OUT THE FRONT DOOR

We all know the importance of the live release rate in evaluating a shelter’s performance. There is another very important statistic that is often overlooked, however, and that is the average length of stay. A shelter that has an average length of stay of 10 days has twice as much effective shelter space as a shelter that has an average length of stay of 20 days. And the animals are twice as well off, because they are spending half the time in the shelter environment, which can be stressful unless the shelter is very well designed. It’s unfortunately rare to see the live release rate on a shelter’s website, but it’s almost unheard-of to see average length of stay. We need to make average length of stay part of the regular statistics that are kept and reported. This would allow us to identify shelters that are doing well on this metric and shelters that are doing poorly. It would allow us to recognize shelter directors who have been able to maintain a short length of stay along with a high live release rate, and to seek their advice on how other shelters can decrease length of stay. There are several factors that influence how long an animal stays in the shelter, including stray-hold time (which is generally mandated by law), medical protocols, behavior evaluation, and marketing. The best shelters manage to combine high live release rates with a short length of stay. Maddie’s Fund has been a leader in identifying factors that affect length of stay and devising protocols for reducing length of stay. For example, check out this webcast. One question is whether to include time in foster care as time in the shelter. I think foster care time should not be included because foster animals, although they may require some support from the shelter, are not taking up space and they are in a home environment. Plus, a foster home often turns into a permanent home. It’s hard to think of anything else that could improve shelter productivity as quickly as cutting down on average length of stay. I think average length of stay is worth more attention than it’s getting, but certainly a first step in raising the profile of this metric is to begin to routinely capture the data as part of shelter statistics.

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

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.

The big news this week is that Austin has selected Tawny Hammond as the new director of the Austin Animal Center. Hammond was previously the director of the Fairfax County, Virginia, animal shelter, which had a live release rate of over 90% during her tenure. She starts her new job on June 15th. Fairfax County is similar in population to Austin, but shelter intake in Austin is much higher. Intake in Fairfax was 3,747 in 2013, whereas the Austin Animal Center usually receives about 17,000 animals yearly. Austin has a rescue partner in Austin Pets Alive! that takes in thousands of animals each year from the city shelter, though. Waco, Texas, has gone from a 36% live release rate in 2013 to a 90%+ live release rate so far this year. City leadership has been solidly behind the effort, and they called in a consultant group, Target Zero, to help. Here is a Q&A about the process with three of its leaders, and here is a column from the mayor including comments on work yet to be done. Chester County SPCA in Pennsylvania is celebrating its recent achievement of No Kill status with its Forget-Me-Not annual festival. A city named The Colony, which is a suburb of Dallas, Texas, is a No Kill community with over 36,000 human residents. Its animal services department reports a euthanasia rate of 9% for 2014. We often hear that the state of Maine is No Kill. I’m not aware of any source for Maine statistics, but here is an article about one Maine shelter that has a 90% live release rate. The Bay Area Humane Society in Green Bay, Wisconsin, is setting up an owner-to-owner rehoming page as an option. This is a great idea for owners who have to give up a pet and want the peace of mind of knowing the new owners. It also allows owners to foster-in-place until their pet can go to a new home. 3-D printing for animal prostheses is creating some amazing results. It has been used to make a non-standard prosthesis for a dog, and now it’s created a titanium lower jaw for a severely injured turtle. Amazing stuff. Another great story from KC Pet Project. When a trucker was taken sick in Kansas City, far from home, and had an extended hospital stay, the shelter took in his dog and arranged to board it past the 10-day shelter hold time. Trucker and dog are now on their way home to Arkansas. A cat cafe has popped up in San Jose. Natalie DiGiacomo has written an introduction for Million Cat Challengers to HSUS’s Adopters Welcome initiative. The most interesting part of this article to me was her observation that in spite of research showing the effectiveness of removing barriers to adoption and the practical success of open adoption in shelters that have tried it, barriers to adoption “just keep hanging around.” Hopefully that will not be true for much longer. It has now been over 15 years since some of the major players at the national level started pushing for adoption reform, so this is one paradigm that should long since have been mainstream. There’s something of a bandwagon of shelters signing up for the dog facial recognition app, Finding Rover. Napa County in California and the Fluvanna SPCA in Virginia are the latest to sign on. A nice story from Arin Greenwood giving some of the history of the Vicktory dogs, on the occasion of the death of Ray. Lots of enrichment ideas for shelter dogs. Pets Alive Middletown hosted a Dogs Playing for Life seminar recently, and John Sibley has written a very interesting blog post about it. Large groups of dogs playing together can work near miracles for everything from aggression to lack of socialization. Daily rounds for shelter pets. What a great idea! A check-up by a shelter professional on every pet, every day, can identify issues before they become problems. I’ve often wondered at the high number of animals “lost” in shelter care at some facilities. With a daily check on each and every animal, shelters can find out within hours when an animal goes missing, and have a much better chance of figuring out where that animal is. Also, a daily check can catch illnesses and behavior problems early when they are easier to deal with, thus saving time and resources for the shelter.

Montmorency County, Michigan, is located in the northern part of Michigan’s lower peninsula, and has about 10,000 residents. Up until 2009, the county sheriff’s office handled animal control. The Elk Country Animal Shelter (ECAS) is a 501(c)(3) organization that supported the county shelter for years and finally took it over entirely in April 2009. Animals were kept in outdoor kennels at the sheriffs office and ECAS’s first order of business was to create a shelter building where the animals could be indoors. The shelter accepts owner surrenders and does not list any restrictions on surrenders on its website. Here are the live release rates for the county as reported to the state of Michigan for the four years since ECAS took over the shelter: 2009 — 97% 2010 — 97% 2011 — 97% 2012 — 97% The shelter’s mission was endangered in 2012 when a contract dispute with the county caused ECAS to stop formally taking in strays. Volunteers for the shelter went out on their own time and rescued strays and took them to a neighboring shelter. Fortunately the dispute only lasted a couple of weeks, and on April 11, 2012 the county approved the funding asked for by the shelter.

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

Cats are not dogs. This seems obvious, and yet the correlative to that statement – that we cannot give equal treatment to cats by treating them the same way we treat dogs – seems to be lost on many people. In the last couple of years we have had proposals for innovative programs that seek to give homeless and lost cats the same chance for life that homeless and lost dogs have – not by treating cats and dogs exactly alike, but by recognizing and accommodating their differences. Some people have reacted to these new programs by complaining that cats are being treated unfairly, and are being made second-class citizens to dogs. I’ve even heard the new cat paradigms referred to as the “war on cats.” While it’s a good thing for people to be cautious before adopting new ideas, we don’t want to be so cautious that we reject lifesaving ideas. With that in mind, what are the new cat paradigms, and what is the evidence to back them up? I’m not an expert on the new paradigms – the experts would be Dr, Kate Hurley, Dr. Julia Levy, Scott Trebatoski, and all the other professionals who have been leaders in this field. But as I understand the new paradigms, one of the central ideas is that, in most circumstances, shelters should not take in healthy cats. Gulp. That certainly is a radical idea. But after looking at the evidence, it makes perfect sense. While an impounded cat is sitting in the shelter waiting for its owner to come looking for it, it may get sick, it is taking up space for cats who really need to be in the shelter (those who are sick, injured, or starving), and the likelihood of its owners finding it is far, far less than if it had been left alone. That italicized clause is one of the keys to the new cat paradigms, and I think it is the most often misunderstood or overlooked part of the new message. So what is the scientific evidence to support the idea that a lost or straying cat is more likely to find its way home if it is just left alone? I asked Dr. Hurley this question, and she sent me two peer-reviewed studies that address the issue. The first study was done in 2005 in Montgomery County, Ohio. It looked at cats lost by residents over a 4-month period and the success of methods that owners used to find the cats. The study included 138 cats. Just over half (53%) of the lost cats were recovered. Two-thirds – 66% – of the cats who were recovered returned home on their own. That is not a typo. All other methods, including neighborhood signs, identification, advertisements, and visiting the shelter, when added up, were only about 1/2 as successful as simply waiting for the cat to come home on its own. The second-most successful method for finding a lost cat was neighborhood signs, but only 11% of found cats were found by that method. Leaving cats alone was 6 times more effective than the second-best method at returning cats home. Only 7% of the cats were recovered from the animal shelter. Now you might argue that perhaps only a few of the cats wound up in the shelter in the first place, and that explains why few were recovered from the shelter. The problem with that argument is that owners in the study took a median of 3 days, with a range of 0 to 21 days, to visit the shelter to look for their cat. And the median time between visits was 8 days. Half of owners did not visit the shelter within the typical 3-day hold time of the county, and when they did visit, their succeeding visits were not frequent enough to allow them to reliably reclaim their cats within the hold period. As the authors of the study said, it was possible that at least some of the cats in the study who were not recovered were killed by animal shelters. So, either cats did wind up in the shelter (in which case their owners did not reliably go to the shelter often enough to find them) or cats did not wind up in the shelter (in which case the shelter was irrelevant to whether they were found). Either way, impoundment is not a reliable way of returning lost cats to their homes. This gets at one of the core differences between cats and dogs, which is that cats are more likely to hide when they get lost. A lost cat may hide for days or even weeks before it makes its presence known enough to come to the attention of animal control. People tend not to look in shelters for lost cats for a very good reason, which is that they know the likelihood of their cat being in a shelter on any given day is low. Unless they have the time to literally visit the shelter every couple of days for up to one or two months, their odds of finding their cat are not good even if it is impounded. And relying on shelter personnel or volunteers to recognize a lost cat from a photo or description is tricky because so many cats look alike. The shelter hold period was designed for dogs, plain and simple. The hold period does not fit cat behavior and it is ineffective to allow cat owners to recover their pets. The second study was a national telephone survey that made contact with 2,587 households in 2010. A higher percentage of lost cats – 75% – were recovered than in the 2005 study. Of the 54 cats recovered, 48 were recovered either by searching within the neighborhood or the cat returning home on its own. The percentage of found cats who returned home on their own was 59% – not that far off from the 66% in the 2005 study, even though the two studies used different methodologies. Almost 9 out of 10 cats who were recovered either returned home on their own or were found by their owners right in their own neighborhood. Only 1 of the cats was recovered from the animal shelter (2% of the sample). Only 4 of the cat owners looked at the shelter for their lost pet. Once again, whether the low rate of recovery from the shelter was due to cats not winding up in the shelter or people not looking for them in the shelter, the result is the same – a very low likelihood of a cat being reunited with its family via the shelter. Both of these studies are small. As with just about every issue involving animal sheltering, it would be nice to have more studies and have studies involving larger numbers of animals. I think the studies are meaningful in spite of the relatively small numbers of cats involved, however, because the percentage of cats who found their way home on their own was huge in both studies. This was not a subtle result – not the kind of thing where you need a cast of thousands to make sure that your result is statistically significant. There are two possible ways for shelters to react to this data. One is to accept that impounding a cat is not a good way to reunite it with its family, and to change procedures so that healthy cats are not impounded and that people are advised about what does work – signs, searching the neighborhood, and waiting for the cat to come home. The other way would be to lecture cat owners about microchipping their cats and going to the shelter every day that their cat is lost. Which way do you think will be more successful? Some people argue that even a 2% or a 7% rate of reuniting cats with owners makes it worthwhile to impound cats. That argument completely overlooks the fact that cats who are impounded cannot go home on their own, and their owners cannot find them by looking for them in the neighborhood. When cats are impounded, we cut off their best opportunity by far to get home – letting them get back on their own – and instead substitute a method, impoundment, that endangers their lives. Shelters are stressful for cats, and stress predisposes cats to disease. Not to mention that the percentage of communities that are saving all savable cats is currently in single digits, so even if the cat does not get sick it still has the hurdle of whether it will be adopted. The two studies discussed above deal only with owned cats who are lost. There are a great many cats who go into animal shelters who do not have homes – they are either feral or they live in the community, possibly visiting many homes but not domiciled in any particular home. These “community cats” are not going to be reclaimed if they are impounded. Community cats who are healthy obviously are doing fine in their environment and do not need intervention by the shelter. Impoundment can only hurt them, unless the shelter can keep them healthy and find an adoptive home for them (or, in the case of a feral cat, a better situation than the one it was in). TNR and return-to-field are well established as the best solutions for most healthy community cats. Making return-to-field the default approach for healthy cats, whether they are community cats or lost pets, is the commonsense solution. This gets at another of the important differences between cats and dogs, which is that today there are almost no truly feral dogs in the great majority of communities in the United States. The dogs in animal shelters are, almost uniformly, dogs who have been socialized to people and have lived in homes or kennel situations before coming to the shelter. Cats have retained much more of their wild nature than dogs, and many cats who come into animal shelters have either lived outdoors all their lives or they have transitioned in and out of homes and are very capable of “living off the land.” Once again, basing our ideas of what is best for cats on our ideas of what is best for dogs does a disservice to cats. What about owner surrendered cats? When animal control stops taking in healthy cats, the shelter has more resources, and some of those resources can be used to expand pet retention programs. In cases where the owner has died or is unable to keep the cat any longer even with help, the shelter will be able to find a surrendered cat a home much more quickly because the number of incoming adult cats will be in better balance with demand by adopters. Keeping healthy cats out of the shelter not only helps the healthy cats, it also helps the ones who are not healthy. When a shelter has fewer cats it can devote more resources to each cat. If 50 cats who all need rehabilitation come in from a hoarding bust, for example, the shelter will be much better able to help those cats if it is not already full. Kitten season won’t be so overwhelming if foster homes are not already full of healthy cats. We hear a lot about improving live release rates to 95% and even higher. Having the shelter take in only the cats who really need to be there is one way to get to those higher live release rates. Although the idea of shelters not taking in healthy cats might sound radical to us today, it is not radical at all from a historical perspective. When animal shelters first started up in the 1800s before rabies vaccines had been developed, their primary purpose was to protect people from rabies by getting dogs off the streets. It was not known at that time that cats could transmit rabies too. Some animal shelters, like the ones in Boston and New York City, impounded cats starting around 1900, but it was very common throughout most of the 1900s for animal control units in the United States not to take in free-roaming cats. The idea that all shelters should routinely impound stray cats is of relatively recent origin, and it has not worked out well. So, to sum up, even to a layperson like me it seems overwhelmingly clear from this data that shelters should not impound cats unless (1) the cat is ill, injured, or otherwise in need of help, or (2) the shelter has the ability to house the cat in a stress-free environment and quickly adopt it out once the hold period expires. Makena Yarbrough, the innovative director of the Lynchburg Humane Society, the open-admission No Kill shelter serving Lynchburg, Virginia, wrote an article for her local newspaper that advises people what to do if they find a cat (although the title of the article refers to “feral” cats, it applies to all found cats). We have advice for people on what to do if they find a baby bird, and I’m sure that has saved many millions of birds from people’s well-intentioned mistakes. So I love this idea of telling people how best to help any free-roaming cats they come across. One important point is that since cats on average take longer than dogs to make their presence known after getting lost, lost and found services for cats need to emphasize that a cat that was just found today might have been lost a month or two ago, or even more. We know how to help cats. Now we just need to get the word out. For more information, check out the Million Cat Challenge and the many helpful resources that Maddie’s Fund has made available about community cats.

Longmont, Colorado, is a city of 86,000 people located north of Denver in Boulder and Weld counties. The Longmont Humane Society (LHS) serves as the municipal shelter for strays who are taken in by Longmont Animal Control or found within the city limits of several nearby towns, including Frederick (population 9000). LHS split off from the Humane Society of Boulder Valley (HSBV) several years ago. According to a representative of HSBV, Boulder County Animal Control takes strays to Longmont that are picked up in the unincorporated area of the county near Longmont, whereas the rest of the strays in the county go to HSBV. According to the representative, Longmont and HSBV both receive strays from the nearby town of Erie (population 6000). LHS accepts owner surrenders from its service area during business hours, with no restrictions other than a small fee. It also accepts owner surrenders from outside its service area, including out of state, if space is available. LHS reported live release rates of 82% in 2010 and 89% in 2011 (calculated by comparing euthanasias to total intake). In December of 2011 the shelter announced the appointment of Liz Smokowski as executive director. Ms. Smokowski has a master’s degree in business administration. In the shelter’s latest annual report, it stated that in 2012, Smokowski’s first full year as director, the shelter increased its live release rate to 94% and decreased its cost per animal by 10%, with an intake of 3901 animals. The report states that over 850 active volunteers supplied 60,895 hours of service in 2012. LHS also submitted a report on 2012 statistics to the state of Colorado, and this report shows a 94% live release rate as well.

Rio Blanco County is located in the northwestern part of Colorado on the Utah border. The 2010 census counted 6700 county residents, including the towns of Rangely (population 2400) and Meeker (2500). The County has two animals shelters, one serving Rangely and the other serving Meeker. Both shelters also accept animals picked up by the sheriff in unincorporated areas of the county. The Rangely Animal Shelter (RAS) is a municipal agency that handles animal control and sheltering for Rangely. Animals are vaccinated, neutered, and microchipped before being adopted. The RAS manager told me that they have a small, waivable fee for owner surrenders and will either take them in immediately or help the owner place the pet. They have a TNR program that has neutered about 200 cats, and they have adopted out 60-70 kittens born to feral mothers. The statistics submitted to the state by RAS for 2012 show a live release rate of 99%. The live release rate does not change if the one animal who died in shelter care in 2012 is included with euthanasias. The Meeker Animal Shelter (MAS) is also a municipal agency that provides animal control as well as sheltering. I spoke to the animal control officer, who told me that although MAS does not impound cats, she will respond to calls about sick or injured cats and take them to a local veterinarian. MAS accepts owner surrenders subject, at times, to a monitored waiting list. A rescue in Meeker called the Cat Coalition does TNR in the area. MAS took in 107 dogs in 2012 and had a 99% live release rate.

There was an interesting conversation a few days ago on the YesBiscuit! blog about whether the 90% live release rate standard for shelters isn’t enough and shelters should be saving a higher percentage. The conversation got me wondering whether the statistics for the 90%+ shelters listed by this blog could shed some light on the question. With almost 200 communities listed at this point, we have a pretty good sample size to work with. Quite a few communities have live release rates in the 95% to 100% range. So one question is whether there are characteristics of communities that affect how difficult it is to go beyond 90% to 95% or higher. The first thing I checked was whether climate has any effect on the number of shelters at 90%-94% versus 95%-100%.  Over the years that I’ve been researching shelters I’ve gotten an impression that shelters in colder climates, on average, have higher live release rates than shelters in warmer climates. Even so, I was surprised at how great the discrepancy was when I ran the numbers. I found a chart that ranks each U.S. state by average temperature, then counted how many communities in the blog’s right sidebar are located in the warmest 25 states versus the coldest 25 states. Out of the 184 communities currently listed, fully 131 (71%) were in the 25 colder states, while only 53 (29%) were in the 25 warmer states. The 20 coldest states had a breakdown of 30 shelters that were at 95% to 100% versus 9 that were at 90% to 94%, whereas the 20 warmest states had 12 shelters at 95% to 100% versus 9 shelters at 90% to 94%. I don’t think these numbers are being distorted by any differential in north-south population distribution: check out this map, which shows a rather even population distribution between north and south. So, if you are running a shelter in a warmer state, you have your work cut out for you. Another impression I had was that there were fewer large jurisdictions with 95% to 100% live release rates. We have to be careful in evaluating large versus small jurisdictions, though, because most jurisdictions are small (median size of 25,000 people). So, I looked at live release rates for communities under 25,000 in population versus communities over 25,000. I found a huge discrepancy in live release rates based on community size. The shelters listed by this blog that serve a population of under 25,000 people overwhelmingly have live release rates of 95% to 100% (21 to 2). Shelters in communities of over 25,000 people, by contrast, were almost evenly divided, with 23 having live release rates in the 90% to 94% range and 22 having rates of 95% to 100%. Overall, we have a striking pattern where smaller jurisdictions are more successful in getting to 95% and above.  (Interestingly, a previous statistical study I did showed minimal effect of population size on the ability of a shelter to get to the 90% threshold; thus, the effect of population size seems to pertain only to live release rates of 95% to 100%.) One of the issues brought up in the YesBiscuit! discussion was whether it’s helpful for advocates to criticize shelters that have live release rates in the 90-95% range, or whether such criticism is setting the bar too high and actually hurting the shelter reform movement. Austin was brought up as an example of a community that has taken severe criticism from advocates for killing some animals that advocates believed were savable. Austin is in the deep south, and it is the largest city in the U.S. that has achieved a 90% or more save rate.  Austin’s live release rate was 91% in 2011. I’ve not been able to find full 2012 calendar year statistics for the Austin Animal Center, but Austin Pets Alive! reported that the city had close to a 95% live release rate in fiscal year 2011-2012. Given that Austin is a big city in the deep South, the city’s attainment of a live release rate of close to 95% seems to me like a pretty awesome accomplishment. In fact, it’s unprecedented. I can’t see how criticizing Austin does the movement any good. Going beyond the head-to-head comparisons of shelter live release rates, there are several strategic considerations that are illuminated by the 184 successful communities identified thus far. One of those considerations is that the the U.S. population living in identified 90%+ communities is about 6.8 million, which is only a little more than 2% of the total U.S. population. We can probably safely double that number due to the fact that not all of the 90%+ communities have been identified, but that still leaves about 96% of the U.S. population served by shelters saving less than 90%. In these circumstances, if advocates claim that a standard that only about 4% of the population has attained isn’t good enough, it might discourage more communities than it encourages. Another consideration is that raising the bar to 95%+ could serve as an incentive for shelters to report their data in ways selected to maximize their live release rates. As of now, there is no standardized reporting system for U.S. shelters. Shelters are free to choose how they report animals in foster care, cats who have received TNR, neonatal dogs and cats, etc. A shelter that wants to make its live release rate look as good as possible can do so without being dishonest or fraudulent, simply because of the lack of any set reporting standards. One concern I have is that if unrealistic standards are set for shelter performance, shelters may start to change their reporting standards to present a rosier scenario, simply out of fear that they will be dragged through the mud by local advocates if they don’t. One final strategic consideration is that shelters that have highly effective pet retention programs will show somewhat lower live release rates than shelters that do not have such programs. This is because the animals that are retained by their owners (and thus not counted at all in shelter statistics) are ones that likely would not have been euthanized by the shelter and would have been live releases. Thus, the shelter is left with a population of animals that on average will need more rehabilitation and be harder to adopt, thereby having a higher euthanasia rate. If we insist on live release rates of 95% or more, it may have the unintended consequence of discouraging pet retention programs. I draw two conclusions from the factors outlined above. First, there are several strategic reasons having to do with performance incentives to stick with the 90% standard rather than moving to a 95% to 100% standard. Second, it’s unfair to judge all shelters by the same standard. The fact that rural shelters in the upper peninsula of Michigan can frequently put up numbers in the 95-100% range does not mean that city shelters in the warmer parts of the country can also do so, at least under the current state of things. Sticking with the 90% standard for now wouldn’t mean forever — once it becomes routine and expected for shelters to achieve 90%, then expectations could be increased. By that time we will have a much better professional infrastructure to help shelters, and communities will have been able to build large coalitions that will help them save the last 10%.

Pflugerville is a rapidly growing city in the Austin metro area. Its current population is 52,000, up from 16,000 in the year 2000. It is located north of Austin on the border of Travis and Williamson counties. The city has its own animal control division and municipal animal shelter that are collectively known as Pflugerville Animal Control (PAC). Animals are spayed or neutered before adoption (subject to exceptions for the welfare of the animal) and microchipped. I spoke with the director of the shelter, Rhonda McLendon, and she told me that the shelter accepts any owner surrender from the city with no appointment required, no fee, and no waiting list. McLendon mentioned two private organizations that have been especially helpful to the shelter, Pflugerville’s Pfurry Pfriends (PPP) and Pflugerville Pets Alive! (PPA!). Plugerville city ordinances prohibit feral cats being returned to colonies, so PPP partners with PAC to place ferals as barn cats. The cats are spayed or neutered and vaccinated. PPP donated outdoor runs for an exercise area at the shelter, and also supplies funds for heartworm treatments and complex surgeries. PPA! promotes the shelter’s pets, and has a popular Facebook page. Early in 2013, The shelter renovated a building next to its facility to increase the number of cats who can be accommodated and to house an intake center and medical facility. The PPP website has photos of the shelter’s new Cat Adoption Center, which has cat condos. The city also purchased a vehicle to use for large adoption events and emergency management. In March of 2013, the shelter’s director issued a press release noting that the shelter had a 97% live release rate in 2012. I contacted the shelter for the full statistics, and by the method I use for this blog the live release rate for 2012 was 98%. McLendon reported that PAC had a 47% reclaim rate in 2012 due in part to officers’ success at returning stray animals to their homes in the field, without bringing them to the shelter. McLendon told me that the 47% reclaim rate includes cats. When I asked how they managed to return so many cats, McLendon told me that officers will go door-to-door to try to find an animal’s home. Animals returned in the field are not counted as intake, so PAC actually served many more animals than the 982 who were impounded in 2012. Pflugerville, TX, is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

2016 UPDATE: Director Ron Edwards has posted statistics going back to 2005 on the Ames Animal Shelter’s website. The live release rate for fiscal year 2014/2015 was 96% for cats and dogs. Ames is a city of about 60,000 people located in the center of Iowa. It is an education and technology powerhouse for a city its size. Animal control and sheltering are provided by the municipal Ames Animal Shelter. The shelter takes in both strays and owner surrenders. The shelter describes itself this way: “The Ames Animal Shelter is a safe[,] humane place for the care of homeless, unwanted, lost, injured and many other animals, while owners are sought. At the Ames Animal Shelter we promise to love and care for the pets brought to us to the best of our abilities; we promise to make them as comfortable as possible in a difficult situation; we will work responsibly to maintain our 90%+ reclaim and adoption rate!” The shelter lists its statistics for 2010 on its website. The statistics show an intake of almost 800 animals in 2010, with 400 adopted, 307 returned to owner, 8 transferred, and 76 euthanized, for a live release rate of 90%. I could not find statistics for 2011 or 2012, but the shelter stated in a 2012 newsletter that its goal was to “maintain” its “90% or higher reclaim and adoption rate.” I am listing this community as 90% Reported because I was not able to locate or obtain a full listing of statistics online as required for the right sidebar. Ames, Iowa, is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.