OUT THE FRONT DOOR

[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.

The Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter (WCRAS), located in Texas just north of Austin, provides animal sheltering services for Williamson County (population 423,000) and all of the communities within the county except for Georgetown and Taylor. WCRAS has contracts with four of the communities: Round Rock (population 100,000), Cedar Park (population 54,000), Leander, (population 27,000), and Hutto (population 15,000). In addition to taking in strays picked up by animal control, the shelter accepts owner surrenders by appointment, with a small fee. WCRAS provides links on its home page for its reports going back to 2008. WCRAS annual reports are some of the best I’ve seen. They clearly state what type of shelter WCRAS is and what it does, and the communities it serves. They go into detail about animal statistics, including statistics that are not usually reported such as length of stay. They have graphs comparing statistical categories going back several years, so you can see how the shelter has been doing over time. The reports also have lots of information about shelter finances. WCRAS, like many No Kill organizations, has been struggling with an outdated shelter building. The county took steps in fiscal year 2013-2014 to determine the feasibility of remodeling and expanding the shelter. For fiscal year 2013-2014, intake of all animals including wildlife was 6694. Dog and cat intake was 6478. The live release rate was 96% for dogs and cats. The modified live release rate, including animals who died or were lost in shelter care, was 93%. WCRAS did not report any owner-requested euthanasias. Foster care numbers were very high, with 1836 animals going into foster care during the fiscal year. Average length of stay at the shelter was 11.6 days for dogs and 14.6 days for cats. The shelter’s yearly intake since 2007-2008 has ranged from a low of 6003 to a high of 7763. The shelter takes in about 19 animals per 1000 people per year. Donations to the shelter have gone up from $17,980.67 in 2007-2008 to $135,204.18 in 2013-2014. The live release rates for cats and dogs separately both went over 90% in fiscal year 2011-2012 and have remained there ever since. The modified live release rate for dogs has also been over 90% since 2011-2012. Fiscal year 2013-2014 was the first year that the modified live release rate for cats went over 90%. Williamson County, Texas, was originally listed by this blog on April 15, 2013, based on its 2011-2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013-2014 statistics.

OK, so I’m exaggerating a bit. But now that I’ve got your attention, I’d like to talk about one easy step that would sharply improve save rates for typical shelters, and would free up lots of time and money that could be used to go the rest of the way to the 90% threshold and beyond. What is that one easy step? Stop bringing cats into the shelter unless (1) the shelter has room for them and can adopt them out, or (2) they are sick or injured. This sounds like a radical idea to some, but in fact the idea has been embraced by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the ASPCA, and Maddie’s Fund, among others. See this draft whitepaper, and this blog by Wayne Pacelle, the CEO of HSUS. The reasoning behind their recommendation is very simple — many “stray” cats have homes, but for various reasons their owners don’t think to look for them at a shelter until it’s too late and the cat has been adopted to a new home or, in many cases, killed. If cats are just left alone, they are much more likely to find their way home. Some people object to the idea of managing cat intake because they think that stray cats will overrun cities and towns unless they are rounded up by the local “shelter” and killed. Pacelle interviewed Dr. Kate Hurley and Dr. Jennifer Scarlett for his blog post, and Dr. Hurley explained that: “shelters have only been impacting a tiny fraction of the total population through euthanasia, not nearly enough to reduce the overall population size, not enough to protect public health, wildlife, reduce the cat population or serve any of the other goals we might have hoped to realize through this practice.” This article by Dr. Scarlett goes into more detail about cat populations, and shows that shelter impoundment and killing of cats barely makes a dent in cat populations. Since impoundment and killing of cats has negligible success at reducing cat populations, it is an exercise in futility to keep impounding them. Maddie’s Fund has created webcasts to show shelters how to implement modern techniques for managing cat intakes. Maddie’s Fund also has this FAQ to address concerns about the new protocols. Some might wonder how diverting cat intake would save money if the shelter has to implement an alternative program to manage intake. The answer is to recruit volunteers for things like pet retention counseling and trap-neuter-return (TNR). People love to volunteer for things that actually help animals instead of killing them. But even if a shelter for some reason could not set up a good volunteer program, that shelter can certainly manage its intake with less time and expense than it takes to impound cats, house them for the stray-hold period, and kill them. Let’s look at a couple of typical examples of how diverting cats from the shelter would affect the save rate. Let’s assume that 10% of a shelter’s current cat intake is sick or injured cats, and thus 90% of cat intake could be diverted. Let’s also assume that 5% of the sick or injured cats had to be euthanized and 5% recovered and were live releases. The Burlington County Animal Shelter in New Jersey is like many shelters in that it is doing pretty well already with dogs but is still killing lots of cats. The shelter took in over 5000 cats and dogs in 2012, and had an overall save rate of about 60%. The shelter’s save rate for dogs was around 90%, but the save rate for cats was less than 50%. If the shelter had diverted 90% of the cats and euthanized half of the remainder, the overall save rate would have shot up to about 85%. The time and money saved from sharply reducing intake could then be used to improve outcomes for the dogs and remaining cats, and the shelter could quickly reach 90% or more. As another example, let’s look at the city shelter in Tallahassee, Florida, which is a typical, high-kill shelter for both dogs and cats. The shelter has been running at about a 50% kill rate for years and has not improved in spite of repeated “plans” put forward by shelter management. In fact, the Tallahassee shelter is so bad that the ASPCA recently kicked the shelter out of its “partnership” program. Even a failing shelter like Tallahassee could substantially improve if it followed the recommendations of Maddie’s Fund and HSUS. Florida shelters are required by law to post their statistics, and here are the statistics for Tallahassee for 2012. The live release rate was reported as 53% for 2012. If the shelter had cut its cat intake by 90% and euthanized half of the remaining cats for illness or injury, the live release rate would have increased to 65%. Then the shelter could have used the time and money it saved to improve its disgraceful save rate for dogs and for the remaining cats. With major players like HSUS, Maddie’s Fund, and the ASPCA signing on to the idea that healthy cats should be diverted from the shelter, we could be approaching a tipping point on shelter policies toward cats. The thing I especially like about these new recommendations is that they could sharply raise performance even for dismal, hapless municipal shelters like the one in Tallahassee. But it won’t be easy to get shelters to buy in and change their ways, and the worst shelters will probably be the slowest to adapt, as they are in most things. As Dr. Scarlett said in her interview with Pacelle: “Making the shift to control shelter populations at the front door may be a huge cultural change for some communities. Leaders who decide this is the best solution for their community have to be ready to invest a lot of work and communication to get their staff’s buy-in, respond to the public’s concern, and be willing to work with local wildlife advocates. The good news is that results will be worth it.”

[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 in the blog’s subtitle. For more about the Worth Watching category, see the Worth Watching page link in the blog’s header.] Rabun County is located in the northeast corner of Georgia in a mountainous area. It is a very rural area, with a population of 16,000 people. The county seat and largest town is Clayton, with 2000 people. Up until 2012, Rabun County provided funding to the Boggs Mountain Humane Shelter for animal sheltering in the county. In July 2012, local news outlets published stories accusing the shelter director, Lowanda Kilby, of killing dogs after taking money from their owners on the promise that she would find new homes for them. The board fired Kilby and she was subsequently indicted on theft and other charges. The Boggs Mountain Humane Shelter board announced in August of 2012 that it could not continue to run the shelter due to a lack of donations. Shannon Conrad, a business owner in Rabun County, organized a new non-profit, Rabun Paws 4 Life (RP4L), and in October 2012 the county commissioners approved the new group to take over the shelter. RP4L had a grand opening on December 8, 2012. RP4L has been posting its statistics on its website every month since April 2013. (If the link to statistics on the RP4L website does not work for you, substitute the name of the month you want to see for “April” in the URL linked above.) The shelter reports a live release rate of over 90% in each month.

[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 in the blog’s subtitle. For more about the Worth Watching category, see the Worth Watching page link in the blog’s header.] Logan County, in northeastern Colorado, has 23,000 people. The county seat, Sterling, has a population of 18,000 people. The Logan County Humane Society (LCHS) is a private non-profit that provides animal control and sheltering for the city and, informally, for the county. I called the shelter and was told that owner surrenders are accepted on a space available basis, with immediate intake if it’s an emergency situation. In 2012, LCHS reported an intake of 468 animals, with a live release rate of 91%. If animals who died or were lost in shelter care are included with euthanasias, the live release rate was 87%. Although LCHS reported a live release rate above 90% for 2012, I’m listing the community as Worth Watching instead of in the right sidebar, because the shelter official I spoke with told me that LCHS might have a slightly lower live release rate in 2013. LCHS started a trap-neuter-return program in 2013, and the program started with a colony of cats that had more very sick members than most. Several of those cats were euthanized. I’ll check on Logan County again after the full 2013 numbers are in and perhaps will be able to add it to the right sidebar at that time.

The news is slow this week, so today’s post is on a subject I’ve been following for a while – the dysfunctional shelter situation in Augusta, Georgia. The Augusta Animal Shelter was in the local news this week when it reported that its shelter killing rate so far in 2015 is down 15% from the same period in 2014. That sounds good, until you read the rest of the story and see that so far this year the shelter has killed 1,912 pets and adopted out only 572. Why is the Augusta shelter so bad? A grand jury report released last January found that the shelter is “understaffed and undersized” and has an inadequate building in a poor location. The report also found that the “staff is doing an incredible job with what they have to work with.” The report found that the shelter’s 70% kill rate was due, among other things, to its location being hard to find and its starting salary being $19,500, which led to a lot of staff turnover. Median household income in Augusta is low – under $35,000 in 2013. Shelter intake appears to be very high. A page on the shelter’s website says the shelter takes in over 12,000 animals each year and returns only 550 to their owners. The website has a link to statistics, but it has been down when I’ve checked. The grand jury report said intake for the year was 10,000 in 2014. Augusta’s population is about 200,000, so if intake is 10,000 per year that is 50 pets per thousand people (PPTP), which is extremely high. The shelter accepts out-of-county surrenders for a small fee, which might be part of its intake problem. Lisa Floyd, who operates an organization called CSRA Life Saver that helps the shelter, says that the problem is too many animals. There are still places, mostly in the southeast, where there is a pet overpopulation problem, and it looks like Augusta might be one of those places. In my researches it seems like shelters with PPTP of 50 or above usually have to transport animals elsewhere for adoption while trying to reduce intake, if they are to get to No Kill. A claim of “too many animals” is often just an excuse for poor performance, but in the case of the Augusta shelter it appears to be simply a factual statement. The shelter lost its part-time veterinarian in 2014, and the city approved hiring a new veterinarian. No one applied for the job for months after the position was announced, and the shelter was without a veterinarian until a hire was announced a couple of months ago. The shelter’s advisory board has also had major upheavals in the last year. Is the high kill rate and general dysfunction the fault of shelter leadership? A story last year indicated that there was a lack of trust between rescues and shelter director Sharon Broady, and that it was costing animal lives. To Broady’s credit, though, it appears that since then she has been attempting to make improvements. The Augusta shelter is not exactly an attractive venue for shelter directors, any more than it is for veterinarians. Low wages, high staff turnover, and an inadequate and isolated shelter building is not a good combination for a city that wants to support excellent leadership. In looking at successful shelters over the years, there is usually one or more things that stick out that have made the community successful. It might be a great director who is so talented that he or she can overcome all obstacles. It might be a supportive and progressive community of people who spay and neuter their pets and who come to the shelter to get them when they stray. It might be city leaders who find enough money to support an attractive, modern, convenient shelter building that’s open on evenings and weekends. It might be a rescue group of volunteers who transport animals north. It might be a non-profit that takes over and does whatever the city shelter is failing to do. Augusta has some dedicated rescue groups, but that’s about it. Augusta’s combination of a cash-starved shelter, inadequate physical plant, extremely high intake, and low-income community presents a real challenge for No Kill. The city’s advantages are that residents are concerned about the shelter, local media regularly report on the situation, and shelter staff appear open to receiving help. So what could be done? In the last few years some of the big national organizations have been able to make an impact in communities by coming in from outside with one or more of three interventions – targeted spay-neuter, transports, and community cat programs. Augusta needs all three. The Augusta shelter has an adoption rate of about 6 or 7 per thousand people as far as I can tell from the fragmentary data. That is much less than No Kill communities achieve, but given the shelter’s circumstances I’m surprised it’s that high. It may be hard to increase that rate given the poor location of the shelter and the apparent lack of money to have adoption-friendly hours. I was not able to find any information on whether the city plans to take action on the grand jury report by building a new shelter in a better location or increasing funding to the shelter so that it can extend its hours. Short of that, the only way to get a high adoption rate would appear to be the private sector taking the animals out and marketing them locally in an effective way. The shelter has offsite adoptions, which may account for their recent increase in adoptions, but their main offsite venue appears to be the local pet store. Augusta could also use some help from consultants – although it is doubtful any money for consulting would be forthcoming and there may be constraints on the director’s power to change procedures. Just looking at the shelter’s website shows some things that need to be done, from stopping out-of-jursidiction intake to making the shelter’s hours more convenient to asking for appointments for owner surrenders. I think the Augusta situation is worth looking at because jurisdictions like Augusta are increasingly what the No Kill movement is facing. A lot of the low-hanging fruit in shelter improvement has already been picked. Today, communities where the live release rate is under 50% tend to have some serious systemic problems that may not be solvable simply by lobbying local government or firing the shelter director. Those communities may require people from outside to come in and provide resources, at least to get the shelter on its feet.

If a person walked up to a dog on the street and intentionally hit it with a tire iron in the face, breaking its nose and causing permanent damage, that person could be charged with animal cruelty in any state in the union. Depending on the circumstances of the case, it could easily be a felony charge. Yet dog breeders – including “hobby” breeders – do equivalent acts of cruelty every day, to millions of dogs every year, with no consequences. I’m talking about dog breeders who deliberately and intentionally breed to produce severe genetic deformities, with full knowledge that the animals they are creating will live pain-filled, compromised, and often short lives. One very common example of the type of deformity I’m talking about is brachycephalia. The word brachycephalia means “short head.” Brachycephalic dogs have a shortened skull and a short, often almost non-existent muzzle. This produces a look that many people think is cute. Some of the popular brachycephalic breeds are the Pug, Pekingese, French Bulldog, English Bulldog, Shih Tzu, Lhasa Apso, and Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Brachycephalia is also a problem in the breeding of cats, although mercifully less so than in the breeding of dogs. There are so many serious health problems created by brachycephalia that I hardly know where to start. The short skull means that the eyes don’t have enough room to sit normally in their sockets. This produces the protruding look that is considered cute, but it also makes the eyes more prone to pop out of their sockets, and it makes the eyes in general more likely to be injured because they have less bone around them. It gets worse. The changes to the brachycephalic dog’s nose and airway are what really makes their lives miserable. We all know that one of the main ways a dog experiences the world is through scent. The brachycephalic dog is much less able to enjoy this sensory experience because he hardly has any muzzle. The short muzzle also gravely affects the dog’s ability to control its body temperature. Dogs control their body temperature by panting to circulate air through their mouths. In the distorted mouth of the brachycephalic dog this air circulation is greatly reduced, with the consequence that the dog easily overheats. A mutt can run after a tennis ball on a summer day, jump up and catch it, and run back to his person. It is hard to imagine a fully brachycephalic dog being able to do this simple thing. Even if he could, he would quickly get overheated and have to stop. The deformities of the skull in the brachycephalic dog mean that the airway is narrowed and compromised, with all the structures that a normal dog has in its throat squished together in a smaller space. This narrowed airway means that brachycephalic dogs often struggle to breathe, sometimes resembling people with COPD. The brachycephalic dog has to work at breathing, which is supposed to be a natural function that the dog doesn’t even have to think about. The labored breathing of the brachycephalic dog can, over time, cause the larynx to collapse, obstructing the airway and causing severe respiratory distress or death. Laryngeal collapse can happen as early as 4 months of age in brachycephalic breeds. The deformed airway causes many secondary problems beyond the primary problem of breathing. Brachycephalic dogs are prone to sleep apnea. Their attempts to get enough oxygen by gulping air may lead to vomiting and regurgitation. Brachycephalic dogs are at risk every time they have anesthesia because the narrowed and compromised airway makes it more difficult to ensure a good oxygen supply both during and after surgery. The unavoidable manipulation of the airway during intubation, as well as the stress associated with surgery, can cause serious complications. Because the muzzles of brachycephalic dogs are so short, their teeth do not have room to grow normally. That means that these dogs often have severe dental problems. But because of the dangers of anesthesia it is difficult to treat their dental problems or even to do routine dental cleaning. Brachycephalic dogs differ in the extent of their symptoms. But even dogs that have fewer symptoms such as wheezing, gasping, and heat intolerance will still experience a greatly diminished quality of life, as they by definition do not experience life the way a normal dog does. In my opinion, deliberately breeding dogs with deformities this severe constitutes animal cruelty. Today we pride ourselves on thinking of our cats and dogs as family members. Pets are like children to many people. Imagine if there was a genetics-engineering company that offered parents an opportunity to make “cuter” children at the cost of compromising their health and their lives. Everyone would be horrified, and if anyone ever actually tried to do that they would be arrested and put in jail. The idea is so absurd that it is hard to even imagine. Yet dog breeders do the equivalent thing every time they breed one brachycephalic dog to another, and no one says a word. In fact, dog breeders have been working hard to make the problem even worse. In just the last 50 years the skull of the British bulldog, for example, has been radically shortened by selective breeding. One particularly gruesome result of the continued breeding for shortened heads is the greatly increased incidence of syringomyelia in brachycephalic dogs, particularly in the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. In these dogs the back of the skull has been so shortened by deliberate breeding that there is not enough room for the brain. The brain in affected dogs is squeezed and affects the flow of cerebrospinal fluid. The syndrome is perhaps best known for the intense pain that it causes its victims. It may progress to paralysis. By some estimates the problem is present in up to half of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. It is scary to think of the pain these dogs may be suffering even when they do not have overt symptoms of the disease.  What is wrong with people who deliberately breed these dogs? Brachycephalia may be the most obvious example of deliberate animal cruelty in dog breeding, but there are many other examples. The giant dog breeds have their own problems, including a greatly reduced life span. The dog’s circulatory system did not evolve to be able to support the height and weight of the giant breeds, and so their expected life span is barely half that of a normal dog. An Irish Wolfhound’s life expectancy is about 7 years, compared to 14 years or so for small mutts. The German Shepherd Dog of today looks bizarre to most people because of the extreme angulation in its rear legs, which makes the dogs unable to stand normally. Many breeds have such extreme hair growth that they require constant grooming to be able to live a normal life. Ironically, the breeding of deformed dogs is more due to hobby “show” breeders than it is to commercial breeders. Show breeders will tell you how different they are from commercial breeders, arguing that commercial breeders just care about making money whereas they care about “improving the breed.” What really happens is this. Hobby breeders are in the dog show “sport” for the purpose of winning trophies and recognition. They breed dogs that they think will appeal to dog show judges. Most dog show judges seem to pay little attention to health, and instead they reward extremes of what they call “type,” which is what most of us would call “deviation from what a normal dog looks like.” These deviations are encouraged by the written standards for breeds. This leads to a vicious circle where, in order to win the coveted trophies, dog breeders produce dogs that deviate further and further from the norm in an effort to catch the eye of the judge. For example, the breed standard for the Akita calls for “much substance and heavy bone.” The result of this standard is that at any dog show you can see Akitas who have so much “substance” that they don’t trot, they trundle. We need to start prosecuting the deliberate breeding of deformed dogs for the crime that it is, particularly in the case of clear-cut and obvious genetic deformities like brachycephalia. Brachycephalic dogs are not “cute.” They are handicapped by their deformity and they suffer — sometimes unimaginably so in the case of those who have syringomyelia. We cannot prevent all deformities and birth defects, but we can certainly stop people from deliberately creating deformities. I don’t know whether hobby breeders really believe that they are “improving” breeds or whether they are so blinded by the gleam from their trophies that they can’t see what’s in front of their face. But whatever their motives, they need to be forced to stop. We need to take the decision out of their hands. The kind of animal cruelty they practice should not be allowed in a civilized country.

Here is a bar graph showing the increase in the human population living in No Kill communities in the 10-year period from 2003 through 2012: Here is a graph of an “S” curve: As you can see, growth in the population of people living in No Kill communities closely matches the progression of an “S” curve up until about the -1 point. If the growth of the No Kill population continues along the “S” curve, then the next 10 to 15 years should see phenomenal growth of No Kill, to the point where the great majority of people will be living in No Kill communities. Pretty cool, huh? Thanks go to Chris Anderson for the lovely bar graph. He prepared it for his talk at the recent Michigan No Kill conference, based on data from this blog. You may be wondering why the graph does not contain 2013 data, and the reason is that I have not yet had time to add that data to my giant spreadsheet of over 100 shelters and coalitions representing No Kill communities. But when the data for 2013 are added, they will show another big jump over 2012. The 2012 numbers do not count Fairfax County, Kansas City, the Portland metro area, or the Seattle metro area, which by themselves would be enough to take the next big leap up the “S” curve. Good times.

Lamar is a city of 7800 people located in southeastern Colorado. Lamar has its own animal control and a municipal shelter, the Lamar Animal Shelter (LAS). The Lamar animal control site states: “Since late 2008, early 2009, the Lamar Animal Shelter and the Code Enforcement Officers have striven to avoid euthanizing animals which come into the shelter.“ The Second Chance Animal Rescue Foundation (SCARF) is also located in Lamar. SCARF has no physical shelter, but houses animals in foster homes. A volunteer with SCARF told me that they rescue animals from a six-county area in southeastern Colorado. Both LAS and SCARF take in owner surrenders from Lamar on a space-available basis, and SCARF networks with other rescues for owner surrenders. LAS only takes in dogs, but SCARF takes in both dogs and cats. SCARF has a trap-neuter-return program for feral cats and two big spay-neuter clinics each year. Statistics from the Colorado Department of Agriculture show that LAS had an intake of 329 dogs in 2012, with a live release rate of 99.7%. Two dogs died or were lost in shelter care, and when they are included with euthanasias the live release rate for LAS was 99.0%. SCARF took in 385 cats and dogs, with a 100% live release rate. The Lamar Animal Sanctuary Team (LAST) also reports to the state. They took in 79 strays and owner surrenders in 2012, with a 100% live release rate. In 2013, LAS reported an intake of 343 animals with a 99% live release rate. No animals died in shelter care. SCARF reported an intake of 518 animals with a live release rate of 100% and no animals dying in shelter care. LAST took in 87 animals and had a 100% live release rate. Their modified live release rate, counting the one animal who died in shelter care, was 98%. Lamar was originally listed by this blog on November 14, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.