dogs only. SCS is managed by a non-profit, the Friends of Cedaredge Animal Control (FCAC). I was told by a shelter official that FCAC has a memorandum of understanding to impound the dogs picked up by Cedaredge animal control. In addition to Cedaredge dogs, SCS takes in non-feral stray cats, stray dogs, and owner-surrendered dogs and cats from the residents of Surface Creek valley, including Orchard City. SCS charges a small fee for owner surrenders and usually has a waiting list, but they make exceptions to the waiting list when needed. There are rescues in the county who do TNR for feral cats. Statistics submitted to the Colorado Department of Agriculture by FCAC for 2012 show that SCS’s intake, including strays and owner surrenders, was 313 cats and dogs. The live release rate was 95% (94% if animals who died or were lost in shelter care were counted in with euthanasias). In 2013, FCAC reported an intake of 314 animals and a live release rate of 99%. The live release rate was 97% if animals who died or were lost in shelter care are included with euthanasias. The North Fork area of Delta County has also been doing very well at animal sheltering, but their animal shelter system has been unstable. Therefore I’m not listing those communities at this time. Cedaredge was originally listed by this blog on November 16, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

I periodically get questions about how much it costs a city to transition to No Kill. Based on what I’ve seen in individual cities and counties over the last 4 years of researching No Kill shelters, I do not think there is any one-size-fits-all answer. Here are a few thoughts on the issue, though. Your mileage may vary. The reason there is no one-size-fits-all answer is that the cost depends on many things, including whether the entity running the shelter is public or private, how much the city or county is currently spending on animal control and sheltering, the amount of support in the community that already exists or can be harnessed (including donations and volunteers), the condition and location of the shelter, and the type and number of homeless animals in the community. An easy way to think of it is that communities want to end up at the same place (No Kill) but they are starting from very different places. One way to start the analysis is to compare the cost of particular, individual No Kill initiatives to what the shelter is currently doing. For example, if the amount that the shelter currently spends per cat is more than what the shelter would spend per cat on a shelter-neuter-return program, then SNR will save money. And pet-retention initiatives that reduce intake have built-in cost savings. Help desks and managed admissions are especially attractive in that regard because they cost little to implement and can often be done with volunteer help, and the reduction in intake can be substantial. This approach has the added advantage that it can be easier to get city officials to agree to a piecemeal transition than doing everything at once. One of the myths about No Kill is that it leads to shelter warehousing. Making it clear to city and county officials that reducing length-of-stay is a priority for No Kill can go a long way toward alleviating that concern. A foster program is one important way for No Kill shelters to reduce length-of-stay in the shelter. City officials should understand that it is far easier to have community engagement in the form of volunteer help and fosters when a shelter is No Kill. Few people would want to foster a litter of orphan kittens, for example, if they thought the shelter might kill the kittens later on. A cost that may be higher with No Kill is veterinary services. After all, one of the primary things that separates No Kill shelters from ordinary shelters is that No Kill treats the treatables. Sometimes treatment is simple, but sometimes it is costly. Much or all of this expense can be offset with donations, though. There are lots of people willing to help save a parvo puppy or get a wheelchair for a paraplegic animal if the shelter lets them know of the need. Public-private partnerships where the private entity pulls sick animals from the shelter and fundraises to treat them is one effective way to deal with veterinary costs. If a city or county has been underspending on animal sheltering, sometimes everyone involved will just have to face that fact. If the shelter building is in a bad location, or is old, poorly designed, or too small, then plans will need to be made to build a new shelter. Non-profits that have a contract to operate a municipal shelter seem to have an easier time with such projects. I have not run figures on this, but my impression is that non-profits that are actively working in the community are far better at fundraising than non-profits that are set up specifically to raise money for a municipal shelter. In some places, voters have approved special millages or other permanent funding for shelters. Most households these days have pets, and anyone who has a pet is happy to know that there is a caring, safe system in place in case their animal ever gets lost or if for some reason they cannot care for it any longer. They are willing to contribute for that. It is something of a false equivalency to compare a No Kill shelter to a traditional, high-kill shelter solely in terms of cost, because the No Kill shelter provides more value to the community. Even though a head-to-head comparison on costs does not give a true picture of the value of a No Kill shelter, No Kill can often win such a cost comparison. Greater efficiencies from No Kill programs, donations, volunteer work, fostering, and even voter-approved taxes can entirely offset any increased costs due to a transition to No Kill. And just because a shelter spends $500,000 more per year, say, after a transition to No Kill does not mean that the extra money is coming out of existing city funds. If the shelter receives $1,000,000 more in cash or in-kind support, then the jurisdiction will actually have a net savings from the switch to No Kill. In fact, No Kill is something of a marker for smart city government that is able to leverage the private sector to provide an important amenity to its citizens. As a recent Mayors Leadership Survey demonstrated, 5 out of 10 of the most admired cities in the United States are No Kill, and the other 5 have shelter systems that are much better than average or are transitioning to No Kill. No Kill is a sign of good governance as much as it is a sign of good sheltering.

[NOTE: The Worth Watching category lists communities whose animal shelter systems are doing substantially better than average, but have not reported a sustained (for one year or more) 90%+ live release rate. These communities are not counted in the running total of 90%+ communities. For more about the Worth Watching category, see the Worth Watching page link in the blog’s header.] St. Paul, Minnesota (population 295,000) lies alongside the city of Minneapolis (population 400,000), and the two are known as the Twin Cities. The Twin Cities metro area has 3.8 million people. St. Paul has a municipal department that operates the city’s Animal Control Center (ACC). Molly Lunaris took over as director of the ACC in the fall of 2013. I spoke to her yesterday about the ACC, and she sent me statistics from 2013 and 2014. She told me that the ACC accepts owner surrenders as well as strays, and the only requirement is that a person surrendering an animal must be a St. Paul resident. In 2013 the ACC’s live release rate for the year was 61%. So far in 2014 it has improved substantially, with an 81% live release rate through September. The shelter offers owner-requested euthanasia, and with owner-requested euthanasia and deaths in shelter care counted as part of euthanasias, the live release rate is 74% so far in 2014. The ACC does very few adoptions, and returns most of its animals to their owners or transfers them to approved 501(c)(3) rescues. Their intake is quite small relative to the city’s population (1541 dogs and cats in 2013, which is 5 per 1000 people). St. Paul is one of those situations where the city shelter’s performance is perhaps better than it looks on paper, for a couple of reasons. First, they may be receiving a higher proportion of the city’s hard-to-place animals, because they have a large non-profit in the city that also does intake. The private Animal Humane Society, which describes itself as “open admission,” has several locations including one in St. Paul. According to their website they take in owner surrenders and some strays. Often in a situation like this with a large private shelter doing intake, the city shelter winds up with a higher percentage of problem cases (such as seizures and hoarding cases) simply because they are the organization that gets the animal control calls. The second reason that the ACC’s performance may be better than it looks on paper is that the shelter is doing several things to divert intake. For instance, animal control officers are following the latest recommendations of No Kill shelter experts by not picking up stray cats unless they need help. The ACC also makes efforts to return animals in the  field, which can reduce intake. I do not have combined numbers for the ACC and the Animal Humane Society, but it look as though their combined live release rate would be about 85% so far in 2014. With kitten season finished, it’s possible that the combined live release rate could reach 90% for 2014 as a whole.

Grosse Ile Township consists of a large island and several smaller islands adjacent to Detroit. The area has about 10,000 residents. The Animals’ Island League Shelter (T.A.I.L.S.) is a private non-profit that partners with the township for animal sheltering. The shelter’s website states: “Although the Animal Shelter is owned and operated by the Township, we, as stewards of the Grosse Ile Animal Shelter, are dedicated to providing the additional financial support needed to make our homeless animal friends happy, healthy, and adoptable.” The shelter’s website describes its operations as follows: “The Grosse Ile Animal Shelter houses stray animals picked up by Animal Control and those turned in by Grosse Ile residents only. Stray animals must be picked up by Animal Control at your residence or the location where the stray animal was found. We are not able to house surrendered animals from other communities.” The website does not mention any restriction on owner surrenders other than community residency. Michigan shelters report their statistics to the state. In 2010, the shelter reported a live release rate of 94%, and in 2011 it reported 91%. The reported live release rate improved to 95% in 2012. Grosse Ile, MI, is listed in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

“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.

Colorado is one of the states that require animal shelters to report their statistics to the state. The reporting form is pretty detailed and, although it’s not perfect, it elicits a lot of information. I posted last year on Colorado’s statewide statistics for 2012, which showed a consolidated live release rate of 85.5%. In this post I’ll take a look at Colorado’s statewide statistics for 2013. INTAKE Total intake of dogs and cats in Colorado shelters in 2013 was up slightly, at 168,841 as compared to 159,183 in 2012. Dogs were 101,771 of this total, and cats were 67,070. The increase in dog intake was almost entirely due to transfers, including an increase in transfers into the state of 4766. Most of the increase in cat intake was also due to an increase in transfers from out of state, which more than doubled over 2012. The total intake of dogs and cats in 2013 was 32 animals per 1000 people, up slightly from 31 per 1000 people in 2012. Average shelter intake per 1000 people in the United States is estimated at anywhere from 15 to 30 animals per 1000 people. The fact that Colorado can do so well with a high intake is evidence that high intake is not an excuse for a high rate of killing. LIVE RELEASE RATE The consolidated live release rate for cats and dogs for all reporting shelters in Colorado for 2013 was 89%. This is remarkable for an entire state, and represents an improvement of more than 3% from 2012, even with the increased intake. The live release rate for dogs was 92% and for cats was 83%. All Colorado has to do to become a No Kill state is to implement some of the recommendations being made by many people around the country today as to handling of community cats. Colorado shelters do not report as a coalition, and so there might be some double counting of live releases in the “in state” transfer category. Most of the in-state transfers probably go to non-reporting rescues, though, and so to the extent that this is a source of error at all it would be a very small one. In fact, even if we assume that all in-state transfers went to other reporting organizations, the live release rate is reduced only 1 percentage point, to 88%. If the number of dogs and cats who died in shelter care are included with euthanasias in calculating the live release rate, it drops 1 percentage point. Shelters can include owner-requested euthanasias in the “Other” live-disposition category in Colorado, so it is not possible to break them out. ADOPTIONS One of the notable things about Colorado’s 2012 data was how well the state as a whole was doing with adoptions. That trend continued in 2013, with Colorado shelters reporting that 87,223 dogs and cats were adopted. This was an adoption rate of 17 animals per 1000 people, a slight increase over 2012’s rate of 16 per 1000 people. RETURN-TO-OWNER Colorado shelters returned 64% of the stray dogs they impounded to their owners, an improvement over the 59% figure for 2012. Among cats, 25% of strays were returned either to an owner or a colony. This is a high rate for cats compared to the nation as a whole, but if Colorado could increase this rate by doing more shelter-neuter-return it would become a No Kill state. BREED-SPECIFIC LEGISLATION Colorado has a state law prohibiting breed-specific legislation, but the law has an exception for local breed-specific ordinances that were in existence at the time the law was passed. The state’s largest city, Denver, still has one of these “grandfathered” pit-bull bans. Several small cities and towns in the state still have such ordinances as well.