Fluvanna County is located in the Shenandoah area of Virginia, southeast of Charlottesville. It has a population of 26,000 people. A private organization, the Fluvanna SPCA, has contracted with the county for animal services, and it accepts strays from the county under that contract. I called the shelter to ask about its owner surrender policy, and was told that the shelter accepts owner surrenders with a fee and on a “space available” basis. The Fluvanna SPCA reported a 93% live release rate in 2011, a 94% rate in 2012, and a 97% rate in 2013. The Virginia state database from which these statistics are taken does not break out owner-requested euthanasia. When animals who died or were lost in shelter care are counted in with euthanasias, the shelter’s live release rate was 91% for 2012 and 93% for 2013. The shelter’s intake has been trending down, from 1169 in 2011 to 1058 in 2012 and 919 in 2013. In its February 2013 newsletter, the shelter discusses how it uses donations for treating and rehabilitating animals who come to them with problems: “We depend on community support to provide shelter, medical treatment, and adoption services to these animals in need. Because of your generous donations, we were able to beat our annual campaign goal of $100,000 and raise over $124,000! With this amount, we are able to treat life-threatening illnesses like heartworm and tumors and injuries like broken bones and wounds so that every healthy or treatable pet has a second chance for a good life.” The Winter 2014 newsletter reports that this year marks the SPCA’s 25-year anniversary. The shelter’s executive director recounts how the founders started the SPCA in an old mule shed. The director noted that in the previous 18 months one in every six animals taken in was returned to its owner, the shelter has started microchipping all adopted dogs and cats, and they now have enrichment programs for dogs and cats. Fluvanna County, Virginia, was originally listed by this blog on May 1, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

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.

The reaction to my August 2nd blog post about the Association of Shelter Veterinarians (ASV) draft position statement on “The Use of ‘No-Kill’ Terminology” has unsurprisingly centered on what many people, myself included, feel is a hijacking of the concept of “capacity for care.” The draft position paper says “euthanasia of healthy and treatable companion animals is sometimes utilized in order to maintain a shelter’s capacity for humane care.” To those of us who care about shelter lifesaving, the concept of capacity for care is not an excuse for killing – instead, it means that animal shelters should take action to ensure that they are a “shelter” to the animals they take in, not just a way-station on the trip to the landfill. In the old days, traditional animal shelters took the view that they were simply passive recipients of whatever animals came in the door, and that they had no choice but to kill when they ran out of time or space. That concept developed back in the bad times when we really did have a pet overpopulation problem in the United States. In the 1970s, animal shelters took in 5 times as many animals per capita as they do now, and there were large numbers of homeless dogs and cats in the environment who never came into the shelters at all. The tragedy of pet overpopulation overwhelmed animal shelters, and created a culture of passivity and killing in the face of the onslaught of homeless animals. Fortunately, there were leaders in the 1970s like Phyllis Wright, who figured out that the way to fix the problem was to fix the pets. She and others started a massive spay-neuter campaign. The turning point came when private veterinarians signed on and began recommending spay-neuter to their clients in the early 1970s. The number of animals coming into animal shelters cratered. In the 1990s when veterinarians began doing pediatric spay-neuter and volunteering their time for TNR, shelter intake plummeted again. By the year 2000, the great majority of communities in the United States had almost no feral or truly stray dogs, and in many communities the numbers of feral cats were stable or declining. It was a different world. This different world was what allowed No Kill to take off as a movement, starting in 1989 with Ed Duvin’s publication of his ground-breaking essay “In the Name of Mercy,” and with Richard Avanzino setting in motion his plan for making San Francisco No Kill. Since then, shelters nationwide have gone from killing some 90% of intake circa 1975 to killing 40% or less today. With shortages of dogs today in many areas, and the new Million Cat Challenge paradigms for community cats, there is no reason why that 40% cannot shrink to the 10-20% range in the next 5 years. We can, within the next few years, be a country where all healthy and treatable shelter animals are saved. This is not a crazy, visionary idea. It is something that has been happening, and is happening, and anyone who does not see it simply hasn’t been paying attention. Every credible national organization, including Maddie’s Fund, Best Friends, the ASPCA, and the HSUS, would agree with what I’ve said here about what has happened up until now. So, what does all this have to do with the draft ASV statement on No Kill terminology? Notice that veterinarians had a huge role to play in getting from the 90% average shelter kill rate of the 1970s to the 40% rate today. It was private veterinarians who guaranteed the spectacular success of the spay-neuter campaign of the 1970s and 1980s, by beginning to recommend routine spaying and neutering to their clients. It was veterinarians who perfected pediatric spaying and neutering and began to recommend it in the 1990s. It was veterinarians who volunteered their time for TNR efforts, or did TNR at cost, beginning in the 1990s. It was veterinarians who started the specialty of shelter medicine in 1999, and who created the ASV and won acceptance for shelter medicine as a specialty in an amazingly short time. It is veterinarians who have been critical in the remaking of the animal shelter, transforming it from the concrete-block death warehouse next to the town dump to the “summer camp” for dogs and cats that is a bright and welcoming community center of today. It was veterinarians who created the most innovative lifesaving effort of the last few years, the Million Cat Challenge. And finally, it was veterinarians, specifically shelter veterinarians who are members of the ASV, who perfected “capacity for care” programs that allow shelters to measure and control intake so that killing of healthy and treatable animals is unnecessary. For all these reasons, I was stunned when I saw the ASV draft on No Kill terminology a few days ago. I felt like I had been yanked back into the 1970s, when the only thing shelter workers could do was work hard on spay-neuter and hope that the future would be better. I felt that there must be some mistake – that the draft was just a product of carelessness and that the drafters could not possibly have really intended to say what they had said. Not the ASV. Not the group of veterinarians, more than all others, who are leading the charge for lifesaving! Surely they could not have meant to take the term “capacity for care,” which stands for a shelter’s power to control its destiny by managing its intake, and twist that life-affirming term back into the mold of the old, hopeless, “we are helpless victims of circumstance who have to kill for time and space.” I have heard from people who do not believe that this draft was just a careless mistake. They think that there is a faction within the ASV that still believes that shelters are helpless victims when it comes to their intake, and that shelters cannot take effective steps to manage intake and length of stay. In other words, that there is a deliberate effort to co-opt and warp the term “capacity for care” and use it as an excuse for killing. The ASV is allowing comment on this document until August 15th. A person from the ASV committee replied to my August 2nd blog post, so they are on notice of the issues. If the draft was just a horrible, careless mistake, then they have had that pointed out to them. Now we will have to wait to see what they do. ASV – please do not ruin the reputation for caring about lifesaving that so many of your members have painstakingly built up by their life’s work. Please do not undermine the phenomenally successful Million Cat Challenge by co-opting one of the terms that is central to its program – capacity for care – and turning it into an excuse for killing rather than a program for life. Please do not throw a wrench into the work of saving shelter animals by offering an excuse for shelters that still take a passive approach. Tear up that draft, and write one that reflects what your best and most creative members are doing. We will all be waiting and hoping that you hear us. NOTE: Readers, please review the blog’s Comments Policy (in the “Contact” tab) before submitting comments. I appreciate and welcome comments, but will not approve comments that do not comply with the policy.

Tazewell County, Virginia, is in the Appalachian mountains in the far southwestern part of the state. Its median household income is very low at less than $31,000. In 2015 the Tazewell County animal shelter had an approximately 50% live release rate, with an intake of about 2000 animals. Now, in the first three months of 2016, the live release rate has been over 90%. How did this transformation happen? A big part of it was a new shelter director. The current director of the Tazewell County shelter, Ginny Dawson, started in November of 2015. She is largely self-educated about shelter management. Before taking over as director she had been a county employee for several years. She studied new methods of sheltering and talked to lots of people for ideas. She remembers reading about managed admission on the ASPCA site, for example. Whenever she thought an idea made sense she would try to find out more about it. The staff who worked with the previous shelter manager decided for various reasons to leave the shelter when he left in 2015, so Dawson and her supervisor were able to hire a new staff of three people. They looked for people with experience working with animals, but compassion for animals was “absolutely” a requirement. Dawson noted that you can teach best practices, but not compassion. Soon after Dawson started as director they made Saturday an adoption-only day so that they could concentrate on adoptions and not intake. They take animals who are ready for adoption to an offsite location where they will get more exposure. Another major initiative was managed admission. People who want to surrender animals are asked if there is anything the shelter can do to help them keep their pets. If not, shelter staff help them explore whether there are other possibilities for rehoming instead of surrender. They explain to people that the county shelter is open admission, with a limited amount of space. They have found that most people are very willing to delay surrender for a few days if the shelter is full, and some people are able to find a new home for their animal themselves. Shelter staff have increased their use of social media for adoption promotion and for finding owners of lost pets. They started posting dogs and cats to Facebook immediately, without waiting for the stray-hold period to expire, to try to reunite animals with owners as quickly as possible. They began to work more with rescues, which Dawson describes as crucial for their success. The Humane Society of Tazewell County works closely with the shelter and helps it in many ways, including transports. They have regular transports that go to the Pennsylvania SPCA, with funding from ASPCA, and the Richmond SPCA has also welcomed transfers from the shelter. Another group in the county, Tazewell ARC, has done transports as well as outreach to county officials. A consulting organization, Target Zero, did a presentation to interested stakeholders in January, and Dawson and the other attendees are very interested in their program. Dawson put some of their ideas into practice immediately, including use of an owner surrender form to gather more information about intakes. A simple thing, but one that had not been done previously. Target Zero did a full assessment of the shelter earlier this month, and the county is considering whether to apply for a fellowship with them. Another suggestion Target Zero made was for the shelter to sign up with the Million Cat Challenge and start implementing their community cat initiatives, including return-to-field. Dawson had heard of the Million Cat Challenge before Target Zero’s involvement, but the suggestion gave them the push they needed to sign up. Implementing the Challenge initiatives will be done in several steps, including coordinating spay-neuter efforts with local clinics and a strengthened managed admissions program. Dawson’s goals for the future are to sustain the progress they have made and continue to improve. The county is renovating a building for a new shelter, which should help them in many ways, including disease control. High live release rates are harder to maintain during the spring and summer “kitten season” months, but Dawson hopes to weather the season with the new programs they have in place. In just the last few years many new and effective programs have been added to the shelter operations toolbox, including managed admission, return-to-field, and transports. Today several organizations have extensive information online at no charge. Maddie’s Fund has webinars on demand that cover many aspects of shelter management. Best Friends Animal Society has presentations from its most recent conference, including “how we did it” playbooks from several successful communities. Consultants can help shelters with every aspect of a transition, including figuring out how to apply programs to their particular circumstances and how to finance changes. Tazewell County consulted with Target Zero, but there are other organizations, such as Humane Network, that also offer consultations. The Tazewell County shelter is still facing some hurdles, but the odds for them to have a 90% or higher live release rate in 2016 look good. Dawson has made use of new ideas and the help that is available, including support from the community, and has turned her shelter around quickly.

The Bitterroot Valley is located near the western border of Montana and follows the Bitterroot River from Missoula south to the Idaho border. Ravalli County (population 40,000) is in the valley. Towns in the area include Hamilton (the county seat, population 4300) and Stevensville (1800). Stray animal and owner surrender sheltering is provided in Ravalli County, Hamilton and Stevensville by the Bitter Root Humane Association (BRHA). A shelter official told me in a telephone conversation that BRHA has no conditions on owner surrenders and that surrenders are accepted upon presentation. I was also told that BRHA takes in some transfers from rescues and other shelters when they need help. BRHA refers most feral cats to a local TNR program. BRHA has a whole suite of enrichment programs for dogs and cats during their stay at the shelter. The programs for dogs include play groups and one-on-one training. Cats have colony housing. Before leaving the shelter to go home with an adopter, animals are spayed or neutered and microchipped. BRHA has a volunteer corp that helps with humane education and offsite adoptions. The Ravalli County commission recently decided that initial intake of stray dogs would be by a local veterinarian. The ultimate responsibility for stray dogs will still be assumed by BRHA, though, because the veterinarian said she will not euthanize strays who are not reclaimed or adopted and instead may have to take them to BRHA for sheltering. A shelter official sent me BRHA’s statistics for 2012. They took in 1048 animals in 2012, which is an intake of 26 per 1000 population. Their live release rate was 96%. Owner-requested euthanasia is not done unless medically indicated, and is counted with other euthanasias. Ravalli County, MT, is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

Aspen is a well known ski resort in Colorado. It is a small town, with a permanent population of fewer than 7000 people. Aspen is the county seat of Pitkin County, which has a population of around 15,000. The county handles animal control. Animal sheltering is provided by the Aspen Animal Shelter (AAS), which has an agreement with the city and county to provide “a sanctuary for dogs, cats and other domestic animals found within county borders until owners can be found.” It is a private organization primarily supported by a boarding kennel. The director describes the shelter as having “more demand than we have supply,” and thus the shelter frequently takes in animals from outside of its service area. The AAS, under the name “Aspen/Pitkin County Animal Control and Shelter,” reported a 98% live release rate in 2010 (scroll down to pages 5-6 in the link), and a 100% live release rate in 2011 (pages 3-4 in the link). The shelter did not report any owner-requested euthanasias in 2011, and the 2011 live release rate rounds to 100% even with animals who died in shelter care counted as euthanasias. The shelter reports to Maddie’s Fund as part of the Northwestern Colorado Coalition, which achieved a 97% live release rate in 2010 for the coalition as a whole (see pages 1-2 in the link), and 98% live release rate in 2011 (97% with owner-requested euthanasia and died/lost counted in with euthanasias). The AAS reported to the state of Colorado in 2012 that its total intake for the year was 346 animals. The live release rate was 100%, and the shelter did not report any animals as died in shelter care or in the “other” category. Therefore, its modified live release rate was also 100%. Another organization in Aspen, the Lucky Day Animal Rescue of Colorado, reports to the state. This rescue took in 12 owner surrendered dogs and 3 owner surrendered cats in 2012, as well as 76 transferred dogs, 57 of them from out of state. They too reported a 100% live release rate. In 2013, AAS took in 400 animals and had  a live release rate of 98%. The live release rate was 95% if the animals who died in shelter care are included with euthanasias. Lucky Day took in 76 dogs and cats, with a 100% live release rate. Aspen and Pitkin County, CO, were originally listed by this blog on April 26, 2013, based on their 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

As everyone in animal sheltering and rescue knows, there is a very complicated debate swirling around the issue of whether outdoor cats are significant predators on wild birds. The No Kill movement is fortunate to have Peter Wolf, who writes the blog Vox Felina, to help elucidate the scientific issues in this debate. Although the debate is complicated, one thing is certainly true, and that is that if bird populations are flourishing then cat predation cannot be all that terrible. A recently published book indicates that in at least one important environment – green suburbs – birds are flourishing in spite of the presence of lots of cats. The book is Welcome to Subirdia, by John M. Marzluff, who is a professor of wildlife at the University of Washington. Since I’m not an expert on bird ecology, I’m relying on a review of the book that appeared in the November 20, 2014, issue of The New York Review of Books. The review is “It’s Time to Live With the Birds,” by Robert O. Paxton, who is an emeritus professor of social sciences at Columbia and a former president of the Linnaean Society of New York. The surprising thing about suburbs is that they not only have lots of birds but they have lots of bird species. One thing that concerns conservationists is when a few species of birds – such as starlings, house sparrows, and pigeons – predominate. That is not true in the suburbs, and one example from Marzluff’s book that Paxton cites is the finding that Central Park in the heart of New York City has a greater number of bird species than Yellowstone. Not all suburbs qualify as suitable habitat for a diverse bird population. Marzluff found that a suburb needs to have about 30% of its landscape planted in natural vegetation. It is actually the variety of habitat, including parks, trees, gardens, ponds, and even lawns (if they are messy), that allows such a variety of bird species to flourish. Suburbia, unlike urban cores or farms, supports diversity of bird species by its diversity of micro-habitats. Marzluff’s thesis is much more complex than this short summary suggests, and neither he nor Paxton sees the suburban habitat as a solution to the great extinction going on. The interesting thing about his thesis for the bird-cat debate, though, is simply the fact that birds can flourish in an environment that is full of cats as long as the environment otherwise meets the birds’ needs for food, shelter, and a place to raise their young. One of Marzluff’s recommendations for encouraging bird numbers is to keep cats indoors. That may be a good recommendation, but the fact is that we’ve had cats in the United States at least since the early immigrants came over from Europe, and there has never yet been a time when everyone kept their cats indoors. And feral cats, of course, do not live in suburban houses. The recommendation is also a bit puzzling in the face of Marzluff’s own finding that birds are flourishing in a cat-rich environment. If suburbs have a greater variety of bird species than our large national parks, then it is very hard to argue that suburban cats are bad for bird conservation.

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 of Brush, which is located in Morgan County, has 5500 people. Fort Morgan 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 instituted new medical protocols since she took over in 2012. In 2013, the shelter took in 895 animals, with a 97% live release rate. The live release rate was 93% if all non-live dispositions are counted as euthanasias. The city of Brush 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 was not listed as a 90% community in 2012 because the Brush Animal Shelter reported killing 56 of the 111 cats they took in during 2012. In 2013, their intake was 238 animals, with a 91% live release rate. The live release rate is unchanged if all non-live dispositions are counted as euthanasias. I’m adding the city of Brush to the right sidebar based on its reported outcomes in 2013. Fort Morgan, CO, was originally listed by this blog on November 9, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Washington, DC, the nation’s capital, had a population of 602,000 at the 2010 census and is growing rapidly. The city is surrounded by densely populated urban areas in Maryland and Virginia, and the metropolitan area has a population of 5,700,000. The Washington Humane Society (WHS) is an animal welfare agency chartered by Congress that has been in existence since 1870. WHS provides animal control and animal sheltering for the district. The shelter states on its website that “[t]he Animal Control Facility primarily houses dogs, cats, and pocket pets, but never turns any animal away.” It describes itself as “the open access shelter in the nation’s capital.” WHS has a comprehensive set of programs, including a Behavior and Learning Center that provides training and play groups for shelter dogs and answers questions from the public, a community cat program that provides TNR, an affordable, high-volume spay-neuter center, a Safe Haven program for pets who are victims of domestic violence or abuse,  and a task force for lost and found animals. This 2013 report provides more information on WHS intake and programs. Zenit Chughtai, a communications specialist with WHS, told the media that WHS had a live release rate of 87% in 2014. Intake was up slightly at 10,540 animals, as compared to 10,474 in 2013. Chughtai credited the shelter’s adoption promotions, including a “Petzilla: Adopt a Cuddle Monster” promotion last May, for the increase in their live release rate. WHS reported a live release rate of 80%, including wildlife, in 2013, so the shelter’s step up to 87% is significant. In an article that appeared in January 2014, a shelter spokesman attributed the shelter’s improvement in recent years to several factors, including new adoption policies, off-site adoption events, discounted and free adoptions, an expanded foster program, the community cat program, and a program to work with landlords. He also credited a new perception on the part of the public about the shelter, noting that in the past the shelter had been seen as “a dark, dreary place where animals come to die.” In addition to WHS, the District of Columbia is home to the Washington Animal Rescue League (WARL), which was founded in 1914. WARL has a full-service veterinary clinic that provides discounted care for the pets of income-qualified residents of the district and 14 surrounding counties. WARL also offers discounted spaying and neutering regardless of the owner’s income or residence. WARL reported an 89% live release rate for 2012 with an intake of 1973 dogs and cats and 89% for 2013 with intake of 2343. Washington, D.C., is counted in the Running Totals as an 80%-90% community.

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.

Until recent years, public animal shelter buildings were designed with the idea that a high percentage of the dogs and cats taken in would be killed. In a traditional, high-kill shelter the owner surrenders were often killed immediately, and unclaimed stray-hold animals were killed after a few days. Many traditional shelters made a small number of select animals available for adoption, but even those animals were killed if they did not get adopted quickly. Under such circumstances, the thinking was that the health and comfort of the animals was not a big concern because they would not be in the shelter for long. Efficiency was more important in shelter design than concern for the animals. That meant locating the shelter near a landfill and building a big loading dock in the back to make it as easy as possible to load dead animals and haul them away. In fact, this blog’s title, “Out the Front Door,” is taken from a phrase that Rich Avanzino used in the San Francisco SPCA’s 1995 Adoption Pact brochure. The brochure characterized No Kill in San Francisco as a change from animals being “quietly euthanized and taken out the back door” to “going out the front door” into loving homes. As the mission of animal shelters changed, their design began to change too. Sheltering animals with the purpose of having them leave the shelter alive required much more attention to disease control. This meant that animals could no longer be packed together into small spaces, and that quarantine areas were needed. Air exchange became very important. In old-fashioned shelters cats were often kept in banks of small cages near or even in sight of the dog runs, something that could not be tolerated in a modern shelter. Cleaning methods included hosing down runs with dogs in them, or housing animals on grates, both of which are unacceptable in a well-designed building. The old style of shelter building made it very difficult to provide a good customer experience. All these defects of traditional shelter buildings had to be changed in shelters built for No Kill. Today, No Kill shelter design has become a thing. The cost of a new shelter can be substantial – even relatively small shelters can cost in the $4-5 million range. But these costs can frequently be offset, and private humane societies in particular have been extremely successful at fund-raising for new shelters. It is more challenging to persuade municipalities to invest in a new shelter, since cities and counties today have many infrastructure needs. It isn’t hopeless, though. One possible answer for a city or county is to have a non-profit organization raise money to turn over to the local government for a new shelter. Another would be a ballot measure to approve a millage earmarked for a new shelter. For shelter operators that cannot afford a new building and where fund-raising is not practical (for example, if the city or county owns the land and the building and is not interested in building a new shelter) a lot can be done to cheaply retrofit the existing building. An outdoor space can be landscaped as an area for adopters to get to know dogs or to see how their current dog gets along with a potential new family member. The entry to the shelter can be expanded and transformed from institutional to welcoming. A shelter I visited last week opened up one wall in the entry so that visitors can see into the operations area and be quickly greeted. In the opposite wall a large window was added to give a view into a cat playroom, which had been converted from storage closets. One area where retrofitting an old shelter seems to fail in many cases is with “grey area” animals. At around an 80% live release rate, the difficulty level in saving animals seems to ratchet up. As I’ve heard from more than one shelter director, after 80% the job of getting to No Kill can get exponentially harder because the animals remaining to be saved are ones that have serious issues. The goal of No Kill is to save all healthy and treatable animals. What seems to happen around the 80% or 85% mark is that the answer to whether a remaining animal is treatable may be “yes, but . . . .” These animals may need extensive rehabilitation for medical or behavioral issues, or need a special home. Grey-area animals can include those who are more susceptible to infections, such as young kittens and animals with skin disease. The ideal thing is to get those animals out of the shelter and into foster homes as quickly as possible, but fosters are not always available. Even with retrofitting it can be very hard to save those animals in an old-fashioned shelter. In such cases a modern shelter designed with disease control in mind can be a lifesaver. This was the result with the Lynchburg Humane Society when they built their new shelter (see photo above). Dog behavior cases are another group of grey-area animals who are hard to accommodate in an old, poorly designed shelter building. A crowded, older shelter may have to co-house dogs, and some dogs cannot tolerate this. Even if the shelter has enough space to allow a dog to have its own run, the dog may still deteriorate from stress and noise. A dog that might have been just fine behaviorally in a modern shelter may become aggressive or a stressed-out basket case in the environment of an old-fashioned shelter. People can be amazingly creative in making an old shelter building work in the world of modern sheltering, but there are limits to retrofitting. Since the purpose of animal shelters has changed so dramatically in the last 25 years, one of the goals of No Kill should be making sure that the local shelter building is reformed along with the mission. Shelter animals deserve safe, humane housing while they wait for placement. And a new shelter building can be the capstone of a community’s effort to go No Kill. A new shelter building can symbolize, in bricks and mortar, the community’s commitment to the type of sheltering that sends animals out the front door alive, healthy, and happy.

Cape May County is a coastal resort area on the southern tip of New Jersey. It has almost 100,000 permanent residents, but the population increases greatly during vacation season. It has several townships (Lower (population 23,000), Middle (19,000), Upper (12,000), and Dennis (6000)) and the city of Wildwood (5000) as well as several smaller cities and boroughs. The county seat is in Middle Township. Ocean City (population 12,000) is at the county’s northern border. Animal control and sheltering for the entire county, with the exception of Ocean City, is provided by the municipal Cape May County Animal Shelter and Adoption Center (CMCAS). CMCAS also accepts owner surrenders from county residents, with an appointment and a small fee. In an interview in January 2011, shelter director Judy Davies reported that CMCAS had euthanized 8 percent of its dogs and 10 percent of its cats in 2010, compared to rates as high as 75% in previous years. The shelter reported a 7.5% euthanasia rate in 2011. The shelter does not post its statistics online, but Davies sent me the shelter’s statistics for 2012, which show a 91% live release rate with intake of 1157 dogs and cats. The statistics do not record any owner-requested euthanasias or animals who died or were lost in shelter care. The 2013 statistics reported by the shelter to the state of New Jersey show a save rate of 92%, with an intake of 1094 animals. A big part of the county’s success is its trap-neuter-return program for feral cats, which was instituted in 2001 and is reported to have reduced the number of feral cat complaints by 80%. A group called the Animal Alliance of Cape May County holds low-cost TNR clinics. County leaders showed their dedication to the program in 2007 and 2008 when they negotiated compromise wildlife conservation rules that allowed the program to continue. CMCAS director Judy Davies noted in the 2011 interview that the county’s intake is considerably lower than neighboring counties. The TNR program is certainly a factor in this lower intake, but Davies also attributed it to the shelter’s pet retention programs: “What we’re doing a lot more of is working with the owners of dogs. Someone might want to relinquish the dog to the shelter because it requires vet care they can’t afford or they just can’t afford the animal because of the economy. We intervene and try to help people.” There are several private organizations that are very active in Cape May County, including the Paws & Claws Society (PACS), Beacon Animal Rescue (BAR),  Animal Outreach of Cape May County, and the Animal Welfare Society of Cape May County. PACS has a suite of programs including pet retention and adoption programs. The Humane Society of Ocean City (HSOC) provides animal control and sheltering for Ocean City, and it has a high live release rate. I will report on Ocean City in a separate article. Cape May County was originally listed by this blog on April 26, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.