OUT THE FRONT DOOR

Jacksonville is a city of 837,000 people on the northeast coast of Florida.  It is the largest city in Florida and the 12th largest city in the United States. The city is located in Duval County, which has a population of about 865,000. The governments of the city and county were consolidated in 1968. The Jacksonville metro area has over 1.3 million people, which is the 4th largest metro area in Florida after Miami, Tampa-St. Petersburg, and Orlando. The Jacksonville Animal Care and Protective Services Division (ACPSD) is a city-run department that handles animal control and sheltering for the city and Duval County. The shelter accepts owner surrenders with no noted restrictions except for a small fee. It does not perform owner-requested euthanasia. ACPSD works closely with two large non-profits in the city. The Jacksonville Humane Society (JHS) takes in some strays and adoptable owner surrenders and pulls animals from ACPSD. First Coast No More Homeless Pets (FCNMHP) offers low-cost spay-neuter, vaccinations, and veterinary care, and does over 30,000 spay-neuter surgeries per year.  FCNMHP collaborates with ACPSD and Best Friends Animal Society in a program called Feral Freedom  that  has made Trap-Neuter-Return the default solution for feral cats in Jacksonville. In 2014 the city of Jacksonville and Duval County became one of the largest No Kill jurisdictions, with a live release rate for ACPSD of 92%. If animals who died or were lost in shelter care are counted as euthanasias, the modified live release rate was 90% for 2014. Combined shelter statistics for ACPSD and JHS have been provided by JHS, but are not in the format I use for calculations. JHS’s live release rate was even higher than ACPSD’s, though. Total intake for ACPSD and JHS for the year was 17,099, which is about 20 animals per 1000 people. That intake number does not include the feral cats who go through the Feral Freedom program. At the 2014 Best Friends national conference, the Jacksonville coalition presented a playbook detailing how they got to No Kill. For years they have had a heavy reliance on spay-neuter programs, including their model feral cat program, to bring down intake. The coalition is also doing a lot of adoptions – ACPSD and JHS did over 10,000 adoptions in 2014. That is 12 adoptions per 1000 people. ACPSD’s live release rate was 35% or less from the year 2000 up until Scott Trebatoski was hired as director in late 2008. The live release rate climbed to 50% in 2009, his first full year as director, then went to 74% in 2012 and 85% in 2013. Trebatoski left ACPSD in March 2014 to become director of the Hillsborough County (Tampa) shelter, and was replaced by Nikki Harris. Harris previously worked for the Nebraska Humane Society and FCNMHP before moving to ACPSD as shelter manager. Jacksonville-Duval County is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

Ventura County is located in southern California, northwest of Los Angeles. The population was 823,000 at the 2010 census. Its median household income is above the national average. Ventura County Animal Services (VCAS) has two intake shelters, and in 2014 they achieved a 91% live release rate with an intake of 9000 animals, according to a recent report from VCAS. This followed orders from the Ventura County Board of Supervisors in 2012 that VCAS become No Kill. Changes that VCAS made after the 2012 directive included starting foster and volunteer programs, seeking out rescues to work with, adding a veterinarian who was on board with treating the treatables, and play groups and pack walks for dogs. Tara Diller was hired as director in February 2014. Diller stresses taking animals out into the community rather than waiting for people to come in to adopt. A non-profit called Paw Works, founded in January 2014, has been helping with fosters, adoption events, and transports. In their first year they rescued over 770 homeless animals in Ventura County. They have a group of volunteer pilots, Air Paws, that do transports, and a barn cat program. Ventura County is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

One of the biggest controversies in animal sheltering today is the question of whether public animal shelters can adopt their way out of killing. Yesterday I posted consolidated statistics for Colorado animal shelters for 2012. As I will explain in today’s post, I think the Colorado data provides very strong evidence that shelters can adopt their way out of killing. One caveat — the Colorado data is based on self-reporting by the shelters in the state. I did not see any red flags in the data and it correlates very well with what I heard in my extensive interviews with shelter officials in the state, but I cannot promise that the data is flawless. First some background. For years now the animal shelter reform movement has had a deep and sometimes bitter division between what I will call the supply-side faction and the demand-side faction. The supply-side faction thinks that we have a pet overpopulation problem and that we will never be able to find enough adoptive homes for shelter animals until we reduce the supply through spay-neuter programs. The demand-side faction believes that there are currently enough homes to save virtually all shelter animals, and that shelters should use marketing and community engagement techniques to increase market share among those who acquire pets. There is no easy compromise between these two factions because they represent two different world views about shelter animals and the general public. The supply siders think that most people want to adopt young, healthy animals and that they will never adopt the pit bulls and older cats in shelters, no matter how much the shelter promotes them. The demand siders think that although spay-neuter programs are a good thing, they take years to work and will never completely solve the problem, whereas marketing techniques can save virtually all shelter animals right now. Where you stand on this question inevitably affects your beliefs as to shelter policy. The supply-side faction does not see a need to change the way that traditional, high-kill animal shelters operate because they think the problem originates outside the shelter with members of the “irresponsible public” who fail to spay and neuter their pets. The demand-side faction believes that it is essential to change shelter operations from the ground up to emphasize marketing and community outreach. Each side in this battle cites statistics. The supply-side faction often cites Peter Marsh, who has written a treatise called “Replacing Myth With Math.” Marsh argues that statistics show that euthanasia rates track animal shelter intakes rather than adoptions, and that adoption rates in California over a 25-year period from 1970 to 1995 stayed about the same while euthanasia and intake rates first peaked and then declined. Marsh concludes that the data means that we will make more progress in ending animal homelessness by reducing intake rather than by trying to increase adoptions. Conversely, the demand-side faction cites the ever-growing number of communities that are saving 90% or more of their shelter animals by changing their shelters and using marketing and community outreach. The supply-side faction argues that 90% save rates either are not sustainable or are not generalizable. How can we settle this question? It’s very simple. The central mantra of the supply-side faction is that the only way to reduce euthanasia is to reduce intake. Therefore, if there is a representative sample of communities that have achieved and sustained a high save rate without reducing intake, then the supply-side argument is effectively countered. Yesterday I posted a blog about the state of Colorado’s shelter statistics for the year 2012. The total intake of cats and dogs for the year was 159,183, and the 2012 estimate for the state’s population was 5.2 million people, so the rate of intake for dogs and cats in 2012 in Colorado was 31 animals per 1000 people. Colorado is a destination state for animal transports, but even if you subtract out-of-state incoming transfers from the intake numbers, the intake per 1000 people was 28 in 2012. HSUS estimates that average intake of shelter animals for communities in the United States is 30 per 1000 people. Another commonly cited estimate for average intake is 15 per 1000 people. Depending on which number you use — 30 or 15 — Colorado is either at the high end of average intake or considerably over average intake. Colorado is a typical state in other important ways as well. The state ranks near the middle of the pack for human population, with a population of 5.2 million people. It has lots of tiny, isolated rural towns, but it also has a very large metro area in Denver. The median annual household income for Colorado is about $58,000 per household, compared with about $51,000 for the entire United States. Even the location is average, since it is near the middle of the country. A supply sider would predict that because Colorado has high intake, it would be impossible for Colorado to achieve and sustain a high save rate without reducing intake. As we saw yesterday, though, Colorado has in fact reported an 85.5% save rate sustained for the entire year in 2012. Colorado’s save rate is much higher than that for the United States as a whole, which is only about 50%. Colorado’s adoption rate for cats and dogs was 52% of all intake and 64% of unreclaimed intake (59% of stray dogs were returned to their owners and 22% of cats were returned to owners or colonies). Unless there is some huge flaw in the data collected by the state, Colorado in 2012 proved that you do not have to have low intake in order to have a high save rate. The Colorado statistics run counter to another claim often made by supply siders, which is that there has never been a community in the United States that was able to sustain an adoption rate higher than 10 shelter animals per 1000 people. Colorado’s population is 5.2 million. In 2012, Colorado shelters reported adoptions of 82,605 dogs and cats. This is a rate of 16 shelter animal adoptions per 1000 population, and it was sustained over an entire year. What about the data that Peter Marsh cites, that show flat adoption rates and euthanasias tracking intake rather than outflow? Most of Marsh’s data is old, and his more recent data does not come from communities like Austin, Reno, Charlottesville, and the state of Colorado that have high live release rates and high intake. In short, Marsh looked at old-fashioned, traditional shelters that did not have modern marketing and community engagement programs, and incorrectly concluded from that data that because he had not seen any successful marketing programs, attempts to increase adoptions would be ineffectual. In addition to the Colorado statewide data, we also have the data from well over 200 individual communities throughout the United States showing that communities can achieve and maintain 90% and higher live release rates. The supply-side faction has argued that these 200+ communities represent only a few percent of the United States population, that they have favorable demographics, or that they are pushing intake off onto other communities. None of those arguments can be made about the entire state of Colorado. In particular, the fact that an entire state has achieved an 85% live release rate refutes the argument that high live release rates can only be achieved by pushing intake to other communities. Colorado is a well-known destination state for transports from other states. Far from pushing intake off onto its neighbors, it is helping its neighbors by taking in thousands of animals per year from other states. I feel that the data we have so far from Colorado and many individual communities is sufficient to show that communities can adopt (and reclaim) their way out of killing. Although spay-neuter programs are valuable, communities can save 90% or more of their shelter animals right now by reforming their shelters, without waiting for everyone to spay and neuter their pets.

[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.