OUT THE FRONT DOOR

Then one day while she was at home she heard loud howling. She went out to investigate and found a stray dog on a neighbor’s property with his paw trapped in a fence. Guinn did what most people would have done – she called animal control and asked them to come help the dog. Animal control officers arrived and were able to free the dog. Then they loaded him on a truck to take him to the shelter. Guinn asked what would happen to him and was shocked when they told her that if no owner claimed him within his 5-day stray hold period he would be killed. She felt remorseful thinking that she had taken an action trying to help the dog, only to find that it might result in his death. Guinn called the shelter and asked them to allow her to adopt the dog if his owners did not reclaim him. They told her if she wanted to adopt the dog she had to come to the shelter in person and write her name on his card. So she made time in her busy day to go to the shelter to do what easily could have been done over the phone. When she walked into the shelter she was overwhelmed to see hundreds of dogs, several to a cage. She found “her” dog, wrote her name on his kennel card, and arranged to come back to pick him up as soon as he was off stray hold. That was on a Friday and she was told she could pick him up on Monday. When Guinn returned on Monday afternoon, she walked into a nearly empty shelter. They had just finished killing, and almost all the dogs she had seen on Friday were dead. As she stood there in the shelter looking around at the empty runs, she was devastated. In that moment, she decided that what she was seeing was wrong and that she wanted to change it. Her dog, one of the few left alive, was waiting, and she went through the adoption procedure with him. She left the shelter determined to do something to stop the slaughter. Guinn began to educate herself about animal shelters, and one of the things she did was attend the 2002 Best Friends conference. She met the leaders of Best Friends there and was inspired by their ideas and encouragement. Soon after, she formed a non-profit, LifeLine Animal Project, to put some of the things she had learned into practice. One of the first LifeLine initiatives was Catlanta, a TNR program for feral cats. Best Friends continued to offer assistance and mentoring, and she even worked for Best Friends at one point. It wasn’t long before she quit her job, took a giant pay cut, and started working on LifeLine full time. LifeLine started a private shelter that took in cruelty cases and special-needs animals needing rehabilitation. Their first spay-neuter clinic, founded in 2005, provided reduced-cost and free sterilizations. They offered vaccination clinics. Guinn’s philosophy was to work with the existing institutions in the community, and she tried to help the local shelters in any way that she could. In 2010, LifeLine opened its second spay-neuter clinic. That same year saw passage of a law Guinn had helped draft that banned gas chambers as a method of shelter killing in Georgia. The Atlanta area has a county-based shelter system, with each county having its own shelter. Most of Atlanta is located in Fulton County, with a small part in DeKalb County. The combined population of the two counties is about 1.7 million people. In Fulton, various non-profits had contracted to run the shelter over the years, and in DeKalb the county ran the shelter. Guinn and LifeLine worked primarily with these two shelters. In 2012, Fulton had a live release rate of about 35%. As Guinn put it, she had been working to support the shelter for 10 years doing everything she could, and yet had seen it go the wrong way. DeKalb was better at about a 55-60% live release rate, due largely to LifeLine having partnered with the shelter to run a feral cat program. Guinn decided to put in a bid to run the DeKalb shelter, not knowing if the bid would even be considered, much less granted. Shortly thereafter, the Fulton contract went up for bid, and LifeLine bid on that as well. Time went by and Guinn had not heard on either bid. Then, in January 2013, she was notified within the space of two days that LifeLine had won both bids. LifeLine took over in Fulton on March 15, 2013, and in DeKalb on July 1, 2013. The last two years have been a whirlwind for Guinn and the LifeLine staff, but it has been time well spent. The live release rate for Fulton County in 2014, in their first full year of running the shelter, was 76%, an increase of over 40 points, and in DeKalb County it was 80%. Intake at the two shelters was over 15,500 animals in 2014. Right now, going into kitten season, both shelters are running at a rolling live release rate in the mid-to-upper 80s. They have accomplished this in spite of the fact that both shelter buildings are old and outdated. LifeLine has made many improvements at the Fulton and DeKalb shelters in the last two years. These include a cat room and adoption area, pet retention programs,  and a streamlined adoption process. The Fulton County contract includes animal control, and the officers can now check for microchips and return animals in the field. The shelters treat the treatables, spending about $10,000 per month on animals who are sent to private veterinarians. LifeLine transports some animals to the north. It is continuing its anti-cruelty, pet health, and spay-neuter efforts in the community, and has sterilized over 80,000 animals. Rebecca Guinn is an example of the “do it yourself” ethic that we are seeing more and more in No Kill sheltering today. In both Fulton and DeKalb counties, outside pressure had made officials aware of the problems with the shelters. It seems very unlikely that significant positive change would have happened in either county, though, without LifeLine stepping up and making proposals to run the shelters. The do-it-yourself approach allows people who do not have a background in traditional animal shelter management or animal control to take over leadership of large city and county shelter systems. If someone with a non-shelter background applied for a job as a shelter director through the usual municipal-government process, that person would probably not be seriously considered. As the head of a non-profit with a track record of actively assisting the shelter, though, such a person is in a good position to bid on a shelter contract. The Atlanta community has been very appreciative of what Guinn and LifeLine have done. Guinn was selected as the recipient of the 2013 Leadership DeKalb’s Sue Ellen Owens Award “for creating a permanent and positive legacy of initiative and vision in the community.” Guinn defines No Kill as saving every savable animal, and she has a goal for both shelters to meet that standard in 2016. This is the first in an occasional series of blog posts on successful shelter directors.

This post is the first in what will be an occasional series trying to identify trends in the statistical data I’ve gathered in the course of doing this blog. In today’s post, I answer some frequently asked questions. 1. Is it easier for small towns to achieve a high live release rate than for big cities? I did a statistical analysis on this question on my previous blog, comparing the average population size of the successful 90%+ communities to the average size of U.S. jurisdictions as a whole, and found that the 90%+ communities I listed actually had higher populations than the average for the U.S. as a whole. What people often don’t realize when they think of this question is that there are very few big cities compared to small cities and towns, so if population size does not have any influence at all on shelter success one would expect to see many more successful small communities than large ones. 2. How long will it be before all the shelters in the U.S. get to a 90% live release rate? I had to laugh when I saw a recent article stating, apparently in all seriousness, that at the current rate of success it would be 500 years before all shelters in the U.S. achieved the 90%+ mark. The author of the article, Pat Dunaway, tried to extrapolate the future date from the existing number of 90%+ shelters and the years since the first 90%+ shelter came into existence, but she forgot one crucial thing — algebra. Her crucial mistake was to assume that the graph of shelters achieving 90%+ was a straight line over time, which is wildly inaccurate. The rate of growth is not quite logarithmic, but it’s far higher than linear. The truth is that if one wanted to try to extrapolate a date for all shelters to be at 90% or more based on historical data, one would have to use some pretty fancy mathematics, including calculus. Adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing aren’t going to do it. We would also have to have identified all the 90%+ shelters currently in existence, which we aren’t even close to having done yet. File this one under “Embarrassing Mistakes Made By People Who Are Out Of Their Depth.” 3. Speaking of historical data, what municipal shelter in the U.S. was the first to achieve a 90%+ live release rate, and when did it occur? The short answer is — we don’t know, because many times shelters don’t announce it to the world when they are successful, and even when they do report we do not generally have independent verification. Among all the shelters I’ve studied where data is available, though, the first shelter to report a 90%+ save rate appears to have been Otsego County, Michigan, where credible reports give 1999 as the date that they achieved a 90%+ live release rate. A related question is what shelter has the longest winning streak — i.e., the longest period of time up to the present with a documented live release rate of 90% or more. Otsego County is also a contender in this category, with a documented streak going back to 2007 (they may very well have been at 90% or above every year since 1999, but were not able to supply me with statistics from 2001 through 2006 when I inquired). The Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA, which has full statistics posted on its website, also shows a 90%+ live release rate going back to 2007. 4. Why do so many highly successful shelters hide their data? I’ve been told several times by officers of highly successful shelters that they do not want to make their success public because they are afraid of having people from other jurisdictions drop off animals in their jurisdiction or try to surrender animals to their shelter. The unfortunate effect of this is that there are many highly successful shelters that are not getting the recognition they deserve. 5. Is there one secret to success used by all the shelters listed on the blog? The short answer to this question is “no.” Some shelters achieve high live release rates by a high rate of adoptions, while others depend almost totally on out-of-state transfers. Some shelters are independent, while others could not succeed without their rescue partners. I frequently speak to shelter officials, and it’s rare for one of them to tell me that the shelter follows any particular program. On the other hand, many of the shelters I write about have characteristics in common, including a hardworking, dedicated director and lots of community engagement. 6. Why should we trust statistics that the shelters themselves report? My answer to this question is that we should not blindly trust any statistics provided by a shelter, because at this point we do not have any industry standard on how to collect and present statistics. Nor do we have any way of independently verifying the accuracy of statistics. Instead, we should look at the statistics provided by a shelter as just one tool to use in evaluating that shelter. That’s why it concerns me when I see people mischaracterize my blog as a list of “no kill” communities or shelters. It is no such thing. Instead, it is a list of shelters that report saving 90% or more of intake. 7. What relationship does the list on this blog have to the list posted on the No Kill Advocacy Center website? The NKAC cites my blog (with some additions and deletions) as the source for a list of communities that they call the “90% Club.” I am not in contact with the NKAC and I’m not responsible for any claims that the NKAC and its officers make about the number of successful communities in the U.S. If you doubt that there are 500 cities and towns saving 90% or more of shelter animals, take it up with them, not me! Although I will say that there are certainly more communities at a 90%+ live release rate (possibly far more) than I’ve identified so far.

These days, almost everyone involved with trying to increase live release rates for cats supports Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) and Return-To-Field (RTF) programs for community cats. The barriers still in the way of TNR and RTF include old-fashioned ordinances in a lot of localities, and bird conservationists. Advocates for cats are chipping away at the ordinances, but the conservationists are stubborn. Many of them argue that all cats should be kept indoors and that any cat found outdoors should be captured and killed. One of the arguments made by the conservationists is that cats have no place in the outdoors in the United States because they are an “invasive” species (also called “non-native”  or “alien”). Cats first came to the Americas in ships from Europe many centuries ago. The conservationists argue that non-native species such as cats destroy native wildlife because the native wildlife species have not evolved ways to protect themselves from the invaders. The idea that invasive species are bad is deeply ingrained in conservation biology, and it has been a difficult argument for cat advocates to address. A new book by science journalist Fred Pearce calls the traditional thinking about invasive species into question. The book, “The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation” (Beacon Press, 2015), uses the term “green xenophobia” to refer to what Pearce considers to be an overblown concern about damage done by invasive species, and a failure to appreciate their value and their place in nature. He argues that the success of roaming species can be seen as a positive counterweight to environmental destruction caused by humans. One of the non-native species that Pearce mentions is the cat. He challenges a cost-benefit analysis made by one scientist that purported to show that cats cost the United States economy $30 for every bird they kill, or $17 billion total each year. The $17 billion number itself is questionable, but Pearce points out that the considerable benefits to the economy that are provided by cats, including rodent control and the documented health benefits to people who have pet companions, were not weighed against the $17 billion figure. Pearce has an interesting discussion of the unintended consequences of efforts to control invasive species on Macquarie Island, a remote island between Australia and Antarctica that is a nesting place for seabirds. The first invaders on Macquarie Island were rats who had stowed away on sealers’ ships. Then cats were brought in to control the rats, and rabbits were brought in for food for the sealers. Many years later the rabbits were eating a lot of the island’s vegetation, so conservationists wiped out most of the rabbits by introducing a disease. But then the cats, with few rabbits to hunt, started killing the birds. The cats were shot, and then the rats, with no cats to control their population, ate the birds. Meanwhile, the remaining rabbits, with the cats no longer there to keep them in check, began to multiply again. (Today the invasives are thought to be gone, but how long will that last?) Much of the evidence that conservation biologists cite in an attempt to prove that invasive species cause damage to native species comes from islands like Macquarie. It is true that there have been some dramatic examples of bird extinctions caused or aided by non-native species on islands. Pearce notes, however, that new studies indicate that plant diversity of ocean islands usually rises after “invasions” by alien species, even in cases where the number of birds declined. Moreover, what happens on islands cannot and should not be generalized to mainlands. Cat advocates for years now have been pointing out the weaknesses in the argument made by conservationists that cats are doing damage to birds at the species level on the United States mainland. This important new book supports the arguments that have been made by advocates, but it goes beyond them in arguing that the success of invasive species is an example of the power of nature to change and adapt. Something to be welcomed, perhaps, rather than feared.

The animal control and sheltering situation in the state of Delaware is in transition. A private organization named the First State Animal Center and SPCA (formerly the Kent County SPCA), which has been in operation for many years, had acquired animal control and sheltering contracts for Delaware’s three counties (Kent, Sussex, and New Castle) and the city of Wilmington. But the state government decided last year to take over animal control for the entire state, and this past summer it started the process of forming an animal control unit and hiring its own animal control officers. The state takeover of animal control was supposed to be phased in gradually in the different counties as the First State animal control contracts (which still had 6 to 18 months to run at that time) ran out. Then the First State board of directors abruptly voted to cancel all of its animal control contracts effective September 15th. First State reportedly made the decision to end its contracts early because it was concerned that its employees, who had been looking for other jobs since the state announced its intention to take over animal control, would resign and leave it without enough staff to service the contracts. This meant that the state had to implement its plan to take over animal control much sooner than it had expected. September 15th has come and gone, and a temporary plan is now in place. The new state agency, Delaware Animal Services, will handle cruelty cases, rabies enforcement, and animal control calls throughout the state starting January 1, 2016. In the meantime, each county has made its own plans to cover animal control for the rest of the year. Kent County and Wilmington entered into a temporary contract with the Chester County SPCA in Pennsylvania. First State has agreed to cover animal control for Sussex and New Castle counties for the rest of the year. There will be potential advantages to having animal control centralized in the state, but it is not clear at this time where and how strays picked up by animal control in each of the four jurisdictions will be sheltered. In July, First State announced that it was getting out of the business of housing strays, and that after its animal control duties ceased it would take in only owner surrenders and would become a No Kill shelter. First State is also reportedly pushing a bill that would take away or modify the status of cats in Delaware as free-roaming. In other news: The Franklin County Dog Shelter in Ohio (Franklin County contains Columbus and has over 1 million people) is reportedly running at an 87% live release rate. Shelter director Kaye Dickson, who started with the shelter last March, says that only dogs with health and behavior problems are euthanized. Statistics on the website show an 81-82% live release rate for June, July, and August, not counting owner-requested euthanasia. In 2014, owner-requested euthanasias represented about 5% of the 11,000 dogs taken in to the shelter. Maddie’s Fund has an article about how shelters in another Ohio city, Cleveland, have an informal partnership to help each other with emergencies such as hoarding busts. The lesson is that even in cases where the organizations in a city do not want to invest a lot of time in crafting a formal coalition, informal arrangements can accomplish a lot. More from Maddie’s — the Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida is reporting a record enrollment in shelter medicine courses of 427 students for 2014-2015, plus 111 students who have completed the certificate program, and the launch of a brand-new Master’s degree in shelter medicine. Here is a report on this and other news from the program. The Million Cat Challenge is closing in on 300,000 cats saved by the shelters enrolled in its program. I still run across people active in animal sheltering who have not heard of the Million Cat Challenge. How can that be? Arin Greenwood reports in the Huffington Post about one smart landlord who has figured out how to acquire long-term, grateful tenants: rent only to people who have pit bulls. With so many landlords reluctant to rent to owners of “pit bulls,” this is a market waiting to be captured. Sarasota County in Florida is discussing a possible law to regulate commercial sale of animals by stores. The most recent commissioners’ meeting on the topic was standing-room only. A public hearing will be held in January.

Lake County is in west central Colorado and has a population of 7300 people. The city of Leadville, the county seat, has 2600 inhabitants. Lake County is in an extremely mountainous area, and it has an elevation that is mostly above 9000 feet. The county contains the highest peak in Colorado, Mt. Elbert. The Leadville/Lake County Animal Shelter (LLCAS) is run by the city and county. I called the shelter and was told that LLCAS accepts owner surrenders from its jurisdiction subject to a small fee and on a space-available basis. The shelter is open 7 days a week and closes only on major holidays. Statistics from the Colorado Department of Agriculture for 2012 show that LLCAS took in 181 dogs and cats in 2012 and had a live release rate of 99% for 2012 (98% if the one animal who died in shelter care is included with euthanasias). The shelter’s intake is 25 animals per 1000 people.

The Colorado Department of Agriculture collects detailed statistics* for shelters in the state that impound animals. Based on those statistics, in recent weeks I’ve been listing the many cities and counties in Colorado that report saving 90% or more of their shelter animals. In addition to the statistics for individual shelters, the state also provides shelter statistics for the state as a whole, and in this post I take a look at those statistics. There is some inspiring news, along with a couple of surprises. The consolidated live release rate for all of the shelters reporting to the state in 2012 was 85.5%.** The consolidated 2012 live release rate for dogs was 90%. Thus, based on the reported figures, the entire state of Colorado met the live release rate benchmark for dogs in 2012. The rate for cats was 79%, which is much higher than average. What accounts for Colorado’s 85.5% live release rate? The return-to-owner (RTO) rate is certainly part of it. There were 40,948 stray dogs impounded, with 24,245 returned to their owners, giving the state a consolidated 59% RTO rate for dogs. The rate is 49% if all dogs in the confiscated/protective custody and incoming “other” categories are added to the figure for strays. As good as that RTO rate for dogs is, one large shelter in Colorado has shown that RTO rates for dogs can go even higher. The Humane Society of Boulder Valley reported a 90% RTO rate for dogs in 2012 based on its stray dog intake, and a 79% RTO rate for dogs based on all dog intake other than owner surrenders and transfers. As to cats, the state’s reporting form directs that feral cat live releases be recorded as RTO. Of the 29,492 stray cats taken in by Colorado shelters in 2012, 6345 were recorded as RTO, for an impressive 22% RTO rate for cats. This figure would presumably be somewhat lower if feral cats were not counted. Adoptions are also a big part of Colorado’s success. Colorado shelters adopted out 64% of the animals impounded in 2012 who were not returned to their owners. Although Colorado is doing very well at getting animals out of the shelter alive, it is not doing so well at keeping them out of the shelter in the first place. Colorado shelters reported a total intake of 159,183 dogs and cats in 2012 — 94,361 dogs and 64,822 cats. The 2012 estimate for the state’s population is 5.2 million people, so the rate of intake for dogs and cats in 2012 was 31 animals per 1000 people. This is either average or well above average, depending on what estimate you use, but it is certainly not a low intake. Colorado is a destination state for transports, but even if you subtract out-of-state incoming transfers from the intake numbers, the intake per 1000 people was 28. The fact that Colorado communities are able to maintain such high live release rates in the face of high intake makes their achievement even more impressive. The statistics showing that Colorado’s success is more on the placement side than the intake side correlate with what I found in researching shelters in the state. The shelter managers and workers I interviewed for the blog impressed me as people who were working very hard to get animals out of the shelter alive. You can see it in the shelter websites, Facebook pages, and newsletters, where they talk about their programs and initiatives. Now for the bad news — there are several cities in Colorado that still have grandfathered breed-specific bans. Two cities that have bans — Louisville and Lone Tree — are served by shelters with 90%+ live release rates, but I don’t list them as 90%+ communities because of the bans. Denver, which is close to a 90% live release rate, also has a ban. NOTES: *I’ve not come across any public shelters that have failed to report to the state, but there could be some out there. Therefore, I cannot guarantee that the state statistics account for every animal that was impounded in Colorado in 2012. **Notes about the data: There were 125,298 live releases for dogs and cats in the state in 2012 (82,605 adoptions, 30,590 returns-to-owner, and 12,103 transfers), and 21,298 euthanasias. The 85.5% live release rate may be slightly overstated because of double counting of the outgoing in-state transfers (the animal shelter reporting requirement includes some of the larger rescues along with the public shelters, and some shelters help out other shelters when needed), but even if we assume that all 12, 041 of the in-state transfers were transferred to other reporting organizations, it drops the live release rate by only about 1.5%. There were 1223 dogs and cats who died in shelter care, and if they are counted in with euthanasias the live release rate drops by about 1 percentage point. There is no separate category for owner-requested euthanasia, and the state suggests recording those euthanasias as “Other” in both the incoming and outgoing categories. Some shelters include fosters in the outgoing “Other” category. The fact that both live and euthanized animals may be recorded in the outgoing “Other” category is an unfortunate flaw in the reporting system, but it does not affect the standard calculation of the live release rate.

Prescott City (population 40,000) is the county seat of Yavapai County, located in the center of Arizona north of Phoenix. A town called Prescott Valley (population 39,000) lies northeast of Prescott city. The two cities, along with Chino Valley and Dewey-Humboldt, are part of an area known as the Quad Cities. The shelter states that its population served is 115,000. The Yavapai Humane Society (YHS) is a private, non-profit organization that provides animal shelter services for Prescott City and Prescott Valley and part of Yavapai County.  YHS takes in owner surrenders but it frequently has a waiting list, and does not note any exceptions on its website. The shelter has a “Safety Net” program for people who are having difficulty caring for their pets, barn cat and TNR programs, a fund for extraordinary medical expenses, and it networks for hard-to-place animals. In 2012, YHS added a cat medical facility, a digital x-ray machine, and an enrichment program. The shelter logged over 36,000 volunteer hours. YHS does not release its full numerical statistics, and instead releases reports of percentages. They reported a 90% live release rate for 2011, which was their first year at 90% or above. Their live release rate increased to 95% for 2012. Their annual report for 2012 stated that their intake for the year was 3500 dogs and cats, with 6% of cats and 5% of dogs being euthanized. For 2013, YHS reports that their live release rate increased to 97%. The shelter euthanized 104 dogs and cats in 2013, compared to 1570 in 2009, the last full year before their program to increase save rates began. Prescott City and Prescott Valley are counted in the Running Totals as 90%+ communities.

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

Teller County is located in central Colorado and is part of the Colorado Springs metropolitan area. Teller County’s population is 23,000 people. The county seat is Cripple Creek, which has a population of 1200. The largest city in Teller County is Woodland Park, which has a population of 6500. The Teller County Regional Animal Shelter (TCRAS) takes in strays and owner surrenders for the county and the city of Woodland Park. Animal control in Teller County is provided by the sheriff’s office. Woodland Park has its own animal control division. The city of Cripple Creek has its own animal control and shelter, the Cripple Creek Animal Shelter (CCAS). A page on the the TCRAS website describes how TCRAS was formed in the year 2000 specifically to avoid having the county send its animals to a kill shelter. Like many progressive shelters, TCRAS does not impound stray cats (see this post by the president of HSUS for more information on recommended community cat policy). I spoke to an official of TCRAS who told me that the shelter takes in owner surrenders from Teller County on a space-available basis. An animal control officer with CCAS told me that they accept owner surrenders from their jurisdiction with no conditions other than a $75 surrender fee. The Colorado Department of Agriculture collects statistics each year on animal shelters in the state. In 2012, TCRAS reported an intake of 757 animals. Its live release rate was 99% (98% if animals who died in shelter care are included with euthanasias). CCAS reported an intake of 38 animals with no euthanasias or deaths in shelter care, for a live release rate of 100%. CCAS had 2 transfers, which the animal control officer told me went to TCRAS.

First, a housekeeping note – if your organization does not already have my blog on your press release distribution list, please feel free to add it. My e-mail is administrator@outthefrontdoor.com. And now to the news. Brother Wolf, the innovative non-profit that has worked with the county shelter in Asheville, North Carolina, to go No Kill, has announced a 5-year plan to build a large sanctuary that will eventually house 600 dogs and 600 cats on 82.5 acres. The purpose of the sanctuary is to rehabilitate animals who need more time and care than the existing shelters can easily provide. The $4.9 million sanctuary will have a veterinary clinic on site. The plans include a learning center and guest cabins for visitors. Brother Wolf’s founder and president, Denise Bitz, decided to leave her career as a nurse and open Brother Wolf after a visit to Best Friends in 2010, so she is familiar with the life-changing experiences that a sanctuary can provide. Paul Berry, a former CEO of Best Friends, is now the executive director of Brother Wolf. There are several upcoming conferences. The SPARCS International Conference on Dog Behavior is being held in Phoenix on June 19-21. The presenters include Michael Hennessy, who will speak on reducing stress in shelter dogs. Best Friends National Conference is being held July 16-19 in Atlanta. The 12th annual ASPCA Cornell Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Conference is being held on July 31-August 2 in Ithaca. Pets who are overdue on their rabies vaccines and come in contact with a rabid animal can safely receive booster vaccination rather than quarantine or euthanasia, according to a study published in JAVMA. This finding will be included in the upcoming edition of the definitive rabies public health guide later this year, which should result in it becoming standard practice. A government office in New Mexico teamed up with a rescue to set up a cat library. The way it works is that an employee who needs a break during the day can “check out” a cat for a short period of fun and relaxation. The program has resulted in 100 adoptions in three years. Speaking of libraries, reading to shy shelter animals helps them come out of their shells. Big news from Houston this week. The city shelter, BARC, had a ribbon-cutting celebration for the opening of Phase I of its $6.1 million adoption center. The city has also brought Emancipet, an Austin based spay-neuter organization, to Houston. Emancipet has a 48′ mobile clinic that can provide 35 reduced-cost or free spay-neuter surgeries per day. Emancipet has started a fundraising effort to build three permanent clinics in Houston by 2017. The ASPCA has pledged $1 million to the effort. A proposed bill in New York State would provide $200,000 in annual funding for TNR programs. The bill is being opposed by a coalition that includes conservation groups. The Just One Day adoption event was held this past Thursday, and several shelters reported good results. The Muncie shelter held a very successful 24-hour event. Here is an interesting blog from a veterinarian who thinks that veterinarians should refuse to participate in shelter killing of healthy or treatable animals. She makes an analogy to the moral stand that doctors have taken against participating in the execution of human prisoners. The discussion in the comments is also interesting, and remarkably civilized on this contentious topic. If you are not keeping an eye on the Maddie’s Institute blog, you are missing out on some great free guidance for using social media. The most recent article discusses frequency of posting to Facebook. Miami-Dade County Animal Services has a 28′ by 8′ van called the Hope Express dedicated to mobile adoptions. It is self-contained, requiring no electrical or water hookups, and is “easy” to set up and break down. it has 24 animal compartments that can be increased to 56 with dividers to accommodate various sizes of pets. Since its launch last summer it has been the centerpiece of events at many types of venues including parks, malls, and downtown Miami. The sides of the van lift up to provide shade and to allow people to view the animals in their compartments. May 17-23 was Dog Bite Prevention Week. Julie Hecht has an interesting post on current thinking about dog aggression – that it is more often situational and learned rather than generalized and innate. HSUS has a webinar on July 1 on how to change adoption policies to remove barriers to adoption and attract potential adopters.

Big dogs are a challenge for many animal shelters. In my conversations with shelter directors, whether the shelter is large or small, urban or rural, public or private, No Kill or still striving for No Kill, one thing I hear a lot is that large dogs are the toughest group to get out the door alive. Why is that? I hear several reasons. One is that people will more readily adopt what Rich Avanzino calls the “cutes and cuddlies.” A different way of saying this is that there is a disproportionate number of big dogs coming into shelters relative to the demand for them. Another issue with big dogs is that the stakes are a lot higher in temperament testing with a large dog than a tiny one. And finally, most pits and pit mixes (so called) are medium or large dogs, and there is still a lot of prejudice against blocky-headed, muscular, short-coated dogs. Several shelters that I’ve followed on the blog as they transitioned to No Kill seemed to hit a wall, or at least a slowdown, when they reached an 80-85% live release rate for dogs. In some cases this slowdown has resulted in local advocates becoming frustrated with the shelter, and the relationship between advocates and the shelter has deteriorated. Even shelters that are saving over 90% of dogs may be sharply criticized by local advocates due to the shelter’s performance in placing large dogs. Many times when a shelter makes a decision to euthanize a large dog, the deciding factor is temperament. The concern with large dogs is especially acute because of their ability to inflict more damage. In the old days 20 years ago or more, when shelters were saving only a small percentage of their animals, the temperament of shelter dogs was not a big issue because any dog with an even slightly questionable temperament was simply killed. As we have saved a higher and higher percentage of shelter dogs, the issue of temperament evaluation is looming ever larger. Any time you have a group of shelter directors together, one of the most popular topics of discussion will likely be how to decide if a dog is safe to adopt out. Dr. Emily Weiss is a behavior expert who has written extensively about dog temperament evaluation in the shelter environment. Dr. Weiss is associated with the SAFER test, which is, to say the least, not popular among many No Kill advocates. SAFER as it was originally developed was just intended to be one tool in assessments. A few days ago the ASPCA announced that it would no longer certify people for SAFER use. My impression in reading the announcement is that ASPCA officials are frustrated with people not using the assessment consistently in the way it was intended. Beyond the SAFER controversy, Dr. Weiss has written many thoughtful blog posts on issues of temperament testing for shelter dogs. She recently wrote a blog post that summed up the current state of behavior evaluations for shelter dogs. In the blog, titled “Taking Risks,” she notes that even among experts “there is little agreement as to where to draw the line” between a dog that is safe to adopt out and one that is not. As she says, the stakes in making these decisions are very high – err on one side and an adoptable dog loses its life. Err on the other side and a dog that is a danger to people or other animals is adopted out into the community. There is no easy answer to this dilemma, because dog behavior will never be straightforward to predict and because the circumstances that dogs face are so variable. The situation is not hopeless, though, and people continue to press forward with new ways to get at the problem. In Dr. Weiss’s most recent blog post she mentioned an experiment done at the county shelter in Fairfax County, Virginia, which gathered some very interesting data. The experiment was overseen by Kristen Auerbach, who is now at Austin. In this program, shelter dogs with issues including fear aggression, kennel stress, barrier reactivity, and resource guarding were placed in selected foster homes. The outcomes were great, with many of the dogs showing different behaviors outside of the shelter. Over 90% of these problem dogs were able to be adopted out successfully and safely. A similar program was in effect at the Austin city shelter when Auerbach arrived earlier this year, and she hopes to collect data from that program as well and to publicize it to a wider audience. Studies like this are important because they quantify what happens with dogs under standardized conditions. The data collected by Auerbach also has implications for the importance of properly designed shelter buildings. How much of the temperament problems we see in dogs is simply due to the unnatural conditions of the typical shelter? If the fearful and stressed dogs could be given their own, homelike quiet space within the shelter and if the barrier-reactive dogs could be housed without the type of barrier that causes the reaction, perhaps those problems could be successfully dealt with inside the shelter. And of course a good shelter design facilitates activities for dogs who need to burn off energy and gain social skills, as with Aimee Sadler’s Playing for Life program. No Kill is only a little more than 20 years old at this point, and we are still learning. The issue of safe placement of dogs who show problematic behavior in the shelter, particularly large dogs, is difficult, but a lot of talented people are working on the issue and progress is being made.

A wonderful story that gets little attention is what happened in 1998 in Otsego County, Michigan. That year, a group of citizens got together and decided that they wanted to stop the killing at their county shelter. They did so in a big way, achieving a live release rate of over 90% in 1999 and every year since then for which we have statistics. The Otsego County shelter was one of the first No Kill shelters in the United States. This article is a nice reminiscence by the current Otsego County shelter director about the people who made the community No Kill. The Salina Animal Shelter in Salina, Kansas, has announced that it has achieved a 90% live release rate. The Petco Foundation has provided a grant to help the shelter upgrade its facilities and sustain its live release rate. The Stockton, California shelter, which is under new management, announced a free adoption event for pits and pit mixes to try to reduce the numbers at the shelter. Twenty-four hours later, 13 of the dogs had been adopted or rescued. Hillsborough County, Florida (where Tampa is located) has had a mystery drop of up to 20% in cat intake at the city/county shelter. Both stray impounds and owner surrenders have dropped. The shelter has a community cat program, but director Scott Trebatoski does not think that program has been in effect long enough to account for the change. He speculates that maybe there has been a change in attitude as to how people deal with cats in their neighborhoods. Perhaps people who hear about the community cat program are deciding to do-it-themselves by getting neighborhood cats spayed and neutered. It will be interesting to see if the drop persists through kitten season. A great story about the power of one. Lisa McCormick of Belleville, Illinois, adopted a couple of cats from an Illinois pound 15 years ago. The pound did not adopt out many animals, and it had buckets of collars sitting on top of its gas chamber. McCormick was inspired to start a rescue, and since 2002 her rescue, Partners for Pets, has re-homed over 12,000 dogs and cats. The rescue has acquired a site for a new shelter and will be moving soon. And a great story about what a No Kill group can do to create the change they want to see. Operation Pets Alive of Montgomery County, Texas, just north of the Houston metro area, is partnering with the county shelter to help it move toward No Kill. Operation Pets Alive programs include transports, offsite adoption events, fostering, and targeted spay-neuter. One of the No Kill flagship shelters, the Nevada Humane Society, is increasing its efforts to serve its area. There are neighborhoods in every city that have few resources for pets, just as there are neighborhoods that have few resources for people to buy healthy food. In such neighborhoods it can be hard for the providers of free and low-cost spay-neutering and pet health services to reach the people who need that help. Recently some shelters have started programs to reach out to these neighborhoods on a person-to-person basis, and NHS is one of them. The shelter’s director, Kevin Ryan, has announced that this work will be furthered by the shelter’s selection as a Pets For Life mentor in the HSUS program. Lost Dogs of America has a very helpful blog on how to trace an animal’s owner from its microchip even when the contact information is out of date or the chip was never registered. A former shelter dog is doing search and rescue in Nepal. Dubuque County, Iowa, is discussing a deal with a private non-profit No Kill, Whispurring Hope Rescue, to take over most animal control duties in the county and adopt out animals. A new documentary, Dog by Dog, follows the money trail in the puppy mill business. Sometimes transporters have to refuse to work with a shelter. It doesn’t happen very often, and it is hard for rescuers to walk away from a shelter, but it keeps transports safe. One of Best Friends’ week-long workshops on how to start and run a sanctuary is coming up June 7-13. Best Friends has been putting on these workshops since 1999. Peter Wolf has a cautionary tale about what can happen when you try to fool Mother Nature. Here is a helpful blog post about getting access to journal articles about canine science. Dogs Playing for Life hosted a very successful event for shelter staff and volunteers from six shelters in Phoenix, Oregon, last week. The director of one of the shelters said play time had a “fully transformational” effect on one German Shepherd who had previously leaped at her gate and barked when approached. One of the host shelters, the Jackson County Animal Shelter, is currently at an 85% live release rate and is aiming for 95%.