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 in the blog’s subtitle. For more about the Worth Watching category, see the Worth Watching page link in the blog’s header.] Santa Paula is a city of about 30,000 people located in Ventura County northwest of Los Angeles, California. In March of 2012, a non-profit called the Santa Paula Animal Rescue Center was formed for the purpose of saving the city’s stray and surrendered pets. The shelter accepts strays and owner surrenders from city residents, with a small fee to relinquish an animal. The shelter states on its website that it does not kill any “healthy adoptable animal . . . due to lack of space or time spent at the shelter.” I was not able to find statistics for the shelter’s first year in operation either on the shelter’s website or in publicly available news reports. Therefore, I am listing the shelter as “Worth Watching” rather than a 90%+ community.

Marquette County is located in the upper peninsula of Michigan and has about 67,000 residents. The city of Marquette, with about 21,000 people, is the county seat. The Upper Peninsula Animal Welfare Shelter (UPAWS) is a private non-profit organization located in Marquette County. I was told in an e-mail from a shelter representative that UPAWS provides animal sheltering for the entire county except for the town of Negaunee, which has a veterinary clinic that takes in strays. I was also told that UPAWS takes in owner surrenders. They encourage appointments for surrenders and ask for a small fee, but do not require either an appointment or a fee. UPAWS reports to the Michigan Department of Agriculture shelter statistics database under its former name of Marquette County Humane Society. In 2011, UPAWS reported a 97% live release rate. The 2011-2012 Annual Report posted on the UPAWS website recorded an intake of 1936, with 79% adopted, 16% returned to owner, 1% transferred, and 4% euthanized. The euthanasia statistic includes owner-requested euthanasias. The 2012-2013 Annual Report recorded a 98% live release rate.

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

Crawford County in northern Michigan has a population of about 14,000, including the county seat of Grayling. The AuSable Valley Animal Shelter (AVAS) is a non-profit corporation located in Grayling that does animal sheltering for Crawford County. I could not find an owner surrender policy on the AVAS website, so I inquired about the policy in a call to the shelter. I was told that AVAS accepts owner surrenders from Crawford County residents, with no conditions other than a fee. In 2013, the shelter took in 170 cats and dogs (scroll down in the link to Animal Shelter of Crawford County). It had a live release rate of 99.4%. All of its live releases were reclaims or adoptions, except for one dog who was transferred. The form listed online by the state for 2012 had errors in it, so I obtained the 2012 statistics directly from the shelter. The shelter had an intake of 173 cats and dogs, and adopted out 113, returned 63 to their owners, transferred 1, and euthanized 1, for a live release rate of 99%. There were no owner-requested euthanasias and no animals died or were lost in shelter care in 2012. AVAS reported a 99% live release rate for 2011 to the state of Michigan, with an intake of 187 animals (scroll down in the link to the report for “Crawford County Animal Shelter”). This Facebook page describes how a volunteer named Dixie Lobsinger ran the county animal shelter from 1992 until retiring in 2005, and instituted many programs such as low income spay-neuter and offsite adoptions. In 2012, the Michigan Pet Fund Alliance recognized Crawford County for its success. An article about the award reported: “Although the AuSable Valley Animal Shelter serves Crawford County, the award was given to include broader efforts to care for animals in the community such as the Leaning Oaks Cat Haven, a cat shelter in Beaver Creek Township, Crawford County Animal Control Officer Gail Foguth, individuals who rescue homeless animals and people who make donations to the shelter.” Crawford County, MI, was originally listed by this blog on May 31, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Roscommon County is located in the northern part of Michigan’s lower peninsula, in the Au Sable State Forest area. There are no incorporated cities in the county, but there are a few rapidly growing unincorporated towns. The population of the county is over 25,000. Animal control and sheltering is done for the entire county, including the unincorporated towns, by the Roscommon County Animal Shelter, which is run by the county. The shelter has a waiting list for owner surrenders. The Michigan animal shelter database report for the Roscommon County shelter for 2013 showed a 99.3% live release rate, which  dropped to 95% when owner-requested euthanasias were included. Total intake for the year was 1006 cats and dogs. The reported live release rate was 99% in 2012, but it dropped to 91% when owner-requested euthanaisa was included in the euthanasia total. The live release rates for the years 2009, 2010, and 2011 were 95%, 98%, and 99% respectively. Roscommon was one of 10 counties in Michigan recognized by the Michigan Pet Fund Alliance for 2011. A September 12 article about the shelter’s director offers insight into what has made this shelter so successful. The article describes how Terry MacKillop, the shelter director, was asked to help reform neighboring Saginaw County’s animal control system. In the article, MacKillop mentions the importance of several factors, including infection control policies, calling rescues to help place animals, and leadership. The article cites MacKillop as “saying that reducing the euthanasia rate to near zero in Roscommon County was the result of a lot of community outreach, education and building relationships with rescue groups and other organizations. ‘Mine didn’t happen overnight,’ he said.” Roscommon County, Michigan, was originally listed by this blog on May 19, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Midland County, as you would expect from the name, is located near the center of Michigan. It is primarily rural, neither wealthy nor poor, and has a population of over 80,000 people. The county seat is the city of Midland, which has about 42,000 people. Up until January 1, 2011, the county government handled animal control and sheltering. The live release rate for the county animal control office in 2010 was only 52% (scroll down in the link to Midland County Sheriff’s Office Animal Control). On January 1, 2011, the Humane Society of Midland County (HSOMC) took over the animal shelter and things quickly changed. The live release rate went up to 95% for the year 2011 (see “Humane Society of Midland County” in the link). The big difference was in adoptions. For example, under the county’s management in 2010 there were only 134 kittens adopted while 168 were killed. Under HMOSC in 2011, there were 605 kittens adopted and only 23 killed. The county adopted out 178 adult cats in 2010 and killed 530, whereas HSOMC in 2011 adopted out 611 and killed 67. In 2012 the live release rate improved slightly to 96%, with an intake of 2295 dogs and cats. In 2013, HSOMC won the Michigan Pet Fund Alliance award for outstanding medium-size shelter in the open-admission category. The shelter’s intake for the year was 2675 dogs and cats. It sterilized all animals before adoption, and did not report any transfers. Its live release rate was 97%. I called HSOMC and asked about their owner surrender policy. They accept surrenders from any county resident, if the resident has a valid driver’s license to prove residence. No appointment is required, but the shelter does charge a small fee ($25). In preparation for taking over animal control, HSOMC hired a new director in December 2010 — Beth Wellman. Wellman was previously shelter coordinator for the Ionia County Animal Shelter, which had an 84% live release rate in 2010 during her tenure. Midland County, MI, was originally listed by this blog on June 3, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

[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.] 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. The ASAP coalition increased the live release rate for the metro area from 62% in 2006 to 79% in 2011. Maddie’s Fund has reported that the coalition had an 85% live release rate for 2012, with a combined intake of almost 32,000 animals. If the coalition were to achieve the same percentage improvement in 2013 that it had in 2012, they would finish the year at a 90% or better live release rate. 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 it makes no sense to look at the individual shelters in isolation, and you have to look at the community coalition as a whole 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 by OHS unless they are aggressive or medically unfit for adoption. People ask me from time to time why I list communities rather than individual shelters, and coalitions such as ASAP are the reason why. Even in cases where there is no formal coalition, you cannot evaluate a municipal shelter without knowing what else is going on in the community. In particular, people often want to criticize a municipal shelter for having a waiting list for owner surrenders or otherwise limiting surrenders, but if there are non-profits in the area who take in owner surrenders, then such criticisms are missing an important part of the picture.

2014 is shaping up to be a big year for the blog. In addition to continuing to feature 90%+ and Worth Watching communities, I’m working on a couple of special projects. The first project is a big numbers crunch on the communities listed in the right sidebar. There is no universally recognized way for shelters to report their statistics, and that means that statistics vary widely in consistency and completeness. Even so, I have quite a bit of data now on public shelters that are saving 90% or more of their intake, and it’s a good sample size to start asking some questions about what makes these shelters so successful. For example, what type of management structure is most common in successful public shelters?  What public shelters are most successful at return-to-owner, and how do they do it? Is human population a limiting factor for adoptions in a typical community? Do communities with managed intake policies have higher stray intake? What is the rate of growth of the number of 90%+ communities? I hope to be able to present some data on these issues and more as the year goes on. The second new project for 2014 is a book I’m working on with a couple of well-known No Kill advocates. The book will have shelter stories and much more! We’re very excited about this project and hope to have the book available by the end of the year. A couple of housekeeping notes: I’ve added a “Running Total” page to keep up with the number of individual shelters in the 90%+ communities, the population served, and the number of Worth Watching public shelters. As for 2014 updates, I will be doing revisions of each existing blog post instead of supplemental posts. Things change rapidly in the shelter world, and doing a revised post will allow me to fix broken links and update general information as well as statistics. The result of an update will be that the old post disappears. The new post will list the date of the original post at the end. I’d like to thank everyone who helped me with the blog in 2013. Your tips, e-mails, and comments were appreciated, so please keep them coming.

Brown County, Indiana, has a population of about 15,000 people. The Brown County Humane Society (BCHS), located in Nashville, Indiana, is a private shelter that contracts with Brown County to take in strays. The shelter states on its website that it “accepts any and all of Brown County’s homeless dogs and cats.” Their euthanasia policy is stated as follows: “Currently only those dogs whose behavior is dangerous and beyond our resources to rehabilitate and pets which are so sick or injured that we cannot afford to treat are euthanized.” The shelter has a high intake, although it has been trending down substantially in recent years. In 2011, for example, the shelter reported that it took in 1096 dogs and cats. That translates to an intake of 73 animals per 1,000 people. (There are various estimates of average annual shelter intake in the United States, ranging from 15 to 30 per 1000 population). In 2013, the intake was 727 cats and dogs, which is 48 per 1000 people. This report, from the 2011 Best Friends No More Homeless Pets conference, details how BCHS has worked to lower intake through their spay-neuter programs. BCHS’s live release rates for the last three years were 97% in 2011, 99% in 2012, and 98% in 2013. The 2011 figure includes animals who died in shelter care with the euthanasia total. The shelter reported deaths and euthanasias separately in 2012 and 2013. In 2012 the live release rate was 97% with deaths included, and in 2013 it was 95% with deaths included. The shelter adopted out 839 dogs and cats in 2011, 757 in 2012, and 511 in 2013. I spoke with Jane Weatherford, a member of the shelter’s board of directors, in 2012 and asked how the shelter managed to adopt out so many animals in a community of only 15,000 people. She said that shelter volunteers supplement local adoptions by taking dogs and cats to off-site adoption venues. They placed 233 animals that way in 2011. BCHS, like most successful shelters, uses social media. Its Facebook page features interesting photographs and appealing descriptions of pets up for adoption as well those who have been recently adopted. Brown County, Indiana, was originally listed by this blog on April 15, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

[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.] Spokane County is located on the western border of the state of Washington. It has a population of 471,000 people, including the 209,000 people who live in the city of Spokane, which is the county seat. The Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service (SCRAPS) provides animal control and sheltering services for the county. It is expanding its jurisdiction as of January 2014, when it will start serving the city of Spokane as well as Millwood, Liberty Lake, and Cheney. SCRAPS accepts owner surrenders from its jurisdictions with no stated restrictions except a small fee. SCRAPS posts its statistics for the last several years on its website. For 2012, it reported a live release rate of 82% with an intake of 5086 animals. This was an improvement over the 78% reported in 2011. SCRAPS serves a large population and has a live release rate that is much better than average and is improving. It’s difficult to evaluate how well the shelter is really doing, though, because the shelter transfers a lot of animals to other organizations both inside and outside of its community coalition. The most recent community-wide statistics provided show a 74% live release rate for the coalition for 2010. There is further uncertainty due to the addition of the city of Spokane to the shelter’s jurisdiction in 2014.

The  city of Taylor, Texas, is located in Williamson County about 30 miles northeast of Austin. It has a population of about 15,000 people. Williamson County and Taylor are part of the Austin metro area. Animal control and sheltering is provided for the city by a municipal agency, the Taylor Animal Shelter. A city official sent me the shelter’s 2012 statistics. Total intake was 315 animals, with 283 impounded by animal control and 11 owner surrenders. The live release rate was 93% for the calendar year. The shelter reports transferring 30 animals in 2012, who went to the Austin Humane Society. The shelter credits its success to “great community volunteers and staff, wonderful partnerships with other shelters and rescue groups and an outstanding community.” Feral cats in Taylor receive TNR from the Shadow Cats organization, a non-profit rescue that is headquartered in nearby Round Rock. Shadow Cats returns ferals to their colonies after TNR or attempts to place them as barn cats if they cannot return to a colony. They also have a sanctuary where cats that are sick with chronic illness can live out their lives. Taylor is located in an area that is very safe for shelter animals. Williamson County and the city of Austin both have live release rates over 90%. The city of Georgetown, which is located in Williamson County, has a live release rate of about 85%. Taylor, TX, is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

Shelby County Kentucky, has a population of about 42,000 people and is located just east of Louisville. Shelby County Animal Shelter & Control is the municipal shelter for the county. The shelter states on its Petfinder site that it accepts “all unwanted and stray animals in our county” and performs “neglect and abuse investigations” for the county. Shelby County No-Kill Mission is a non-profit that works closely with the shelter. Its director and co-founder is Kelly Jedlicki. This June, the shelter will celebrate its fifth year of saving more than 90% of the animals it takes in. Shelby County was the first community in Kentucky to achieve the 90% rate. The shelter does not post its statistics online, but Rusty Newton, the shelter’s director, sent me the statistics by e-mail. The shelter keeps its statistics on a fiscal-year basis, from July through June. In fiscal year 2010-2011, the shelter took in 1651 dogs and cats and had a live release rate of 95%. In fiscal year 2011-2012, the shelter took in 1486 dogs and cats and had a live release rate of 98%. So far in the 2012-2013 fiscal year the shelter has maintained its 98% live release rate. The shelter did not report any owner-requested euthanasia or animals died or lost in shelter care. Shelby County, KY, is counted in the blog’s Running Totals as a 90%+ community.