OUT THE FRONT DOOR

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.

There has been a lot of discussion on this blog’s Facebook page over the last month or two about the role of public criticism of local shelters in getting communities to No Kill. Pretty much everyone agrees that criticism has a role. The difference of opinion is on the issue of when criticism is helpful and when it is counterproductive and hurts No Kill progress. This is not a simple question because it gets into the whole issue of how to bring about change in local government. The answer to the question is going to be different depending on the circumstances. In a small town, all it may take to reform the shelter is an offer to foster kittens and hold adoption events. In New York City, however, you have a local government that has been doing animal control since 1807 and has a whole bureaucracy built up. Getting a city government like that to change can be a major undertaking and requires a lot of political skill. Another consideration with the use of criticism is that once you start making attacks on the local shelter director you have burned that bridge forever. If you make attacks in the name of “No Kill” you have just created a shelter director who hates the very sound of “No Kill.” So before launching attacks on the shelter director, local advocates should consider whether a sincere and determined effort to help the shelter improve has been made and has failed. Making an effort to help the shelter before criticizing it is a no-lose proposition. If the effort succeeds then all is well. If it fails, that failure will turbocharge a reform effort made up of volunteers who have been prevented from helping the animals. When you have 10 or 20 volunteers who have been forced to stand by while animals are needlessly killed, you have the nucleus of a group that will have both knowledge and determination. Once a decision to publicly criticize a failing and recalcitrant shelter has been made, what type of criticism is helpful? That depends on the audience. Criticism of a shelter based on its statistics and practices may be very effective when directed at a city council or county commissioners, but it must be accompanied by constructive and specific recommendations for change. A shelter director from a nearby No Kill community, or a No Kill consultant, may have more of an effect on community leaders than local advocates could have. If the audience is the general public, criticisms based on statistics and best practices may convince a few people but most people will not pay attention. And a shelter director can deflect that type of criticism by saying that the critics do not understand the unique circumstances of the shelter, that the shelter’s intake is different from other shelters, etc. Most people will buy those excuses. No Kill advocates can take a lesson here from the fight against factory farming. Several years ago the Pew Research Center put out a report that was a blistering indictment of the factory farming industry on every front – harm to the environment, harm to public health, cruelty to animals, putting small farmers out of business, and negative health effects on workers. That report was chock full of facts and statistics, but it had nowhere near the effect on the public that the clandestine videos taken by organizations like Mercy for Animals had around that same time. A video of a calf being beaten, or a baby chick being thrown alive into a grinder, has more effect with the public than all the statistics in the world. It’s the same with the local shelter. Arguing that a 50% live release rate is below the industry standard may not  get you very far with the public. A photograph of a mother dog and her litter of puppies killed by mistake while a rescuer was on the way, or a pet killed because its microchip was not scanned, will get headlines and make a deep impression on the public. You can’t get that kind of documentation, though, unless you are involved with the shelter. What I’ve said so far applies to a failing shelter that will not change voluntarily. Once a city or county government or shelter director decides to make a sincere effort to get to No Kill, then criticism becomes a whole new ballgame and different considerations apply. When a credible No Kill effort is underway, criticism becomes a balancing act. Every word of public criticism against a shelter while it is trying to get to No Kill will hurt the effort, because it will have a tendency to decrease the number of volunteers, the amount of money donated, and the goodwill of the community. The more effective and on point the criticism is, the more it will hurt the effort. So the advocate has to make a decision whether the criticism will do more harm than good, and has to think about how to phrase the criticism so that the constructive aspect is emphasized and the destructive aspect is minimized. The advocate in this circumstance must be sure that he or she knows the shelter system thoroughly and is competent to balance the harm the criticism will cause against the benefits. A good example of constructive criticism of an ongoing No Kill effort is this blog by John Sibley on the subject of New York City’s nightly kill list. Sibley has dealt with the NYC shelter system for a long time and is thoroughly familiar with it. The criticism acknowledges all the progress that has been made, and it discusses the reason why the kill list was started and the fact that it has been effective. Then it discusses the downside of the list and argues that today, the harm outweighs the good. An example of unproductive criticism of an ongoing No Kill effort would be an analysis made by someone who has never been to the shelter in question and never talked to the director, where the analysis was made based only on statistics and current practices and only skims the surface. This type of criticism can hurt the shelter but not help it. Very typical of such criticisms are statements like: “The shelter should be open longer hours,” or “they need to institute a TNR program,” or “they should be having off-site, free adoption events each weekend.” A shelter director who is making a sincere No Kill effort is likely to be thoroughly familiar with the advantages of longer hours, TNR, and off-site and reduced-cost adoption events. And if by some chance the director doesn’t know about those things, a private communication would be sufficient. But No Kill programs often have barriers that are not obvious to a bystander. An advocate who did some research might find out, for example, that a local ordinance forbids TNR and the city council doesn’t want to overturn the ordinance because they are concerned about bird kills. With that knowledge, the advocate could write something constructive that used facts to help persuade city leaders that TNR is good for cats and birds. Why do we have such a problem with unhelpful criticism by No Kill advocates, i.e. pointless criticism of shelters that are in the process of transitioning to No Kill or have achieved No Kill? A good deal of it is no doubt because killing animals, even when it is true euthanasia, is a very emotional subject and people tend to write about it reactively rather than strategically. Another reason may be the effect that some No Kill leaders have on their audiences. Most No Kill leaders today are convinced that cooperation works and that divisiveness is counterproductive. There are some leaders, however, who seem to encourage advocates to look at all but a handful of shelter directors as enemies who cannot be trusted. We should not be surprised when the followers of those leaders conclude that shelter personnel are routinely faking statistics and just waiting for chances to kill animals. If we have No Kill leaders who mock cooperation and say that fighting is the only way forward, or who say that a shelter director who is not saving 98% just doesn’t care enough, then we can expect No Kill advocates to conclude that no-holds-barred criticism is a good thing regardless of the context. The idea that No Kill advocacy always requires confrontation and that cooperation is useless traces back to the mindset of the 1990s. There was a time some 15-20 years ago when many elements of the traditional shelter industry fought against No Kill, and the fights were often bitter. I can understand how No Kill advocates who were active back then find it hard to forget. But that was then and this is now. Today it is not an exaggeration to say that No Kill practices are generally recognized as industry best practices. We still have people in the shelter industry who dislike the term “No Kill,” but that is usually because of the divisiveness associated with No Kill, not because of No Kill’s ideas about the best way to run a shelter. Criticism based on that old “white hat, black hat” divisiveness is destructive because that world no longer exists. That doesn’t mean we all have to love each other and sing Kumbaya. It does mean we need to focus on what is happening today, not what happened in 1996, or 2006. In fact, No Kill progress has been moving so fast that events of even five years ago are ancient history. People who cannot keep up with this change would do us all a favor by retiring from the movement.

Tazewell County, Virginia, is in the Appalachian mountains in the far southwestern part of the state. Its median household income is very low at less than $31,000. In 2015 the Tazewell County animal shelter had an approximately 50% live release rate, with an intake of about 2000 animals. Now, in the first three months of 2016, the live release rate has been over 90%. How did this transformation happen? A big part of it was a new shelter director. The current director of the Tazewell County shelter, Ginny Dawson, started in November of 2015. She is largely self-educated about shelter management. Before taking over as director she had been a county employee for several years. She studied new methods of sheltering and talked to lots of people for ideas. She remembers reading about managed admission on the ASPCA site, for example. Whenever she thought an idea made sense she would try to find out more about it. The staff who worked with the previous shelter manager decided for various reasons to leave the shelter when he left in 2015, so Dawson and her supervisor were able to hire a new staff of three people. They looked for people with experience working with animals, but compassion for animals was “absolutely” a requirement. Dawson noted that you can teach best practices, but not compassion. Soon after Dawson started as director they made Saturday an adoption-only day so that they could concentrate on adoptions and not intake. They take animals who are ready for adoption to an offsite location where they will get more exposure. Another major initiative was managed admission. People who want to surrender animals are asked if there is anything the shelter can do to help them keep their pets. If not, shelter staff help them explore whether there are other possibilities for rehoming instead of surrender. They explain to people that the county shelter is open admission, with a limited amount of space. They have found that most people are very willing to delay surrender for a few days if the shelter is full, and some people are able to find a new home for their animal themselves. Shelter staff have increased their use of social media for adoption promotion and for finding owners of lost pets. They started posting dogs and cats to Facebook immediately, without waiting for the stray-hold period to expire, to try to reunite animals with owners as quickly as possible. They began to work more with rescues, which Dawson describes as crucial for their success. The Humane Society of Tazewell County works closely with the shelter and helps it in many ways, including transports. They have regular transports that go to the Pennsylvania SPCA, with funding from ASPCA, and the Richmond SPCA has also welcomed transfers from the shelter. Another group in the county, Tazewell ARC, has done transports as well as outreach to county officials. A consulting organization, Target Zero, did a presentation to interested stakeholders in January, and Dawson and the other attendees are very interested in their program. Dawson put some of their ideas into practice immediately, including use of an owner surrender form to gather more information about intakes. A simple thing, but one that had not been done previously. Target Zero did a full assessment of the shelter earlier this month, and the county is considering whether to apply for a fellowship with them. Another suggestion Target Zero made was for the shelter to sign up with the Million Cat Challenge and start implementing their community cat initiatives, including return-to-field. Dawson had heard of the Million Cat Challenge before Target Zero’s involvement, but the suggestion gave them the push they needed to sign up. Implementing the Challenge initiatives will be done in several steps, including coordinating spay-neuter efforts with local clinics and a strengthened managed admissions program. Dawson’s goals for the future are to sustain the progress they have made and continue to improve. The county is renovating a building for a new shelter, which should help them in many ways, including disease control. High live release rates are harder to maintain during the spring and summer “kitten season” months, but Dawson hopes to weather the season with the new programs they have in place. In just the last few years many new and effective programs have been added to the shelter operations toolbox, including managed admission, return-to-field, and transports. Today several organizations have extensive information online at no charge. Maddie’s Fund has webinars on demand that cover many aspects of shelter management. Best Friends Animal Society has presentations from its most recent conference, including “how we did it” playbooks from several successful communities. Consultants can help shelters with every aspect of a transition, including figuring out how to apply programs to their particular circumstances and how to finance changes. Tazewell County consulted with Target Zero, but there are other organizations, such as Humane Network, that also offer consultations. The Tazewell County shelter is still facing some hurdles, but the odds for them to have a 90% or higher live release rate in 2016 look good. Dawson has made use of new ideas and the help that is available, including support from the community, and has turned her shelter around quickly.

Several organizations have started doing No Kill counseling and shelter assessments in the last few years. One such group is Target Zero, or TZ. TZ was originally a program of First Coast No More Homeless Pets (FCNMHP), which is one of the organizations that created No Kill in Jacksonville, Florida. The founders of TZ were Rick DuCharme, the head of FCNMHP; Peter Marsh, who spearheaded a state-funded targeted spay-neuter program in New Hampshire in the 1990s; Tracey Durning, a “social entrepreneur and philanthropic advisor” to non-profits; and an anonymous donor. Once TZ was underway DuCharme moved back to giving his full attention to FCNMHP and Marsh moved to advisor status. Shelter assessments are done primarily by two members of the TZ staff. One is Dr. Sara Pizano, a veterinarian who was director of the Miami-Dade shelter for six years and was also a panel member for the Association of Shelter Veterinarians while that organization was seeking recognition of shelter medicine as a specialty. The other is Cameron Moore, former program director for FCNMHP. TZ receives referrals from communities that are interested in receiving a shelter assessment. One of the initial steps is a Go To presentation, which Pizano and Moore do remotely. All stakeholders in the community, including government officials, shelter staff, and representatives of other humane organizations, are encouraged to view the presentation. The TZ philosophy includes the concept that cooperation is key to No Kill, and cooperation is built into the program from the beginning. After the Go To presentation, if there is interest and TZ staff members believe there is sufficient evidence that the various stakeholders can work together, a full, in-person shelter assessment is scheduled. Pizano and Moore do the assessments, although they sometimes bring additional experts with them. An example was their recent assessment for the Tazewell County shelter in Virginia. Pizano and Moore were accompanied on this assessment by Dr. Tiva Hoshizaki, who is currently doing a residency in shelter medicine at Cornell veterinary school. Pizano told me that shelter assessments are often most effective once a community has decided to make changes and the process of change is just getting underway. In those cases the commitment is there and the assessment can help guide the change. In Tazewell County, for example, the county was planning to renovate a building to replace the current shelter but had not received any input from shelter design experts. Hoshizaki has a special interest in shelter design and she and the TZ team were able to offer suggestions for the renovation. The timing was right, and the new shelter will reflect some of the latest advances in shelter technology. TZ promotes the concept that healthy community cats are better off in a return-to-field program rather than being taken into a shelter only to be killed. When a shelter stops impounding healthy community cats it frees up staff to work on pet retention, adoptions, and other lifesaving programs. TZ supports the Million Cat Challenge, which has a detailed program to help shelters create humane and effective community cat initiatives. Million Cat Challenge founders Dr. Kate Hurley and Dr. Julie Levy are TZ consultants. TZ urges shelters to join the Challenge and also the Best Friends network. In addition to a sterilization program for community cats, TZ often recommends that shelters implement targeted spay-neuter for owned pets, a program that was key to Jacksonville becoming No Kill. Another intake-reduction program that TZ recommends is managed admissions. This includes asking people who want to surrender animals if they can work with the shelter when the shelter is full. Owners might be willing to hold their animal for a couple of weeks until the shelter has room, or might even be willing to rehome the animal themselves using social media. Managed admission programs can mesh with pet retention efforts to cut owner surrenders substantially and smooth out peaks and valleys in intake. I asked Pizano if each of the shelters they assess are different, requiring an individualized approach. She said that while there are many differences in starting points, programs like the Million Cat Challenge and best-practice strategies for dogs are effective everywhere. TZ frequently finds that communities have local ordinances or rules that have to be changed or worked around. In Tazewell County, for example, the shelter is not allowed to accept donations directly from the public. One possibility in such circumstances is for a private non-profit to collect donations and help the shelter fund programs. TZ is not a grant-giving organization, but they can help shelters and community organizations apply for grants. TZ does not just offer an assessment and then leave. Instead, they continue to work with shelters through their Fellowship program. Fellowships last three years, after which the community “graduates,” hopefully with a high live release rate. TZ also offers a Partner status to cities that do not currently qualify for the Fellowship program but show good potential to qualify in the future. Perhaps the most unusual thing about TZ is that it can offer consultations and Fellowships at no charge due to support from its anonymous donor. Another characteristic of the organization is that it seeks out shelters that are performing poorly, because those shelters offer the greatest possibilities for saving lives. (Tazewell County was something of an exception since it was already doing very well at the time TZ became involved.) Reading the list of Fellow and Partner cities, it is obvious that they present challenges – cities like El Paso, Texas; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Brevard County, Florida. Progress so far is encouraging – two of TZ’s Fellowship cities, Waco, Texas, and Huntsville, Alabama, have achieved a 90% live release rate and have graduated from the program. Consultants are an increasingly important means of helping communities get to No Kill. Today we have an enormous amount of information online about how to improve lifesaving, but there is nothing like having an expert take a look at a particular shelter and a particular community, identify the issues, set out priorities, and give shelter leadership the confidence that they can do it. This is especially true for shelters that are doing poorly, as many times the leaders of such shelters are in a deep hole and have no idea how to begin to climb out. A consultant can be the key to helping those directors realize that other people just like them have succeeded, and that there is hope.

We have achieved very high spay-neuter rates for owned cats and dogs (83% for owned dogs and 91% for owned cats*). If people are to have dogs and cats, the dogs and cats must come from somewhere. Hence the title – are we in danger of cutting the number of dogs and cats available for adoption to the point that we see negative consequences in the form of shelter shortages? Will spay-neuter programs that are too successful wind up driving potential adopters into the arms of puppy millers? For cats, the answer to the question of whether we are going too far with spaying and neutering is a resounding “no,” at least for now. Owned cats are perhaps no more than half of the total number of cats, and feral and community cats will continue to supply kittens to meet the demand for the foreseeable future. For dogs, the answer is “maybe.” The dog supply differs from the cat supply in two important ways. First, unlike with cats where we have perhaps as many as tens of millions of feral and community cats, feral dogs have almost disappeared in the United States. There are persistent reports that a few areas (Detroit, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston and parts of the southwest are often mentioned) have a feral dog problem. We don’t know for sure because there have been no studies to find out one way or the other, but if there are places with feral dog problems they are rare. The second way in which the dog supply differs from the cat supply is that breeding on a large commercial scale is common with dogs and almost unheard-of with cats. The reason why large-scale commercial breeding of cats is almost unheard-of is that there is much less diversity in the cat population than the dog population. Although there are cat breeds, in most cases the differences from one breed to another are relatively minor – differences in coat characteristics and color and slight differences in size and build. Brachycephalia (a harmful genetic mutation) is unfortunately present in a few cat breeds, but overall you do not see anywhere near the size, conformation, and temperament variations in cats that you do in dogs. Because cats are mostly of one type there is less reason for people to want “purebred” cats than purebred dogs and less incentive to breed cats in large numbers for commercial gain. Lucky cats! In the last 40 to 50 years the percentage of people who buy their dogs from a commercial breeder as opposed to adopting from a shelter or rescue has decreased. There are many reasons for this. Knock-off breed registries have been created to undermine the near-monopoly that the American Kennel Club (AKC) used to have on purebred-dog registration. Commercial breeders embraced these new registries because they were less expensive than AKC registration. The existence of a multitude of registries may have cheapened the overall worth of the “purebred” concept in the public’s eye, since the new registries have exposed the fact that a pedigree is just a piece of paper with little intrinsic value. Another reason that people have become disenchanted with purebred dogs, in my opinion, is because show breeders have pursued ever more extreme “type” in their dogs, and as a result the health and soundness of purebred dogs has declined. A recent survey by the Kennel Club in England indicated that the lifespan of purebreds has dropped. No surprise to anyone who looks objectively at what is being rewarded as the ideal breed type at dog shows. Yet another reason why mixed breeds have become more popular in recent decades is that the advent of the computer made it much easier to adopt a dog. Petfinder, which started up in the mid-1990s, evened the playing field between commercial breeders and shelters, giving shelters a way to publicize their animals. Petfinder and the increasing number of pet stores that feature homeless animals also seem to have led to a big increase in the number of rescues that take in owner surrenders and pull mixed-breeds from shelters. They too now have ways to compete with the commercial breeders. And there has been a change in the attitude of the public toward shelter animals. That is partly because of all the efforts that shelter workers have made to make visiting a shelter a better experience. It also may be because people today more and more view their own pets as family members, and that increases their empathy for homeless animals. All these changes mean that today we have more demand than ever from the public to adopt shelter dogs, at the same time that we have less supply of dogs. Today, spay-neuter programs for dogs are concentrating less on the overall number of dogs and more on an imbalance in the demand for dogs. Shelters in most places consistently report that they have too many large dogs, especially of the so-called “pit bull” type, and too few cute, fluffy, small dogs. People will stand in line at the shelter to adopt a 20-pound poodle mix, but a healthy, friendly, well-mannered 60-pound pit mix may have to wait months before an adopter comes along. So the answer seems to be that we still need to go full speed ahead, all hands on deck for feral and community cat sterilization, but for dogs we need a more targeted approach. The difference between today and the situation we faced 25 years ago, when the big spay-neuter effort of the 1990s started, is that today we need to work smarter, not harder. We need to start integrating our spay-neuter efforts with the current state of the market for shelter cats and dogs. Ideally we can adjust spay-neuter efforts so that we have enough supply to meet the demand from people who want to adopt, but not so much supply that shelters have to scramble to find homes for them all. As for the future, any systemic shortages of dogs in the United States could be addressed by importing homeless dogs from overseas. There is a lot of fear-mongering by commercial breeders about dog importations, though, so it remains to be seen whether a significant number of imported homeless dogs will be allowed. There is also some “friendly fire” from No Kill advocates who oppose transportation and importing of dogs because they would like to see shelters go out of business entirely. This is a viewpoint I don’t understand. If shelters close down due to a lack of pets available for adoption, commercial breeders will bounce back and we will be stuck with all the horrors of commercial dog breeding forever. We have the puppy millers on the ropes — let’s keep them there. * American Pet Products Association National Pet Owners Survey 2013-2014 (Greenwich, CT: American Pet Products Association, 2014), 16.

I usually report about No Kill efforts that already have a track record of success. But not infrequently I get questions or comments from people who say that there is nothing going on in their city or town – no type of No Kill effort at all – and they wonder what to do, how to get started. Based on the stories of successful No Kill leaders I’ve interviewed, there does not seem to be any one path to accomplishment. However, in this post I list some themes that have turned up over and over in my talks with successful leaders. Please note – I am not a consultant and have never worked for pay in a shelter. The following is based on what I have learned from interviews with lots of people in both No Kill and the traditional shelter industry in my five years of reporting on No Kill. So take it for what it’s worth. Seek out inspiration. A common theme with successful No Kill leaders I’ve interviewed is that they actively sought out inspiration. Robin Starr went to San Francisco in the 1990s to see in person what Rich Avanzino was accomplishing at the San Francisco SPCA. Rick DuCharme went to Lynda Foro’s 1997 No Kill conference in Massachusetts and met Peter Marsh, who told him about the impressive results of New Hampshire’s approach to No Kill. Rebecca Guinn attended the 2002 Best Friends conference and received encouragement to start a non-profit. All three of these people went on to have a major part in making their cities No Kill. If you are a new No Kill advocate wondering what to do, you cannot do better, in my opinion, than attending the Best Friends conference. There are other great conferences, including American Pets Alive! and HSUS Expo, but I think Best Friends is particularly helpful because they present workshops by people who have been key in getting their cities to No Kill. It would be nice if Best Friends would stagger the schedule of these workshops so an individual can attend all or most of them. But in addition to the workshops themselves the Best Friends conferences offer a great opportunity to network with those successful leaders. If I were a new advocate I would ask the successful people what were the very first things they did on the way to No Kill. Makena Yarbrough raised a lot of money and built a fabulous shelter for the Lynchburg Humane Society, but that was not the first thing she did. Rick DuCharme’s organization works with other organizations to put on gigantic mega-adoption events in Jacksonville, but he did not start out doing that. Find one thing that you think will put you on the path to No Kill, something that’s doable starting out. It may be transports. It may be a TNR program. It could be starting a volunteer program for the shelter, or a foster program, or a help desk. It might be building a grass roots organization to work at creating a city council that is more friendly to animal issues. It isn’t a bad thing to start small, and learning how other people have succeeded can inspire you to realize that small efforts can grow into big organizations. Ask for help. Once you decide what you want to do, ask for help. There is lots of help out there, but if you want people to help you, you really need to have a plan. People are much more likely to want to help you if you have done your homework, know what you are talking about, have made contacts within No Kill, and above all are practical about what you can accomplish. You must be able to articulate specifically what help you want and why you think your plan will make a difference. Some of the best places to look for help are: (1) No Kill shelters near you. I have yet to meet a successful No Kill director who does not want to help neighboring communities go No Kill. A No Kill shelter in your area can do several things for you, such as alert you to local resources, help you build a grass roots group, and maybe even stage regional events. And when you are trying to convince city leaders that No Kill is possible in your city, they will be far more impressed by what a neighboring shelter has accomplished than a shelter hundreds of miles away. (2) State federations. These are really an overlooked resource. Some state federations, like the one in Virginia, are fabulous and very committed to No Kill. Even some of the more traditional federations may have people who are successfully raising live release rates, but who do not advertise that fact or call it “no kill.” The state federation is definitely worth checking out. (3) Consultants. The most productive way to use a consultant is if you can have the consultant meet the shelter director and make an inspection of the entire animal control and sheltering system in the jurisdiction. That’s not always possible, but if it is, a consultant can be incredibly helpful. Today there are shelter veterinarians who offer consultations, and they may be a little less intimidating to a traditional shelter director than a No Kill consultant. Lots of people seem to start out by focusing on getting donations or grants. Donations and grants are critically important, but it seems like people are much more successful at getting them once they have at least a little bit of a track record or institutional backing. Asking for donations or grants for a brand-new enterprise that hasn’t done anything yet is a tough sell. Not impossible, but not easy. Build bridges. I’ve seen some people who advise new No Kill advocates to view themselves as superheroes who are coming in to destroy the old system and raise a new system in its place. That does not appear to be a very effective method. Virtually all the successful No Kill efforts I’ve reported on involve people who built bridges to city leadership and to other organizations in the city. Building bridges does not mean you all get together and sing kumbaya. It means that you conduct yourself in a businesslike, professional way. Perhaps the most important part of building bridges is to prove that you are willing to work. No one likes an armchair quarterback, and any advocate who just stands back and tells people what to do, even if they frame their message politely, is not going to be very effective. The beauty of building bridges is that you may find help where you were not expecting it. Even if you don’t, you have left open the possibility of a future coalition. And by having an open dialogue with the other players in the city you will learn a lot more about the situation than if you wall yourself off in a silo. Building bridges may help the work you are doing, and it certainly will not hurt. Burning bridges, on the other hand, can permanently make your job harder. There has been an unfortunate tendency among some No Kill advocates to demonize people who work in traditional shelters. The psychology of traditional shelter workers and the interface between the traditional shelter industry and No Kill has deep historical roots, and a thorough discussion of it is beyond the scope of this blog post, but suffice it to say that there are all kinds of people who work in traditional shelters. Just don’t pre-judge them, take each one as an individual, and you will do fine. Analyze the situation. One might think that “analyzing the situation” should be done earlier in the process. As a practical matter you will be analyzing the situation all the time, right from the start. But it is difficult to analyze a situation accurately until you are pretty familiar with it. And getting too wrapped up in an analysis can slow you down if the analysis turns out to be wrong or incomplete. So by all means analyze the situation, but don’t get too invested in the analysis until you are sure of your ground. Many of the successful No Kill leaders today started out in one direction and then either changed directions or added additional initiatives as they went along. That said, you do need to know the basic facts about your community. What is your shelter’s policy toward cat intake? Does the shelter make traps available to people? Does animal control actively seek out free-roaming cats to impound? Do they only accept cats over the counter? Is there a TNR program? What is intake per 1,000 people? What is the breakdown between strays and owner surrenders? Between dogs and cats? How long is kitten season in your location? How much money does the shelter receive? How old is the shelter building? How convenient is it for adopters? What are the state and local laws, regulations, and ordinances that affect the shelter? Who on the city council or among the county commissioners is friendly to animal issues? Are there a lot of free-roaming animals in the city? What organizations and rescues pull animals from the shelter? What is the shelter’s social media outreach? How many non-euthanasia deaths are there each year? What categories of animals are dying of disease? What percentage of dogs and cats are killed for behavior? Does the shelter do owner-requested euthanasia, and if so how many and what are the requirements? Does the shelter vaccinate on intake? Does it require an appointment for owner surrenders? Knowing the answers to these questions and a lot more like them can help you decide what needs to be done and how to focus your energies. In starting out you want to pick a goal that will have an impact and is big enough to attract other people to your effort, but not so big that it becomes unfocused or overwhelming. Don’t get discouraged It is possible that you will struggle for months or maybe even years and feel that you are not accomplishing very much, but in fact you really are. Maybe your effort to persuade the shelter director to meet with a consultant failed, but if you have been polite, constructive, and professional, and have done a good job explaining the advantages of a consultation, you will have made an impression on the shelter director. And you will have learned something about that director. Maybe you set a goal to do 1,000 free spay-neuters in the city’s poorest neighborhood in your first year and you only did 500, but 500 is far better than nothing. And you will have established contacts that can allow you to do better next year. Just talking to people about No Kill and making the effort is important. If your projects fail, they will still help pave the way for people after you to succeed. Regardless of what you might hear, No Kill is almost never easy. In a tiny town where the shelter receives a few hundred animals a year, you might be able to achieve No Kill overnight, but not in Memphis. Or Dallas, or Houston, or Detroit, or any of a lot of mid-sized cities and counties. Be realistic, not ideological. Above all, make your own way.

From the Out the Front Door HuffPo Blog: We used to have a terrible pet overpopulation problem in the United States. Intake at the Los Angeles city shelter in 1970 was 144,000 animals. Today it’s less than 18,000 per year. In New York City, the number of animals taken in by the city shelter fell from 136,035 cats and dogs in 1974 to about 30,000 today. Similar falls in shelter intake happened all over the country starting in the 1970s. There were also lots of animals in the environment in the 1970s who never came to the shelter. It was very common in those days to encounter homeless or stray animals in the street, or to hear from friends and neighbors that they had found a stray animal or that they had a litter of puppies or kittens they needed to place. Today in most cities it is rare to see strays living in the street, and the number of puppies brought to shelters is small. “Kitten season” still occurs, but at a lower volume in many places. The reason most commonly cited for the drop in the number of homeless pets is that around 1970 private veterinarians began to recommend spaying and neutering for their clients’ pets as a routine part of veterinary care. The first low-cost spay-neuter clinics started opening up in the 1970s, and that may have spurred the veterinary profession to take action to avoid losing that business. Another factor may have been that it was not until the 1970s that spay and neuter surgeries were safe enough for private veterinarians to feel comfortable recommending them. In any event, the spay-neuter rate for owned pets went from perhaps 10% in 1970 to 85% or more today. There might have been other factors that contributed to the drop in shelter intake. Attitudes toward pets were evolving in the 1970s, and people began to view their pets as family members. And in the 1970s and 1980s many communities passed leash laws, which helped reduce the number of free-roaming dogs. It seems doubtful that today’s No Kill communities could have evolved without the huge drop in shelter intake since 1970. Comprehensive nationwide statistics on shelter intake are not available, but from the data we have on individual shelters and from various surveys that were made, it appears as though shelter intake per person was about five times higher in 1970 than it is today. It is hard to imagine today’s No Kill communities being able to maintain 90% and above live release rates if their intake was five times as high. People often think that the reason animal shelters killed some 90% of their intake in the 1970s was because shelters in those days were run by workers who did not care about animal lives. That’s a misperception. Given the overwhelming number of homeless animals, shelter workers back then were faced with the reality that there were not enough homes. Adoptions were like a game of musical chairs. An adoption from a shelter simply meant one less home for a stray living in the street or for a puppy or kitten from someone’s “oops” litter. That did not make the killing acceptable, but shelters were in a situation with no good choices. Starting in the 1990s there were several innovations that were critical to No Kill. The fall in shelter intake was boosted by trap-neuter-return (TNR) and return-to-field (RTF) programs, which have been game-changing for cats. TNR was largely unknown until the 1990s and RTF is a recent practice. Petfinder, which started up in the mid-1990s, was very important in boosting shelter adoption rates and encouraging the formation of all-breed rescues. Also in the mid-1990s Richard Avanzino started to attend national conferences to publicize the techniques for increasing live releases that he had perfected at the San Francisco SPCA from 1976 to 1989. And the first course in shelter medicine was taught in 1999. By the year 2000, the basics for No Kill to succeed were in place and it was a matter of spreading the word, continuing to develop techniques, and building the infrastructure. The traditional shelter industry was slow to catch on because it was collectively suffering from a type of learned helplessness due to its decades of dealing with overwhelming shelter intake. It needed to be pushed by the No Kill movement to realize that times had changed and it was possible to save more and more shelter animals. Today there are still quite a few regressive shelters, but the shelter industry as a whole has gotten the message and is solidly behind No Kill. Things are rapidly improving, and at this rate we could very well have a majority of No Kill communities in the country by 2020.

The specialty of shelter medicine, which has grown at a fast pace from its beginnings 16 years ago, is critical to No Kill. Shelter medicine has been key not just to medical treatment of the treatables, but also to reducing shelter stress through housing and enrichment, fixing behavior problems, preventing disease, designing shelter buildings, and developing programs for shelter flow-through and capacity control. It is no accident that No Kill and shelter medicine have grown in parallel over the last 16 years. The field of shelter medicine is growing so fast that it’s hard to keep up. But one way to get a good grounding in the subject is to read “Shelter Medicine for Veterinarians and Staff,” Second Edition (2013), edited by Lila Miller and Stephen Zawistowski. Dr. Miller, who is often referred to as the founder of shelter medicine, was the first African-American woman to graduate from Cornell’s veterinary college, at a time (1977) when the profession was beginning to diversify. She, along with Dr. Jan Scarlett, taught the first formal class in shelter medicine at Cornell in 1999. Dr. Miller was a co-founder of the Association of Shelter Veterinarians (ASV) in 2001. She co-wrote the textbook “Infectious Disease Management in Animal Shelters” with Dr. Kate Hurley. She has been with the ASPCA since 1977, and is its director of veterinary outreach. In 2008 she received the American Veterinary Medical Association’s Animal Welfare Award, and in 2014 she received the ASV Meritorious Achievement Award. Dr. Zawistowski has a PhD in behavior and genetics from the University of Illinois. He has written, co-written, or edited several books in addition to the shelter medicine text, including a history of the ASPCA (“Heritage of Care”) and a textbook about companion animals (“Companion Animals in Society”). His research work has been published in several journals and he is a founder and co-editor of the “Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science.” He has served for many years as Science Advisor to the ASPCA, and is a well-known speaker on animal welfare subjects. He was a founder and officer of the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy. Their textbook lists 51 contributors, including Dr. Kate Hurley, Dr. Julie Levy, and Dr. Jan Scarlett. It has an 80-page introductory section that includes articles on shelter statistics, design, management, and legal issues, among other topics. Following are sections on husbandry, infectious disease, animal cruelty, shelter programs, behavior, and sterilization. Individual articles cover everything from stress and quality of life for shelter animals to population management to wildlife and equine care to animal hoarding to foster care to behavior enrichment to community cat management to pediatric neutering, along with all the other topics you would expect in a shelter medicine text. Although this text is written for shelter veterinarians and staff, it has lots of valuable information for anyone who is interested in shelter issues. People who are trying to reform shelters from the outside may not always realize the complexity of issues that shelters face in trying to save animals. The sections on proper care of the various species found in animal shelters covers almost 200 pages, for example. The spay-neuter section is over 100 pages. The chapter on foster care shows not only how valuable foster programs are but how many factors must be considered in setting up and running foster programs. The extensive section on disease control shows the planning and constant vigilance that is required to keep animals healthy in the shelter environment. The cost for this textbook is modest given its size and the amount of information it contains. As a non-professional, I learned a lot about the intricacies of modern shelter management from it, and would recommend it for anyone who is interested in shelter issues. Animal shelter management is a field that is changing at dizzying speed, and this textbook provides a good way to get an overview of the issue.

The organized humane movement in the United States began right after the Civil War. From 1866 when the first SPCA was founded until the end of the progressive era around 1920, the three cities that were the center of the humane movement in the United States were New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Each of these cities had its great leader in humane work. In New York City it was Henry Bergh. In Philadelphia it was Caroline Earle White. In Boston it was George Angell. These three people were the most prominent champions of animal welfare in the United States in the post-Civil-War period. Today these great leaders are not talked about much and many people are unfamiliar with them. Following is a quiz about them. I hope you find it interesting. 1. Which of the three humane leaders founded the first national humane organization in the United States? A. Henry Bergh B. Caroline Earle White C. George Angell Answer: A – Henry Bergh, who founded the ASPCA in 1866. Two years later in 1868 White founded the Pennsylvania SPCA and Angell founded the Massachusetts SPCA. In 1869, White founded another SPCA, the Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania SPCA, after she was precluded from participating in the leadership of the Pennsylvania SPCA due to her gender. 2. Which of the three humane leaders was a vegetarian? A. Henry Bergh B. Caroline Earle White C. George Angell Answer: B – Caroline Earle White. White worked very hard on humane transport of cattle and other animals from the western plains to slaughterhouses in the midwest and east, but progress was slow. The cruel treatment of meat animals may have been what motivated her to become a vegetarian. 3. Which of the three humane leaders proposed an ordinance in 1880 to allow the mayor to appoint people to catch any cat found in a public area and kill it unless reclaimed by its owner within 3 hours? A. Henry Bergh B. Caroline Earle White C. George Angell Answer: A – Henry Bergh. Bergh’s proposed cat ordinance was criticized by people who feared that the three-hour holding period was not long enough to allow people to reclaim their pets. Bergh stated that the ordinance was “for the sake of suffering humanity as well as the wretched cats.” The ordinance was approved by the New York City aldermen but was never approved and put into effect by the mayor, possibly due to a lack of funds to implement it. 4. Which of the three humane leaders proposed a lecture series at a prominent university that would link the humane movement to other great reform movements of the post-Civil-War era such as women’s suffrage? A. Henry Bergh B. Caroline Earle White C. George Angell Answer: C – George Angell. He proposed the series of lectures to the president of Harvard. 5. Which of the three humane leaders was successful at persuading the city to allow his or her humane organization to take over the cruel city dog pound? A. Henry Bergh B. Caroline Earle White C. George Angell Answer: – Caroline Earle White, whose Women’s Branch SPCA took over the Philadelphia city pound in 1870 and replaced it with a shelter. The Philadelphia dog pound had been one of the cruelest in the country, where dogs were held without food and killed by a painful method after their hold period expired, and White took it over to stop the cruelty. Bergh proposed in 1873 to the mayor of New York that the city build a shelter like the one in Philadelphia and allow the ASPCA to run it, but the city declined. Angell believed that there were not enough homeless dogs in Boston to justify building a pound or a shelter. 6. Which of the three humane leaders said that animals had a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? A. Henry Bergh B. Caroline Earle White C. George Angell Answer: B – Caroline Earle White. Although both White and Bergh made “rights” statements about animals, they do not appear to have believed in a literal right to life for animals. In the case of cats and dogs, all three of the humane leaders appear to have accepted the killing of homeless cats and dogs. They probably saw it as a necessity given the lack of any practical method to cut down on breeding (the capability to do mass spaying of dogs and cats would not mature until the 1960s or 1970s), and the public’s intense fear of stray dogs due to the threat of rabies (commercial rabies vaccines for dogs were not available in the 1800s and early 1900s, and post-exposure vaccination for humans was not available until late in the 1800s). The concern of the three humane leaders was not to abolish shelter killing, but to ensure that impoundment and killing be done in a way that was as humane as possible.

[NOTE: The 90% Reported category lists communities whose animal shelter systems report having been at a 90%+ live release rate for at least one year but who do not qualify for a listing in the right sidebar because they do not make their full statistics easily accessible online.] Kitsap County is in the state of Washington, right across Puget Sound from Seattle. It’s a large county, with a population of over 250,000 people. The county contains four cities — Bremerton (population of about 40,000), Bainbridge Island (23,000), Port Orchard (11,000), and Poulsbo (9000). Animal control and sheltering services are provided for Kitsap County by the Kitsap Humane Society (KHS), a non-profit. The shelter does animal control and sheltering for the county and the four cities. It has an animal control unit which handles stray intake, cruelty investigations, and responding to emergencies and disasters. The shelter takes in owner surrenders with a fee, which is reduced for low-income people, and it requires an appointment. If KHS decides during the surrender process that an animal is sick and medically untreatable, or dangerous, they ask the owner to request euthanasia. The shelter issues annual reports that include its statistics. The shelter does not list its full statistics online. According to its Annual Report for 2013, it rehomed 4197 animals for the year and had a 93% save rate. Stray cat intake decreased 37%, which they attribute to their community cat spay-neuter program. The 2012 annual report states that intake was 4703 animals and the live release rate was 94%.  In 2011, reported intake was 4993 with a live release rate of 95%. In 2010, it reported an intake of 4285 animals and a live release rate of 94%. Kitsap County, WA, was originally listed by this blog on June 26, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

“We’ve been begging the city to go No Kill for years and nothing has happened!” How often have you seen a statement like that? Trying to get a city shelter to reform itself can be a challenging experience. It often leads No Kill advocates down a frustrating road of seeking to force out the current leadership on the city council or in the shelter and replace it with No Kill leadership. That approach can work (Austin, Texas and Arlington, Virginia are examples), but I’ve also seen it fail (Tallahassee, Louisville, Macon, etc., etc.). Sometimes there aren’t enough local people to support the cause, sometimes the city leadership is too entrenched to be thrown out by a single-issue campaign, sometimes city leadership does appoint a new director and that director fails. Just a few days ago, local No Kill advocates were unsuccessful in unseating a county commissioner in favor of a No Kill candidate in Manatee County, Florida. In this article I’d like to talk about a different way that I’m seeing more and more in my researches, where local advocates do not have to take to the streets in protest or beg the city council or the municipal shelter to take action. That different way is for No Kill advocates to form a non-profit that takes on the functions that the municipal shelter is not performing properly. There are a large number of non-profits that have been formed in the last several years for the purpose of making a community No Kill, and they are succeeding at an astounding rate. I would say that far more No Kill communities are being formed by this method today than by the older method of trying to force communities to change by protest and political action. It is worth noting that even in Austin there was a combination of methods. One group worked on political support while another group formed a large non-profit – Austin Pets Alive – to partner with the city shelter. One of the functions that this type of non-profit can perform very well is adoptions. There are few municipal shelters that will refuse to allow a reputable non-profit to pull animals from the shelter for rehoming. And if a non-profit does run into resistance from the shelter in releasing animals, that would be a concrete issue that would garner a lot of attention and sympathy from the public. Another thing that non-profits can do very well is TNR. In some places this may require the non-profit to do some work to pave the way, including checking out state laws and local ordinances to see if any of them need revision. But again, revision of cat ordinances is a concrete issue that may be much easier to change than the entire city council or leadership structure of the shelter. There are many other tasks a non-profit could take on, such as pet retention, targeted spay-neuter, microchip clinics, and running volunteer and neonatal foster programs. In addition to the practical effect of saving animal lives quickly and effectively, a non-profit working with the city shelter can build a strong relationship over time that will gradually bring city and shelter leadership on board with the idea of No Kill. In fact, it seems like a logical approach to try formation of a non-profit to work with the city before trying political action. Political action is a bruising process, and if the people seeking change do not prevail, they can poison the well for any future collaborative process. One could argue that the route of using political action to demand change should be used only as a last resort, given that the track record of cooperation has been so much better and given the serious consequences of failed political action. One of the beauties of non-profits is that they can start off small. For example, a non-profit could take on as its first task saving orphan neonatal kittens during kitten season and finding them adoptive homes. Once the group had some experience at adoptions, they could branch out into doing offsite adoption events for the shelter. Then perhaps they could set up a Help Desk in the shelter lobby, staffed by volunteers. Then maybe a targeted spay-neuter effort to reduce the number of pit bulls coming into the shelter. As the group grew and gained community support, they would also be gaining practical knowledge about exactly what needed to be done in their city. Perhaps they would be able to get to No Kill by working with the existing shelter leadership, but if not, at some point they would have the experience and community support to successfully bid on and run the city shelter themselves. Getting to No Kill by starting a non-profit does not have to be a slow process. In Kansas City, Missouri, for example, a non-profit was formed, bid on and won the city contract, and then got to No Kill within six months. That’s somewhat unusual in cities I’ve studied, though. But the non-profit process should not be rejected just because it might not fix all the problems immediately. If the city leaders are recalcitrant and shelter leadership is unresponsive and there is no large groundswell of support among the citizenry, then you have nowhere to start unless you do it yourself. Here is a list just off the top of my head of large non-profits that are currently partnering successfully with city shelters or contracting to do sheltering themselves to raise live relief rates: Austin Pets Alive, the Richmond SPCA, Kansas City Pet Project, the Nevada Humane Society, Dane County Humane Society, Humane Society for Seattle/King County, First Coast No More Homeless Pets/Jacksonville Humane Society, Lifeline Animal Project (Atlanta), and the San Francisco SPCA. This method has also been used in a great many counties and small towns where animal sheltering is done by a non-profit. A variation on this theme is where you have a consortium of non-profits. This method seems to be especially effective in large cities. It is being used with great success in San Antonio, Denver (despite their regressive pit-bull ban), Gainesville, Buffalo, New York City, and Portland. Based on the momentum and trends of the past several years, the future of No Kill certainly seems to be in building non-profits and collaborative groups of non-profits to work with municipalities. This should be an inspiring approach for No Kill advocates who have been trying the political approach for years and getting nowhere. Instead of waiting for the municipal shelter or the city council to change, they can turn their words into actions today and create the change themselves.

It’s too early for 2014 stats to be out, but not too early to look at some No Kill shelters that had very good years in 2014: Lynchburg is a small city of 76,000 people in rural Virginia. The Lynchburg Humane Society (LHS) has a contract with the city of Lynchburg for animal services. The director, Makena Yarbrough, recently posted a blog talking about events in 2014. (The blog is accompanied by a photo of a 12-year-old adoptee who may be the cutest dog ever). The shelter took in over 800 more animals in 2014 than in 2013, including 368 pets saved from neighboring shelters. The brand-new shelter building, paid for by donations that LHS raised (way to go community!) is almost ready and is slated to open in February. They had a very successful special effort during kitten season in 2014 to get kittens out of the old shelter building quickly so they wouldn’t get sick, and this effort sharply decreased their shelter deaths. What a great 2014 – and they are planning to make 2015 even better. Jacksonville also reached out to help neighboring communities in 2014. First Coast No More Homeless Pets (FCNMHP), a Jacksonville non-profit that has been a major part of the city’s success, has been helping neighboring Nassau and Clay counties to sharply reduce their kill rates. Nassau County Animal Services recently announced that they increased their live release rate by 20 points in 2014 and plan to become No Kill in 2015. Rick DuCharme, FCNMHP’s director, wants to expand assistance to additional neighboring counties, including some that are sparsely populated and have few resources. Kansas City, Missouri, is a city of 464,000 people. A group of pet advocates formed the Kansas City Pet Project (KCPP) in 2011 and took over the city pound on January 1, 2012. Brent Toellner, president of the board of directors, posted a retrospective of the last three years. Their staff has grown from 18 to more than 60 and they have opened two satellite adoptions centers. Fosters, volunteers, adopters, and community support have all grown. The shelter has a tradition of being open on New Years Day, as they were on their first day of business in 2012. They did that to show the community that it was not going to be business as usual with KCPP, and they kept their promise. Christie Banduch, the director of the tiny Kirby, Texas, No Kill shelter, developed a very ambitious plan in 2014 to make the unincorporated parts of Bexar County, where Kirby is located, No Kill too. She spotted an opportunity when the city of San Antonio, which is also located in Bexar County, decided to stop providing animal control and sheltering for the county. When that happened the county was left with no shelter. Kirby’s shelter is too small for the number of animals they take in, so an agreement for Kirby and Bexar County to partner, hopefully with Banduch in charge of the whole thing, would be serendipity. And last, but far from least, 2014 may turn out to be the year when the entire state of Colorado went over the 90% live-release-rate mark. The state hit an 89% live release rate for 2013. Unfortunately, if this year is like last year we will be waiting several months on the data. Colorado would be the first No Kill state ever, though, so it will be worth the wait. In addition to saving so many of its own animals, Colorado also saved thousands of animals transferred into the state from kill shelters. In addition to these stories there were hundreds of other communities whose shelters did great things in 2014. 2014 was the best year yet for No Kill, and all indications are that 2015 will be even better.