La Plata County is located in southwestern Colorado and has 51,000 residents. Its county seat is Durango, which has 17,000 residents. The impounding agency for the city and county is La Plata County Humane Society (LPCHS), which has an animal control division. LPCHS describes itself as an “open-admission animal shelter.” The shelter accepts owner surrenders from La Plata County and Durango but asks that people call first. A shelter representative told me that, in addition to open-admission acceptance of La Plata and Durango animals, LPCHS also accepts animals from outside of its jurisdiction when it has room. All animals are spayed or neutered, vaccinated, and microchipped before they leave the shelter. The shelter offers owner-requested euthanasia. LPCHS participates in the PetSmart Charities Rescue Waggin’ program. This article describes a recent transport from LPCHS to the Humane Society of Boulder Valley. LPCHS shelter director Chris Nelson said they had not euthanized a dog for space since they began to participate in the program. Lisa Pedersen, director of the Humane Society of Boulder Valley, said they might be short of dogs to adopt out without the transfers. She attributed that fact to the attitude of people in Boulder Valley, stating that adoption from the shelter was the “popular choice” for people in the area. LPCHS submits its statistics to the state of Colorado. For 2013, total intake was 3047 animals. This gives the shelter an extremely high pets-per-thousand-people rate of 60. The shelter adopted out 1905 animals and transferred 193. The live release rate was 92%. The modified live release rate including shelter deaths was 91%.

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 was 25 animals per 1000 people in 2012. In 2013, the shelter’s intake increased to 208 animals. The live release rate was 99%, or 96% if the animals who died in shelter care are included with euthanasias. Lake County was originally listed by this blog on November 25, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

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.

Today I have a guest post written in conjunction with Bonney Brown and Diane Blankenburg about their consulting organization, Humane Network. Brown and Blankenburg are well known in the animal shelter world for their work in leading Nevada Humane Society (NHS) for several years in its transition to achieving and sustaining a community-wide live release rate of 94%. NHS had (and still has) a partnership with Washoe County Regional Animal Services (WCRAS) in providing animal control and sheltering for Washoe County, Nevada, which contains the cities of Reno and Sparks. Their success in Washoe County was an especially important milestone in shelter lifesaving because it was not a progressive or wealthy community. Almost all successes in community-wide lifesaving before Washoe County were in resort or college towns, or progressive places like San Francisco and New Hampshire. Reno was a more typical city, with economic challenges and a very high rate of shelter intake. So when Washoe County achieved a live release rate of over 90% it was proof that high save rates could be achieved anywhere. As Brown says, when a community is trying to increase their live release rate “the devil is in the details.” The basic best practices for lifesaving shelter operations were developed back in the 1970s and 1980s, and in the last few years some important new programs have been added. The issue for shelters that want to increase their live release rate is not so much deciding what programs need to be put in place to increase lifesaving – that is pretty well standardized today – but how to implement the programs. There are a myriad of large and small “how to” issues in getting from here to there, and that’s where Humane Network can help. For example, everyone knows that having a foster program is important for lifesaving. What isn’t so obvious is how to set up a foster program, how to recruit the foster caregivers, how to recruit the right person to run the program, what training the foster parents need, what level of support they should have, and what documentation is needed. What about liability? What about the foster contract? What does a foster do if an animal gets sick in the middle of the night? Who pays for routine expenses like food? What procedures should be in place to protect animals in foster? What will the program cost and how will funds be raised to pay for it? Is it sustainable? In addition to helping shelters with the myriad details that come up in the implementation of lifesaving programs, Brown and Blankenburg have found that one of the most important keys to success is follow-up. Even when shelter staff are given a detailed road map to institute a best-practice program, follow-up is important to provide moral support, make sure that the roadmap is understood, and answer the additional questions that so often arise. In some cases shelters have already achieved a high live release rate at the time Humane Network is called in, but they are not doing it in a sustainable way. They are burning themselves out by working long hours, or spending the organization’s endowment, or relying on frequent emergency pleas to the community. In those cases a consultation can help the organization get to a point where it can maintain its success long-term. The Humane Network team can also help organizations with applying for grants, including, in some cases, grants to pay for the consultation process itself. Helping communities get lifesaving programs up and running is only one part of what has been keeping Humane Network busy for the last three years. Another service they provide is helping organizations recruit the right leadership. Leadership is one of the most critical needs for any animal shelter because so many different talents, including business and people skills, are required. But recruiting executives to run animal welfare organizations can be challenging because the pay is often not competitive with other fields and the level of public scrutiny can be daunting. Brown and Blankenburg help organizations sort through what qualities are critical for success, and then help them find suitable candidates. People who work in the private sector in business management, marketing, human resources, and related areas generally receive training in various aspects of management and leadership, but that type of training is unusual in the animal shelter industry. Brown points out that animal shelter administrators often promote people on the basis of how well they have done at the operations level rather than looking at whether they possess the necessary management skills. When this lack of experience in management is combined with a lack of training in leadership skills, the new shelter manager does not have the tools to succeed. He or she may not know how to give feedback, resolve conflicts, or delegate, and may not realize that part of delegation is following up to make sure that things get done. The Humane Network team can advise on what gaps in knowledge or experience are fixable with mentoring and should not be disqualifying. The challenge that shelters and animal welfare organizations face in recruiting and training good leadership is one reason that Brown and Blankenburg started a certificate course in Lifesaving-Centered Animal Shelter Management at the University of the Pacific. They believe that the certificate program can help people from outside the shelter industry get hired, and can help people who have risen through the ranks within the industry to fill gaps in management skills and leadership training. Enrollment in the certificate program has grown to the point that courses will now be offered year-round. Another issue with reforming a shelter is that it has to be done on the fly. Shelters are not like a manufacturing business that can just shut down for two weeks to retool. Reforming a shelter is more like replacing an escalator while it is in use, or operating on a beating heart. The animals will not stop coming in the door, and part of reform has to be keeping the shelter functioning as changes are being made. This difficulty can sometimes make directors leery about taking the initial leap to start reforms. In cases like this Humane Network can break the logjam by providing a strategy for getting it done. It helps for a consultant to have a track record of actually running a shelter and creating a sustainable lifesaving program, because the consultant has probably experienced many of the same problems faced by the shelter director. In addition to consulting with community-based shelters and animal welfare organizations, Humane Network has been working with some of the large national organizations on program development. Humane Network has done projects with Maddie’s Fund, Best Friends Animal Society, Petco Foundation, and Alley Cat Allies. With Alley Cat Allies, for example, they have developed a series of “toolkit” guides. One of them is a 90-page workbook on how to set up a foster program for cats and kittens (“Saving Cats and Kittens with a Foster Care Program”). The length of this brochure, 90 pages on 8″ by 11″ paper, illustrates how important it is to show shelters each step in the process rather than just telling them to “start a foster program.” In addition to working with the large national organizations, Humane Network sometimes works with other consultants. For example, they worked with the shelter medicine program at UC Davis on a project they did for the Animal Foundation in Las Vegas. The demand for their consulting services has been high, and Brown and Blankenburg have been going non-stop since they launched Humane Network. In the future they hope to have time to do more work on the big-picture question of the next steps for our movement. Stay tuned.

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%.

In just the last year there has been an enormous increase in communities that are reporting saving 90% or more of their animals, and an even bigger increase in communities reporting 80% or more. Because there are so many communities to report on, I no longer have enough time to do the amount of research needed for my traditional listings. So I have to make a choice — either do as many listings as I can the way I’ve always done them (which would mean most 90%+ and 80%+ communities don’t get listed at all), or change to a new method where I list all reported communities but the listings are not researched in-depth (which would mean that I make listings based on shelter press releases and media reports without independently verifying them and without researching things like shelter policies, other organizations in the community, local controversies, etc.). I’ve decided to go with the second option, because what my readers want is to know about all communities that are doing well, not just a fraction of them. The downsides are that there will be less information in each listing, and that listings will be based on media reports which may not always be correct. I think the number of bad listings will be pretty small, and I will take them down when I find out about them, but there probably will be an occasional one. The way I’m going to implement this is to list in the right sidebar every community that I feature, lumping together 90% Documented, 90% Reported, and Worth Watching. New listings may be full-length features as they are now or shorter posts, depending on how much information the shelter has made available. The right sidebar will be called Notable Communities. Each post will have a notice stating whether it is 90%+, 80%+ or Worth Watching, but the posts will not be separated by those subcategories in the right sidebar. At some point soon I may need to save space in the right sidebar by listing only the most prominent community in a group of communities. For example, listing Williamson County, Texas, and not Round Rock. I will not be able to update listings yearly as I have been doing. That means that people will have to be careful in using the listings on individual communities and may have to do some of their own research to get the latest numbers. As for the Running Totals, my plan is to delete the current count, which is based on number of communities, and go to a count based on human population living in 90%+ and 80%+ communities. I’m going to do a spreadsheet where I will list each 90%+ community and each 80%+ community and its population and post those totals as separate Running Totals. Again, these numbers are going to be subject to the caveat that I will not have checked each community as closely as I used to. In other developments, the News Bits page has become the blog’s most popular feature. I have plans to migrate News Bits over to Facebook eventually, but it may be a while until I get around to that. In the meantime, when a News Bit involves a newly announced 80% or 90% community, I may post it as a blog as well as a News Bit, so that I can link to it in the right sidebar. So over the next month or two the blog may look like a construction zone, and it might even blow up a few times, but hopefully we will come out of it with a better idea of just how successful No Kill really is.

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

Gogebic County in Michigan and Iron County in Wisconsin are located across the state boundary from each other at the western end of Michigan’s upper peninsula. Gogebic County contains the town of Ironwood, which has over 5,000 people. Together, the population of the two counties is over 22,000 people. The “Helping Orphaned Pets Everywhere” (H.O.P.E.) animal shelter, located in Ironwood, contracts with Gogebic and Iron counties  to provide sheltering for lost, stray, and abandoned animals and cruelty cases. The shelter also accepts owner surrenders “as space permits.” I called the shelter for more detail on the owner surrender policy and was told that if someone needs to surrender a pet and cannot wait, the shelter will take the pet even if they are full. A 2009 article about the shelter states: “Animals are not euthanized except in cases of unrelievable suffering, terminal illness or a known history of being a threat to the public.” The state of Michigan collects statistics on all animal shelters in the state and posts them online. The report for H.O.P.E. for 2013 can be accessed here (scroll down to Help Orphaned Pets Everywhere). Intake in 2013 was 407 cats and dogs. The live release rate was 98%, with no reported owner-requested euthanasias. All animals adopted out were spayed and neutered. The shelter reported a 99% live release rate in 2012, with an intake of 472 cats and dogs. In 2011, H.O.P.E. reported a live release rate of 98% with an intake of 401 cats and dogs. Gogebic County, MI, was originally listed by this blog on June 4, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

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.

Scarlett, before she was named Scarlett, was a homeless calico cat who lived in a poor neighborhood in Brooklyn. In the late winter of 1996 she had a litter of five kittens in a deserted garage. The garage was a decrepit hulk with unstable beams – a neighborhood eyesore. One early morning before daylight, about three or four weeks after Scarlett had her kittens, the garage caught fire. The fire appeared to be arson, not an accident, and flames were roaring out the front when firefighters arrived. The firefighters could not enter the building due to the danger of collapse. Fortunately, there were no homeless people sleeping there that night. One of the firemen who responded to the call, David Giannelli, was an animal lover who had often rescued animals from burning buildings. As he fought the fire he heard some faint meows. He traced the sound to the lot next door, where he found three kittens huddled against the wall of a building. Their fur was scorched and their ears were a little singed. Giannelli heard more cries, and he found two more singed kittens. It was easy to deduct that the mother of the kittens had carried them through the fire, but there was no mother to be seen. After putting the kittens in a box, Giannelli and a couple of bystanders looked for the mother. They finally found her lying in the vacant lot across the street, not moving and and badly burned. Her coat was singed, the skin on her head was so burned that she could not open her eyes, and her ears were burned. Giannelli put her in the box with the kittens, and their meowing revived her enough to do a head count by touching them each with her nose. By the time the fire was out it was daylight. Giannelli was acquainted with the staff at North Shore Animal League, where he had taken injured animals before, and he called and told them what had happened. They told him to bring mom and kittens in right away. The kittens had some burns, but the main danger to them was smoke inhalation. Scarlett was in the worst shape, with significant burns on her head and body. And she was very thin, not in the best shape to fight off possible infection and lung damage. North Shore had a full-service veterinary clinic, and they were able to stabilize mom and kittens and put them in an oxygen chamber to help their lungs. Scarlett’s kittens were each a different color – white, dark brown, pinto, grey, and Siamese. The two that Scarlett brought out last, the white and grey ones, had to have fluids. They improved, and all five kittens did well enough to be placed in foster care. Then disaster struck, as the white kitten and the brown one came down with a virus. The white kitten died, and the brown one was left with a little nerve damage. The surviving kittens showed virtually no scarring from the fire, but Scarlett clearly looked like a burn victim. She had severe scarring on her face, her eye rims were burned, and her ears were half gone. Meanwhile, the news media had been going wild with the story of the heroic mother cat who had raced back and forth through the flames five times to carry her kittens to safety. Scarlett became internationally famous, and North Shore received more than 6000 letters from people wanting to adopt her or one of her kittens. Scarlett wanted to be an only cat, and her four surviving kittens had bonded into two pairs, so North Shore selected three lucky homes for the celebrities. In a follow-up story in 2001, all were reported as doing well. There have been many animal heroes, but one nice thing about this story is that it involved a stray cat. Scarlett does not appear to have been feral, and instead was what we today would call a community cat. By the time Scarlett had her kittens in 1996, there was a growing number of shelters where cats like her had a chance. And her story shows that the public will help when given the opportunity. From the firefighters and bystanders who rescued Scarlett and her kittens to the thousands of people who offered to adopt, the “irresponsible public” saved the day once again. References: Martin & Suares, “Scarlett Saves Her Family,” Simon & Schuster Editions (1997); New York Times, May 2, 1996, Mar. 4, 2001.

In the last 30 to 40 years there have been great changes in how most owned dogs and cats live their lives in the United States. Those changes raise some important questions about the quality of life of modern cats and dogs. Dogs first arrived in the United States some 9,000 years ago, and they lived and worked with Native Americans. More dogs arrived with European settlers beginning in the 1600s. Cats were brought over on ships with the earliest European explorers, so their history in the United States is measured in hundreds of years rather than thousands. Up through the mid-1900s, the great majority of dogs and cats spent at least part of their time outdoors. This was partly tradition, since dogs and cats had always been allowed to roam. It was also partly practical, since flea control was sketchy and kitty litter had not been invented. Sterilization of dogs and cats was rare in the mid-1900s and earlier, so people had to deal with behaviors like marking, spraying, and caterwauling that made cats and dogs undesirable to have in the house full-time. In the mid-1900s society underwent a revolution in the way people lived, with a move from farms and small towns to the suburbs and cities. During that time sterilization for pets remained rare, largely due to the belief that the surgeries were harmful to animals and the fact that (in the days before antibiotics and good anesthetics) the surgeries, especially spay surgery, were somewhat risky. By the 1970s the population of dogs and cats had reached what was seen as crisis proportions – unsurprising given that cats and dogs were still typically free-roaming and unsterilized at that time. A movement began, supported by the traditional shelter industry and virtually all of the humane organizations, to get people to spay and neuter their pets and start keeping dogs on leash or otherwise under control. This movement was extremely successful, and from 1970 to 2000 we saw a rapid cultural change. By the year 2000 it was considered socially unacceptable in most neighborhoods for people to allow their dogs out to roam by themselves. Also by 2000, substantial majorities of pet owners had their cats and dogs sterilized. Free-roaming dogs and cats were no longer at crisis levels in most places. The changes in where people live and the growing prohibitions on allowing dogs and cats to be free-roaming have resulted in major changes in how dogs, and to a lesser extent cats, live their lives. One hundred years ago dogs had a great deal more freedom than they have today. They could choose how they spent their time, what they did, and who they associated with. Many dogs had routines that they carried out on their own, such as patrolling the neighborhood, hanging out with their dog friends, rummaging in the garbage, or going to meet the kids coming home from school or their owners on the way home from work. The routine of most cats concentrated more on hunting than socializing, but cats too could go where they wanted and do what they wanted. Today, responsible owners walk their dogs on leash and the dogs are only allowed to run free in a fenced yard or a dog park. Cat owners are urged to keep their cats entirely indoors, and pacify them by building elaborate cat play areas. In some ways what has happened to dogs and cats mirrors what has happened to children. Up until perhaps 30 or 40 years ago it was routine for parents to allow their children to roam the neighborhood unsupervised. Children as young as six were allowed to walk to school by themselves or with friends, and the only rule for play time was to come home in time for dinner. Today, of course, children are much more closely supervised, and the supervision is enforced by law. In Maryland the parents of two children, ages 10 and 6, were threatened with having their children taken away because the parents allowed the kids to walk home from a park by themselves in an upper-middle-class neighborhood. Even parents who disagree with the choices of the Maryland parents may be concerned that the close supervision of today’s children inhibits their ability to learn independence, social skills, good judgment, and problem-solving. Similarly, with dogs and cats who live in a constantly controlled and supervised environment, their socialization skills, confidence, judgment, and independence can suffer. With dogs we can see this manifested as hostility to strangers, unpredictable behavior, separation anxiety, and an inability to understand social cues from other dogs, among other behavior problems. With cats kept indoors we can see stress and boredom. There is no doubt that the modern, more confined life of dogs and cats is physically safer for them. With increasing population density and more and more cars in the environment, the danger of being killed or badly hurt by a car is a constant threat to free-roaming cats and dogs. There may be other benefits to confinement as well, such as a greater attachment between person and pet. But there is no doubt that dogs and cats have lost a great deal in losing their freedom. If I had to choose whether to live as a dog in 1915 or 2015, I would choose 1915 hands down, in spite of the possibility that my life might well be shorter. Is there anything we can do to give dogs and cats back their freedom? With cats, I think the answer is yes. Cats who are sterilized and have had their shots should be allowed to roam free if they want, in my opinion. If a person’s home is simply too dangerous to allow a cat to roam due to vehicular traffic, interfering neighbors, or aggressive animal control, then a move to a more accommodating neighborhood may be in order. For dogs it is a much more difficult problem. Dog parks, dog beaches, and other places where dogs can roam free may help. Intensive socialization of the young dog with many different people and dogs, in many different environments, may help. If a dog has to be on leash, then the owner might want to take the dog on one or two long walks a day where the dog gets to lead and gets to decide where to go and what to do. Some doggie day care places do a great job and are like spas for dogs, but they can be expensive. I’m sure dog behavior experts could come up with many more suggestions. Perhaps the most important thing is simply to recognize the problem. No Kill shelters today do a good job at matching dogs and cats to the temperament and lifestyle of their prospective owners. Simply preventing mismatches could go a long way toward ameliorating the problems of the modern lifestyle. And urban planning needs to begin to include better accommodations for pets. Ten years ago disaster management agencies simply ignored pets, but that changed after Katrina. If people today really value their pets as family members they will seek out neighborhoods where pets are welcome and where design considerations such as green space, walking trails and dog parks have been incorporated. Those things will help people too, and they should not be restricted only to wealthier neighborhoods.

The state of Colorado will be releasing its shelter statistics for 2014 in the next week or two. The statistics are collected pursuant to the state’s PACFA reporting rule and include all intake shelters and rescues. The live release rate for Colorado as a whole for 2013 was 89%. We may find out when the statistics for 2014 come out that Colorado is the first state ever to go over the 90% LRR mark for an entire year. Summary statistics will be posted on the state’s PACFA website for those interested, and I will be reporting on the full statistics on the blog. The Austin Pets Alive! facility was flooded in the recent torrential rains in Texas. A call to the public resulted in dozens of people lining up to provide temporary homes for the animals. Volunteers also cleaned up the water and unclogged drains, allowing the shelter to reopen in only two days. Due to all the help from the public, APA! was able to take in 67 dogs from another facility to keep them from being euthanized. Maddie’s Fund has a helpful article on Twitter effectiveness for animal shelters and rescue groups, and another article with encouraging news on ringworm. Also a ton of information on saving orphaned kittens. Saving Our Companion Animals, a group that started up last January in Fort Bend County, Texas, is doing pretty much everything they can think of to help the county animal services division. The list of stuff they are doing includes animal care and socialization, networking on social media, taking photographs, interfacing with rescues, running adoption events, and doing pet retention. They also have an emergency medical fund and they work on spay-neuter. Whew! They need financial support – sounds like possibly a great opportunity for a grant-giving organization. From Arlington, Texas we have fresh statistical evidence that charging a surrender fee does not lead to pet abandonment. A pilot program instituting a $25 surrender fee correlated with a drop in stray intake, a drop in owner surrender intake, and fewer calls reporting loose animals. Win, win, win. The funds collected will be used to pay for an animal cruelty investigator. More win. Other shelters that have kept statistics after instituting managed admission policies, including Lynchburg, Virginia and Douglas County, Nevada, have also found that asking owners to be more responsible correlates with positive changes. Animal Farm Foundation has a great article about how animal shelters can best approach the issue of breed identification. The SPCA of Martinsville-Henry County just did its largest single transport ever with 122 animals going to North Shore. The transport was aided by  the American Humane Association. Since the 1990s shelters in West Virginia have relied on transports to the northeast to save their animals. West Virginia shelters tend to be extremely underfunded and often do not receive much support from local populations, either in reducing intake or increasing placements. Fortunately, the state has a convenient transportation corridor in freeways running across Pennsylvania. West Virginia also has many shelter workers and volunteers who work very hard networking the animals, getting them vetted for transports, and often driving the first legs of transports. I’m seeing more and more stories like this one about cities and counties building good, modern shelters. Sometimes the stories are about a private SPCA or humane society that has the contract for animal sheltering and is fundraising for the new building. In many cases, though, the local government provides all or a good portion of the funds. The Niagara Falls City Council has approved a 1-year contract with the Niagara County SPCA. The Pet and Women Safety Act (PAWS Act) is pending federal legislation that addresses the common situation where a victim of domestic violence is reluctant to leave an abusive situation if it means leaving pets behind. The proposed law also addresses situations where an abuser stalks a victim’s pet. Not much is getting through Congress these days, but the numbers cited in the linked article indicate this is a much-needed measure. Another pending federal bill takes aim at animal cruelty. It’s encouraging to see these proposed bills at the federal level, since most animal issues are relegated to the state and local level. The Huntsville, Alabama animal shelter has higher-than-average intake at close to 6,000 animals per year. It has recently been using reduced-fee adoption events and extended hours to increase its live release rate, which was 92% for May. The shelter faces ongoing challenges, though, including high recent intakes and an influx of dogs from hoarding cases.