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.

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.

Asheville is a city of almost 90,000 people located in the mountains of western North Carolina. It is the county seat of Buncombe County, which has a population of 248,000. Asheville has become a mecca for retiring baby boomers and is growing rapidly. The city, county, and a non-profit called the Asheville Humane Society (AHS) have a cooperative arrangement for caring for homeless animals. The city and county both have animal control units that enforce ordinances, pick up strays, and respond to complaints. The Buncombe County Animal Shelter (BCAS) in Asheville houses strays for their hold period, and if they are not reclaimed they go to the AHS Nancy Hiscoe Clark Adoption and Education Center for placement. AHS contracts with the city and county to run BCAS, and BCAS and the AHS adoption center are located side-by-side on a modern campus. The shelter accepts owner surrenders with no fee and no appointment required. AHS and the shelter offer many programs. Brother Wolf Animal Rescue is a non-profit that has operated in Asheville since 2007. It has an adoption center that is open 365 days a year and houses up to 100 animals. Brother Wolf has a Help Desk and a pet pantry, and it takes in some owner surrenders. The Humane Alliance of Western North Carolina has provided low-cost spay-neuter in the area since 1994, and reports that it has sterilized 350,000 animals. The Humane Alliance partners with BCAS, PetSmart Charities, and the Mimi Paige Foundation to provide trap-neuter-return for community cats. AHS and the shelter are part of the Million Cat Challenge. A news report on January 29, 2015, stated that BCAS took in 5900 animals in 2014 and euthanized 16% of them. The shelter adopted out about 3000 animals, returned about 960 to their owners, and transferred about 800. Buncombe County is counted in the Running Totals as an 80%-90% community.

Alger County is a small rural county located on the northern border of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Its population is 9600 people, including the county seat of Munising. Animal sheltering is provided for the county by the Alger County Animal Shelter (ACAS), which is a non-profit organization registered as the Humane Society of Alger County. The shelter stated its primary purpose in a newsletter as: “to receive lost or unwanted animals brought to the shelter, to return them to their owners or place them in a good home, and to educate the public about intelligent and humane treatment of animals.” I spoke to the shelter manager, who told me that the county sheriff answers calls for stray pickup and those animals are brought to the shelter. ACAS accepts owner surrenders (including surrenders from outside the county) except for animals who are vicious or obviously sick. The shelter manager told me that ACAS turns away only about 3 or 4 animals each year under those criteria. ACAS employees or volunteers will drive to meet local owners who want to surrender an animal but cannot come to the shelter during regular business hours. The shelter asks for a $25-$50 contribution for owner surrenders, but does not require it. ACAS leases a building from the county and the county provides utilities, and the city of Munising makes a small payment to the shelter each month, but the shelter is primarily supported by donations and volunteers. Like other Michigan shelters, ACAS reports its statistics to the state of Michigan each year. The shelter has had a high save rate for several years. For 2013, ACAS reported an intake of 254 cats and dogs, with 58 returned to owner, 208 adopted, and no transfers (scroll down in the link to the ACAS page). The live release rate was 99%. The 2013 reporting form for Michigan shelters does not include the categories of owner-requested euthanasia or died/lost in shelter care, so I’m unable to provide a modified live release rate. In 2012, the shelter reported an intake of 308 animals, with 243 adoptions, 57 returned to owner, and 3 euthanasias. This gave the shelter a 99% live release rate for the year . If the 5 animals who died in shelter care are counted in with euthanasias, the live release rate was 97%. ACAS takes in at-risk animals from other shelters when it has room. In 2012, 63 animals from other shelters were assisted by ACAS. (In a 2013 newsletter, ACAS listed somewhat different numbers for 2012 than those reported to the state. I asked the shelter manager about the discrepancy, and she said the statistics in the newsletter were estimates, prepared before the year-end totals were available.) In 2011, the shelter report to the state showed a 94% live release rate with an intake of 240 animals. The Michigan Pet Fund Alliance recognized ACAS with an award for its 2011 live release rate. In 2010, the shelter reported a 94% live release rate with an intake of 190 animals. ACAS also reported high live release rates in previous years. Alger County, MI, was originally listed by this blog on July 31, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

I started my first blog keeping track of high-performing public shelters back in July of 2011. At that time most people thought there were about 2 dozen or so No Kill shelters, and they were almost all small towns. No Kill at that time certainly seemed to qualify as an outsider movement. Fast forward to today, and here’s a list of big cities/metro areas that are at or above a 90% save rate and have sustained it for at least a year: Seattle metro area, Portland metro area, Fairfax County VA, Austin, Denver, and the entire state of New Hampshire. Here’s a list of big cities/metro areas that recently hit 90% or have 80%+ live release rates: New York City, Washington DC, Richmond VA, San Francisco, Jacksonville, and the entire state of Colorado. This is just off the top of my head and I may have left some out. In addition, we have very active programs in San Antonio and Los Angeles (a Best Friends effort) that are making great progress. Here’s the funny thing, though. All these big cities did not just wake up in the last three years and say “hey, let’s go No Kill.” Instead they have all been working for many years, and in some cases decades, to get where they are today. In some cases they were directly influenced by the No Kill program that was developed in San Francisco by Rich Avanzino and his staff back in the 1980s and 1990s. Robin Starr, for example, flew to San Francisco from Richmond in the late 1990s to consult with Avanzino about how to bring the program to Richmond. And the movement in New York City was patterned after Avanzino’s program, although they have altered it to fit the circumstances of New York. In other places on the list above, the people who instituted shelter reform seem to have been affected only indirectly, if at all, by the San Francisco program. New Hampshire developed its own program back in the 1990s, which included at least one shelter director independently coming up with some of the programs being used in San Francisco. The doyen of one of the biggest cities on the 90% list dislikes the term “no kill” because he believes it unfairly labels shelter workers as killers. He has used a cooperative approach to help form a coalition that, working over decades, has brought his city to a live release rate of over 90%. Over the years since the San Francisco Adoption Pact was signed in 1994, there has been a lot of progress made in how to save lives. One of the most exciting developments has been the new directions in community cat management. Based on work that has been done by Alley Cat Allies since its founding in 1990, and also carried on by Dr. Kate Hurley, Dr. Julie Levy, and Maddie’s Fund, we are on the verge of being able to end shelter killing of cats. The new programs for cats were included in a draft California whitepaper issued last year that was signed by both the ASPCA and HSUS. This whitepaper also endorsed managed admission techniques. There are additional exciting developments going on at the national level. I was told by one HSUS director that they are pleased with their new program of highly targeted spay-neuter, in which people go door to door in city neighborhoods where a lot of backyard breeding is occurring. ASPCA is trying to improve transports, using knowledge from transport businesses to develop more efficient ways to move animals around the country. All this is great news, and it illustrates the fact that No Kill has quickly become a big, heterogeneous movement. Its success certainly seems to indicate that No Kill has either already moved from outsider to insider status, or will soon. It may be time for the leaders of the movement to think about whether and how this development should change the tactics of the movement and how the movement presents itself. The biggest question may be whether it is time to move from confrontation to cooperation. That’s an oversimplification of course, because in some cities and towns it may be that confrontation is still the only policy that will succeed (yes Memphis and Tallahassee, I’m thinking of you). But there are many situations in which the No Kill movement could perhaps move forward faster by thinking of how it can work with people rather than confronting them. For example, many traditional shelter workers strongly object to the idea that there is no pet overpopulation problem. To those people, accepting that there is no pet overpopulation problem will inevitably mean that spay-neuter programs will be given up or de-emphasized. I can understand how people who have been doing humane work for decades would find this to be a frightening prospect. This seems to me like one area where the No Kill movement could forgo some terminology and instead reinforce the fact that it still strongly believes in the importance of spay-neuter, especially in areas of high intake. Another thing that really offends traditional shelter workers is when No Kill advocates say that No Kill can happen overnight, and all you have to do to get to No Kill is stop the killing. In fact, No Kill can happen overnight, but maybe not everywhere. It can happen overnight in a small community that has favorable demographics and where the shelter is already at a live release rate of 75% or so. But if the shelter takes in 30,000 animals per year and is in a city with low median income and has a live release rate of 25% or so, then it’s hard to imagine how the shelter could transition to 90% overnight. And as far as saying that all you have to do is stop the killing, that’s not a helpful statement. Getting to No Kill is a lot of work, because people aren’t going to appear out of thin air to adopt, foster, etc., just because a shelter has announced it’s going No Kill. I think we could easily re-work the terminology we use to be more accurate and less inflammatory — for example, we could say that a No Kill transition can happen quickly in most places, and that what we need to do is take killing off the table as a solution. It may seem like a subtle distinction in wording, but it changes the meaning from an accusatory demand to putting the emphasis on the process. There is a substantial list of additional complaints that traditional shelter officials and workers have against No Kill, including their opinions that managed intake leads to animals being abandoned, that lowering adoption prices leads to hoarding and abuse, that TNR and SNR are inhumane, etc. A national program of data collection and analysis could help lay these fears to rest. Even if traditional shelter workers refused to accept the results of such data collection, the collection and presentation of the data would show that No Kill is willing to take criticism seriously. And who knows, we might find some things we need to fix. Another issue that No Kill needs to address is the lack of a national steering organization. At the current time we have various organizations, but they are either single-person efforts, or local, or they have a limited purpose. These small organizations have contributed a great deal to No Kill. In order to be taken seriously as an insider movement, though, No Kill should have a national organization that brings its leaders together. There are many people to choose from for a potential board for such a guiding body, including Rich Avanzino, Becky Robinson, Bonney Brown, Nathan Winograd, Jane Hoffman, Dr. Hurley, Dr. Ellen Jefferson, and Brent Toellner. At some point, such an organization might develop certification standards for No Kill shelters. Perhaps the transition to insider status is best represented by what happened in Kansas City, Missouri, where local activists formed their own non-profit, Kansas City Pet Project (KCPP) and bid on the contract to run the city shelter. They won the contract and started work on January 1, 2012. KCPP’s shelter is fully open admission, and it’s big — they had an intake of 8179 animals in 2013. They hit 90% within 6 months of their starting date, and have stayed at or above 90% since then. It’s a struggle for them, because intake has gone up now that they are no kill, but they are making it work. Now that No Kill has proven itself, it will be possible in more and more cities for No Kill advocates to form non-profits and bid on contracts. It’s not a crazy idea anymore, and No Kill advocates can use examples from many places to show city leaders that contracting out animal shelters makes sense on many levels. As insiders, we have to show that we can produce the results we promised. One way to do that is to move from picketing and protesting to taking the reins and running successful public shelters.

Monmouth County, New Jersey, is in the center of the state and has about 630,000 human residents. It is a county of many small cities and boroughs, with its largest municipality having a population of 67,000. The Monmouth County SPCA (MCSPCA) is a private organization that has contracted with many of the cities and boroughs in Monmouth County to provide animal sheltering services for strays.  The shelter has adoption centers in Eatontown and Freehold. The municipalities served by the MCSPCA are almost all in the eastern part of the county. These municipalities include: Atlantic Highlands (population approximately 4,000), Eatontown (13,000), Fair Haven (6,000), Highlands (5,000), Holmdel (17,000), Little Silver (6,000), Long Branch (31,000), Middletown (67,000), North Middletown (3,000), Ocean Township (27,000), Red Bank (12,000), Rumson (7,000), Sea Bright (1,000), Shrewsbury (4,000), Spring Lake Heights (5,000), and West Long Branch (8,000). There are 12 communities with 5,000 or more population served by the MCSPCA, and each of these communities is listed separately in the sidebar. Adding up the totals of all these communities, the MCSPCA provides animal sheltering services for a population of more than 216,000 people. The MCSPCA also takes in owner surrenders by appointment. I called the shelter to get details on their owner surrender policy, and was told that they do not turn any animal away unless, in their judgment, the animal should be euthanized due to severe behavioral issues or untreatable suffering. In that case they recommend that the owner take the animal to the vet for humane euthanasia. In 2011 the MCSPCA had a live release rate of 94% calculated by comparing live releases to euthanasias, and 90% calculated against total intake. Their intake was over 4500 animals. The shelter’s Annual Report for 2012 showed a 94% live release rate, with a modified live release rate (including died/lost in shelter care) of 93%. Total intake for the year was 4467. The Annual Report recounts how the shelter helped with the Hurricane Sandy relief effort by taking in 150 animals stranded by the storm and by distributing 300,000 pounds of food. In other news for 2012, the shelter opened an offsite adoption center at a mall and adopted out over 700 animals. As of this writing the shelter has not posted an Annual Report for 2013. Statistics reported to the state of New Jersey showed an intake of 3538 animals for 2013 with a live release rate of 93%. Monmouth County, NJ, was originally listed by this blog on April 15, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.