OUT THE FRONT DOOR

Garfield County has a large landmass that stretches from west of Denver to the western border of Colorado. It has a population of over 56,000 people. The county seat is Glenwood Springs, which has a population of about 10,000. Colorado Animal Rescue (CAS) is a non-profit that has animal sheltering contracts with the county and Glenwood Springs. (The city of Rifle is located in Garfield County, but it has its own animal shelter that reports separately.) CAS takes in strays and owner surrenders, but has a waiting list for owner surrenders and charges a fee. CAS reported a 96% live release rate to Maddie’s Fund in 2010, with an intake of 931 animals (scroll down in the link). In 2011, the shelter reported a live release rate of 97% with an intake of 992. The shelter did not report any owner-requested euthanasias, and the live release rate with animals who died or were lost in shelter care included with euthanasias was 96%. CAS also reports its statistics each year to the state of Colorado. In 2012, it reported an intake of 1098 animals. The live release rate was 97%. Garfield County and Glenwood Springs are two of a group of communities in the area west of Denver that report to Maddie’s Fund and the Asilomar Accords as part of the Northwestern Colorado Coalition. Other members of the coalition are Summit, Pitkin, and Eagle counties and the cities of Aspen and Rifle. The coalition reported an overall 97% live release rate in 2010 and 98% in 2011 (see pages 1-2 in the links).

As we’re waiting for the 2013 end-of-year statistics to start coming out, I thought this might be a good time to discuss a very interesting statistical study done by Makena Yarbrough, the director of the Lynchburg Humane Society in Lynchburg, Virginia. The study looked at her shelter’s experience with Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) over several years. Yarbrough even included a “control” in the study in the form of statistics from the city of Danville, which is located south of Lynchburg along the Virginia-North Carolina border. Yarbrough’s blog post reporting on the study, linked here, is well worth reading. The study looked at the statistics for Lynchburg and Danville for cat intake and disposition for every year from 2005 to 2012. Lynchburg has a program that offers free spay/neuter and rabies shots to feral and stray cats. Danville impounds cats, but has no TNR program. The graph of outcomes in the two shelters shows a stunning difference. The Danville shelter’s live release rate for cats ranges from 3% to 10% (not a typo) for the years from 2005 to 2012, and the two lowest years are 2011 and 2012, which were both at 3%. Lynchburg’s worst year, at a 21% live release rate for cats in 2005, was never as bad as Danville but the really interesting thing is what happened in 2009, when the Lynchburg shelter began promoting TNR. The live release rate for cats, which had been creeping up slowly before 2009, took a big jump from 36% to 51%. Then in 2010 it took an even bigger jump to 75%. In 2011 and  2012 Lynchburg had an 85% and 81% live release rate for cats, compared to Danville’s 3% in each of those years. Total intake of cats in Lynchburg dropped from 1354 in 2008, the year before the shelter started promoting TNR, to 949 in 2012, whereas total intake of cats in Danville from 2008 to 2012 stayed fairly steady at 3622 in 2008 and 3557 in 2012. Not all of Lynchburg’s increase in live release rates was due to their drop in cat intake, because the number of cat adoptions went up substantially from 2005 to 2012, but the drop of about 400 cats per year in intake must have contributed greatly to the improved live release rate. As for 2013, Yarbrough said in August “so far this year we have seen an even bigger decrease in cats/kittens to the point where kitten season seemed very very mild.  And we were wondering if we even had one.” She points out that since TNR causes the number of free-roaming cats to decrease, bird conservationists and people who are concerned about rabies should be supporting TNR instead of opposing it. This isn’t the first time that Yarbrough has published an interesting statistical study. I’ve written previously about her study on the effects of Lynchburg’s appointment policy for owner surrenders. Statistical studies like these are so helpful for shelter reform advocacy efforts. I know that shelter directors are very busy people, but it would be nice to see more such studies, and I’d like to thank Makena Yarbrough for taking the time to analyze and write about her shelter’s experiences.

Henderson County is in a rural area in the western part of Kentucky. The county contains the eponymous city of Henderson, which has a population of about 28,000. The combined population of city and county is about 46,000. The Ohio River separates the county from Evansville, Indiana, a city of about 117,000 people. The Humane Society of Henderson County (HSHC) is a private non-profit that has the animal control and sheltering contract for both the city of Henderson and Henderson County. The shelter also accepts owner surrenders from its jurisdiction, with no conditions. In a recent article, a reporter interviewed Josh Cromer, who was hired as the director of the shelter on October 3, 2011. Cromer discussed his first year with the shelter, and stated that the euthanasia rate for the first nine months of 2012 was only 5%, compared to 40-45% in previous years. Cromer stated that his three greatest accomplishments during the year were getting a good team together, reducing the euthanasia rate, and creating a cage-free area for cats. He expressed disappointment at not being able to attract as many volunteers as he wanted, and listed several improvements to the physical plant that are planned or in progress. The shelter posts statistics on its home page, listing its statistics through September 22, 2012 as intake = 1247, return to owner = 80, adoption and transfer = 998, and euthanasia = 65. This is a 94% live release rate under the method used by this blog. Last year the county floated a plan to take over animal control and build a pound. Some people feared this would lead to the county simply killing the animals that were impounded in the new facility. Fortunately, the proposal for the new pound has been tabled, and there do not appear to be any plans at this time to bring it up again. Henderson County, KY, is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

The Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter (WCRAS), located in Texas just north of Austin, provides animal sheltering services for Williamson County (population 423,000) and numerous communities within the county. WCRAS has contracts with four of the communities: Round Rock (population 100,000), Cedar Park (population 54,000), Leander, (population 27,000), and Hutto (population 15,000). In addition to taking in strays picked up by animal control, the shelter accepts owner surrenders during its business hours, with a small fee. WCRAS provides a link on its home page to its statistics for the calendar year and for its fiscal-year annual reports going back to 2009-2010. The shelter’s statistics for the calendar year of 2012 show a total intake of 7488 cats and dogs. The live release rate for the year was 94%. I’m not able to calculate a modified live release rate (including animals who died in shelter care in the euthanasia total) because the statistics provided by WCRAS include animals who were dead on arrival in the number who died in shelter care. However, the modified live release rate is at least 90%, because the rate calculated with the DOA’s included was 90%. The shelter’s Annual Report for the fiscal year 2011-2012 shows that intake for the 2011-2012 fiscal year was the highest in the last 5 fiscal years. The shelter reduced its number of euthanasias in spite of increased intake. The Annual Report states that the shelter has 335 foster homes who took in 1764 fosters during the fiscal year (page 9), and volunteers who logged 9166 hours (page 11). One interesting statistic from the Annual Report is the average length of stay for animals in the WCRAS shelter. Cats on average stayed 15 days, and dogs on average stayed 11 days. Average length of stay is a very important criterion in measuring shelter performance, but it is one that we rarely see in a shelter’s published statistics.

Fairfax County, which is located in northern Virginia within commuting distance of Washington, DC, has 1,082,000 human residents. The public animal shelter in Fairfax County achieved a 90%+ live release rate in 2013, and Fairfax County is now the largest jurisdiction listed as a 90%+ community by this blog. The Fairfax County Animal Services Division (FCASD) is the municipal agency providing animal control and sheltering for the county. The Fairfax County Animal Shelter (FCAS) is part of FCASD. FCAS describes itself as an “open access” shelter for owner surrenders. In December of 2012 construction was completed on a shelter expansion that doubled FCAS’s square footage. FCAS got a new director in November 2012, Tawny Hammond. One of Hammond’s initiatives for the shelter in 2013 was to increase the number of pit bull adoptions. They succeeded in nearly doubling the number of pit bull adoptions. (Although the article in the link mentions restrictions on pit bull adoptions, Fairfax County does not have breed-specific legislation determining dangerousness). FCAS has also begun to include pit bulls in their transports into the shelter. FCAS has a trap-neuter-return (TNR) program that has been operating since 2008 and has provided TNR to over 3000 cats. The shelter does not count feral cats in its impounds or dispositions. Cats are considered free roaming in Fairfax County and animal control officers therefore do not impound healthy stray cats. There are several other organizations in the region that should be noted. The City of Fairfax, an independent city of 23,000 people, has its own animal shelter which operates independently of FCAS. Owner surrenders and a small number of  strays are taken in by the Humane Society of Fairfax County (HSFC). The Friends of the Fairfax County Animal Shelter raise funds for FCAS, volunteer at the shelter, and help with marketing. FCAS sent me their statistics for 2013. Their intake was 3747 animals (not counting animals presented for owner-requested euthanasia). This is an exceptionally low intake of 3.5 animals per 1000 people. There are several reasons for the county to have a low intake. One of the most obvious explanations is the county’s policy not to impound stray cats. Another reason is that HSFC takes in some owner surrenders and a few strays. FCAS has a robust pet retention program, which no doubt keeps many potential owner surrenders in their homes. Another possible explanation is the county’s very high median household income (third highest in the United States in 2012). Studies have shown that wealthier families are more likely to spay and neuter their pets. Whatever the full range of explanations might be, FCAS has achieved a very low intake. FCAS’s live release rate for 2013 was 92% (based on statistics sent to me by a shelter official). This includes 1120 animals returned to their owners, 1777 adoptions, and 376 transfers out. If owner-requested euthanasias are included in total euthanasias, the live release rate drops to 82% (see discussion below). The 31 animals who died in shelter care, if added to euthanasias, do not change the live release rate. HSFC has not made their statistics available yet for 2013, but in 2012 they reported a 99% live release rate to the state of Virginia with an intake of 551 animals. The City of Fairfax houses their shelter animals with a local veterinarian and does not report to the state. I noted above that FCAS’s live release rate for 2013 drops to 82% if owner-requested euthanasias are included in total euthanasias. This drop of 10 points is really an artifact of the shelter’s extremely low intake per 1000 people. The typical yearly intake for a shelter serving 1,082,000 people would be in the range of 16,000 to 32,000 animals. If FCAS took in that number of animals, then the 454 owner-requested euthanasias they had in 2013 would represent only about 2% of intake, a much more typical number. One thing we must keep in mind as shelters succeed in decreasing their intake is that it will cause changes in the statistics we generally see. I communicated at length with a shelter official about FCAS’s policy as to owner-requested euthanasia, and the policy is to restrict the practice to animals who would be euthanized for severe aggression or untreatable illness if they were impounded. The shelter official told me that in 2014 they are going to require that the shelter veterinarian examine every animal where euthanasia is requested by the owner and verify that euthanasia is required. Ultimately, FCAS officials would like to move this service out of the shelter and to a clinic setting where it could be provided for low-income people along with other essential veterinary services.

Otsego County is located in a rural area in the northern part of Michigan’s lower peninsula, and has a population of about 23,000 people. Otsego County Animal Control is the municipal agency that provides animal control and sheltering services for Otsego County. The shelter is supported by the Friends for Life organization, which provides a range of services including Petfinder listings and foster homes. A new shelter building was completed in January 2012 after funds were approved by local taxpayers. I called the shelter to ask about the owner surrender policy, and was told that Otsego County residents do not have to make an appointment or pay a fee to surrender an animal. The shelter appreciates people calling ahead if they wish to surrender an animal, but does not require advance notice. The shelter takes in stray cats as well as dogs. I was told that the county does not have many feral cats, but if they get a call about feral cats they offer TNR. They also sometimes relocate cats through a barn cat program. In 1999, the county adopted a resolution supporting the concept that no adoptable companion animal should be killed. The resolution “was also founded on the belief that ONLY those animals received in a condition of terminal illness or mortal injury that are beyond clinical redemption and/or animals that are deemed aggressive and/or dangerous and cannot be successfully rehabilitated with available resources should be humanely destroyed.” Friends For Life reports that the shelter had a “reclaiming/adoption” rate of 99.5% in 1999 and 98.75% in 2000. I was not able to find statistics for the years from 2001 to 2006, although partial statistics from 2001 and 2002 indicate the shelter had a 90% or higher live release rate in those years. The Michigan state database shows that the shelter reported live release rates as follows from 2007 through 2012: 2007 — 91% 2008 — 95% 2009 —  96% 2010 —  95% 2011 —  95% 2012 — 95% (Note: The form that Otsego County Animal Control submitted to the state of Michigan for 2012 contains an error in that it states that 197 cats and dogs were sold for research. I spoke to a shelter official who verified that this was a mistake on the form, that no animals were sold for research, and that the 197 number was for returns-to-owner.)

The great majority of the communities listed in the right sidebar of this blog have attained their high live release rates by placing animals within their own communities. There are some places, though, that rely heavily on sending animals out of the state to save them. For those of you who are not familiar with transports, they generally involve sending animals from shelters in the south to rescues and shelters in the north. Colorado is a major receiving state for transports, and it takes in thousands of animals per year from other states. Transports are not easy – the trips often take 2 days (meaning that overnight accommodations must be found), a health certificate is usually required, and money must come from somewhere for gasoline, crates, etc. Transports used to be done by volunteers driving individual “legs” of 1-2 hours, which involved a lot of work in recruiting and coordinating the volunteers, but now they are often done with a large van and one driver who does the whole route. There are also private companies who will transport shelter animals for a fee. There is even a group called Pilots N Paws that uses volunteer pilots to fly animals. In most cases, the animals who are transported are on the kill list of their sending shelter, so there is no doubt that transports are literally lifesaving for the great majority of the transported animals. Many people nevertheless object to transports because they fear that transported animals will take homes away from animals in the receiving communities and result in those animals being killed. What does the evidence say on this issue? Fortunately, the state of Colorado collects detailed statistics for its animal care facilities, and since Colorado is also a state that receives many transferred animals, these statistics can tell us a lot about whether transferred animals take homes from animals in the receiving location. The Colorado reporting system has a “shelter” category that includes all shelters that receive impounded animals as well as some private organizations that have a centralized intake facility. (Rescues that do not have a centralized facility report in a separate category.) Thus, we have statistics available for public shelters in Colorado. If transports are resulting in local animals being euthanized, we should be able to see the effect in the numbers. In 2012, impounding shelters in Colorado transported in 13,726 animals —  12,642 dogs and 1084 cats. (There were probably many thousands more who were transported in by non-impounding rescues, but those transports are not germane to our inquiry since rescues generally will not euthanize for time or space). As I discussed in an earlier post, Colorado had an overall 90% live release rate for dogs for 2012. With a live release rate that high, it is unlikely that very many, if any, local dogs were killed who could have been adopted but for the transports. We know from the experience of many shelters all over the United States that the difficulty in placing the last 10% of dogs is more a matter of finding resources than finding homes — the last 10% are generally animals who need medical care or training, or perhaps hospice or sanctuary. In fact, the statistics definitively prove that, as least as far as impounding shelters are concerned, the transports of dogs into Colorado saved lives in 2012. As mentioned above, 12,642 dogs were received by impounding shelters. There were 8801 euthanasias of dogs in the entire state for 2012 by those shelters. Thus, even if we assume for the sake of argument that every single transported dog took away a home from a local dog, there were still 3841 net lives saved by the end of the year. I think it’s safe to conclude, based on these numbers, that transports of dogs into Colorado took sales away from breeders rather than taking away homes from local shelter dogs. But what about cats? There were only 1084 cats transported into Colorado in 2012. Colorado is doing far better than most states with cats, in that it had a live release rate for cats of 79% in 2012. I think we would need to know more about the cats being transported into Colorado to make a judgment. If the cats are mostly purebred, it may be that they are taking sales away from breeders rather than homes from local cats. Still, the evidence in favor of the effectiveness of transports for cats is much less than for dogs. Can we generalize from the experience in Colorado to make conclusions about transports nationwide? I think we can, because there does not appear to be anything that sets Colorado apart from the other transportation destination states that would make such a generalization invalid. There are a great many communities in the northeast that are at a 90% or more live release rate for dogs, and the northeast probably receives more transports than any other part of the country. So the same statistics that apply in Colorado probably apply to most destination communities. I think this study shows statistical support for the conclusion that there is a shortage of adoptable dogs in certain areas of the country. I think the study also shows that transporters in general are being careful not to take homes away from adoptable animals. This is shown by the fact that in 2012, transporters brought only a few cats into Colorado, and did not bring in enough dogs to push the live release rate below 90%.

Kansas City, Missouri, is a city of 464,000 people. It is located on the western border of Missouri, with the state border bisecting it from the smaller city of Kansas City, Kansas. For a variety of reasons, the kill rate at the Kansas City, Missouri, animal shelter went from 66% in 2006 down to 32% in 2011. At that point, with one in three shelter animals still dying, the city decided not to renew the contract of the organization that had been running the shelter. A group of pet advocates then got together and formed a new non-profit called Kansas City Pet Project (KCPP). The president of the board of directors of the new organization was well-known blogger Brent Toellner, who writes the KC Dog Blog. The first agenda item of the new organization was to win the contract to run the city shelter. After a struggle over financing, the contract with KCPP was finally approved by the city council in November of 2011. KCPP is an “open access” shelter that accepts animals from animal control and from the public. KCPP formally began running the Kansas City shelter on January 1, 2012, with a goal to stop the killing of healthy and treatable pets. The shelter was open on New Year’s Day, putting its plan of expanded hours into practice. The shelter also debuted its “Free Ride Home” program for returning animals to their owners in the field. One week later, they had adopted out 165 pets. The shelter implemented several initiatives to increase adoptions, including an off-site adoption center and a collaborative adopt-a-thon in 2012 where 706 animals were adopted. It reached out to volunteers, and sought out rescue help. It started a transport program to send dogs to the North Shore Animal League. It successfully raised funds for play yards for dogs. It filled out its leadership team including Teresa Johnson and Shannon Wells in the top spots. In July of 2012, KCPP’s live release rate first hit 91%. They were able to maintain that high rate, and for the year from July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013 the live release rate was 91%. If owner-requested euthanasia and animals who died or were lost in shelter care are included in the euthanasia total, the modified live release rate was 88%. The total intake for the year from July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013 was 7084 animals (counting only dogs and cats) as compared to 6128 in calendar year 2011. This high intake put KCPP in a very small group of shelters of that size that have achieved a 90%+ live release rate. For calendar year 2013 KCPP’s intake was 8179 cats and dogs, as compared to 6846 in calendar year 2012. Despite the significantly higher intake, KCPP increased their live release rate to 92%. The modified live release rate (counting owner-requested euthanasia and animals who died or were lost in shelter care in with euthanasias) was 88%. In a blog post on January 12, 2014, Toellner reviewed the year. Highlights of 2013 were the shelter’s offsite adoption venue which had more than 1600 adoptions, a visit from Aimee Sadler to establish a Playing for Life program at the shelter, and a mega-adoption event in October where they adopted out 228 pets in three days. For an in-depth look at what has made KCPP so successful in such a short time, check out this brochure. It was prepared for the 2013 Best Friends No More Homeless Pets conference, where Toellner was one of the featured speakers. Kansas City, Missouri, was originally listed by this blog on August 9, 2013, based on its July 2012 to June 2013 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 calendar year statistics.

Charlottesville is an independent city within Albemarle County in Virginia, located near the Shenandoah National Park. The combined population of the city and county is about 118,000 people, not counting non-resident students who attend the University of Virginia. The Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA (CASPCA) is a private non-profit that contracts with the city and the county for animal sheltering services. The shelter takes in strays and owner surrenders. It has a pet retention program to reduce the number of owner surrenders, and requires an appointment and a fee to surrender a pet. The shelter does not guarantee acceptance of an owner surrender if the animal has a major medical or behavior issue. CASPCA posts its statistics on its website. It had a 90% live release rate in 2006 and has had a 90% or better live release rate each year since 2009. In 2011, the shelter’s live release rate was 93%. The live release rate for 2012 was 94%, with an intake of 3569 dogs and cats. If we include the categories of owner requested euthanasia (ORE) and died or lost in shelter care in with euthanasias, the shelter’s 2012 live release rate was 92%. This is the same as 2011, when the calculation including ORE and died/lost was 92%. For 2013 the shelter reported an intake of 3679 cats and dogs. This is an intake of approximately 31 per 1000 people. The live release rate was 96%. The shelter did not report any owner-requested euthanasias. If animals who died or were lost in shelter care are included with euthanasias, the live release rate was 94%. The director who first took CASPCA to a 90% or better live release rate, Susanne Kogut, resigned in June of 2012. Leslie Hervey was selected as the new executive director in the summer of 2013. Hervey was formerly the executive director of the Martinsville-Henry County SPCA in Virginia. Albemarle County, Virginia, 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.