OUT THE FRONT DOOR

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.

Right now several states still have gas chambers in active use in animal shelters. Reformers are working hard in those states to get gas chambers banned, but they are running into local resistance in many places. It is puzzling that there is still any opposition to getting rid of gas chambers, because all of the leading national organizations that have weighed in on the issue say that euthanasia by injection (EBI) is the preferred method of euthanasia for shelter dogs and cats. The textbook “Shelter Medicine for Veterinarians and Staff” notes that the Association of Shelter Veterinarians, ASPCA, HSUS, and the American Humane Association (AHA) “all recommend EBI of sodium pentobarbital as the only acceptable method for euthanasia of dogs and cats in animal shelters.” The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), in its 2013 Euthanasia Guidelines, says that “the preferred method of euthanasia” in animal shelters is EBI. The Euthanasia Reference Manual published by HSUS states that EBI is the best of the available euthanasia methods for shelter animals, and lists gas chambers among the methods that “are not considered to be humane euthanasia, and should never be permitted in a shelter setting.” The National Animal Control Association states that EBI using sodium pentobarbital is the “only method of choice” for humane euthanasia of shelter dogs and cats, and it “condemns”  the use of gas chambers. The people who want to continue using gas chambers in shelters generally rely on three arguments. None of those arguments stand up to scrutiny and none of them are accepted by experts in the field. The first argument is that gas chambers are safer for the humans involved when they are dealing with aggressive or feral animals. This argument seems plausible at first glance because people tend to think of EBI as requiring handling of the animal, while the gas chamber just requires pushing a button. But what this argument ignores is that the technician has to handle the animal to get it into the gas chamber in the first place. EBI is actually safer than the gas chamber for the technicians because a press gate or squeeze cage can be used to restrain an animal for the few seconds required to give a pre-euthanasia sedative. The restraint technique is used in TNR to get feral cats ready for surgery, and it is both safe for the technicians and as humane as possible for the cats. Anyone who has seen experienced people preparing feral cats for surgery will realize how much more humane the restraint-sedation technique is than stuffing a fully conscious, struggling, terrified animal into a gas chamber. And speaking of danger to the human technicians, gas chambers are dangerous things to have in any building. The “Shelter Medicine for Veterinarians and Staff” textbook notes that carbon monoxide exposure has been documented in the death of one shelter worker and the illness of another. Gas chambers that leak low levels of carbon monoxide can cause serious health problems in shelter personnel. There is no way to tell if a chamber is leaking without monitoring it, because the gas has no smell or taste. And handling the gas is dangerous because it is explosive. The second argument made by those who want to keep using gas chambers is that EBI is more expensive. This argument is factually incorrect. AHA did a study of costs of EBI versus gas chambers and found that EBI is cheaper – far cheaper, in fact. The 2009 study found a cost of $4.66 per animal for the gas chamber versus $2.29 for EBI. Sodium pentobarbital is a controlled substance, but the majority of states allow direct registration for animal shelters to obtain the drug. Concern about the ability of shelters to get sodium pentobarbital without having to go through a veterinarian should never be a barrier to banning gas chambers, because if a state lacks direct registration it could be instituted at the same time as the ban on gas chambers. The third argument made by people who want to keep the gas chamber is that a gas chamber is emotionally easier on shelter personnel because they do not have to look at and touch the animal as it dies. Again, the experts in the field do not agree with this reasoning. Many studies have found that performing euthanasia is stressful for shelter workers regardless of the method used. The key is how workers deal with the stress. If they distance themselves from their emotions by distancing themselves from the animal’s death, it is harder on them in the long run. Being able to feel the sadness and tragedy of an animal’s death is actually a sign that a shelter worker is coping with his or her emotions in a healthy way rather than ignoring them or shutting them off. I suspect that what is really occurring with resistance to getting rid of gas chambers is just resistance to change, and a desire not to have to go through the learning curve of adopting a new method. Those concerns should not stand in the way of banning gas chambers. When every national organization with expertise on the issue, including the AVMA, has expressed the clear opinion that EBI is superior to the gas chamber in all respects, that should be the end of the debate.

This Tuesday, April 21, at 9PM EST, Scott Trebatoski is giving a free webinar on Return to Field (RTF) for community cats. The webcast, presented by Maddie’s Fund, will have a 20 minute presentation and a 40-45 minute Q&A session, and did I say it’s free? Go ahead and sign up even if you cannot participate live, and Maddie’s will send you an e-mail with a link to watch it on demand as soon as it’s available. There has been quite a bit of controversy over RTF programs, with some people believing that such programs discriminate against cats or make it less likely that owned cats will be reunited with their owners. I’ve even seen comments from some people who believe that RTF is just a way for shelters to artificially jack up their live release rates. Trebatoski’s webinar is a chance for people who have reservations about RTF to talk to an expert and find out what RTF is really about and why it works so much better for cats than the traditional shelter approach. By the way, Hillsborough County, Florida, where Trebatoski is now director, is replicating the success of his previous city, Jacksonville. Since Trebatoski became director in Hillsborough a year ago, the live release rate has rapidly increased and in the last few months has been pushing 90%. In March 2015 the live release rate was 89% using the traditional calculation and 87% including animals who died or were lost in shelter care. Intake in March was 1,137 dogs and cats, and average length of stay was under 7 days. Hillsborough County includes the city of Tampa, and has an estimated population of about 1.3 million people. In more RTF news, the state of Arizona has passed a law that exempts cats from the state’s mandatory 3-day hold period on the condition that they are sterilized and returned to field. Francis Battista of Best Friends has posted a blog on this new law and its importance to the Best Friends-PetSmart Charities community cat initiative in Pima County, Arizona. The blog has a nice summary of why RTF programs lead to better outcomes for cats (including a much higher chance of being reunited with their families) than traditional hold times. HSUS’s Animal Sheltering magazine has an article in the March/April 2015 issue about the Chico, California, city shelter’s adaptation of the new cat paradigms to their local circumstances. The shelter first got buy-in for the program by consulting with the city government and the community. Owner surrendered cats now go to a local non-profit. The city shelter takes in sick or injured stray cats and orphaned kittens, and refers healthy community cats for TNR. Cat euthanasia dropped from 1,273 in 2011 to 88 in 2013, while cat intake dropped from 2,839 to 442. This program allows the shelter to concentrate on the sick, injured, and orphan stray cats who really need their help, while the healthy stray cats who are doing well remain in the field where many of them have homes. The Charleston (South Carolina) Animal Society’s new kitten intensive care unit is now open. The society takes in 2500 kittens each year. The news about dogs this week was mostly scientific and medical. Scientific American and Science magazine are reporting on research showing that when dogs and people gaze into each others’ eyes, both species have an increase in neurochemicals that are important in bonding. In other words, your dog really is feeling love for you when he or she looks into your eyes. The canine flu outbreak in the Chicago area has been identified as caused by an H3N2 subtype. This is the first identification of an H3N2 subtype outside of Asia. Currently available canine vaccines are for the H3N8 subtype, and it is not known if there is any cross-immunity. The H3N2 virus can also infect cats. The Koret Shelter Medicine Program has made this list of resources available. Maddie’s Fund has a new article on treatment of parvovirus in a shelter setting. In other shelter and rescue news, Salt Lake County, Utah, is reporting that it had a 93% live release rate in 2014. The Jacksonville Humane Society has started a campaign for funds to build a new permanent shelter to replace the one that burned down in 2007, killing 86 animals. The HSUS is making an initial investment of $600,000 in programs to improve the situation for street dogs in Puerto Rico. And Dogster has a nice interview with a caring ACO officer in Atlanta to celebrate ACO Appreciation Week.

Alpena County is located in the far northern part of Michigan’s lower peninsula, bordering Lake Huron. It is a predominantly rural county with a population of 30,000. The county seat is the city of Alpena, which is a vacation spot with a permanent population of 10,000. Alpena County has an animal control division that reports to the state of Michigan (scroll down in the link). The Huron Humane Society (HHS), located in the city of Alpena, also reports to the state of Michigan. I spoke to a representative of HHS who told me that they have a contract with the county to take in all the animals transferred by animal control and they take in strays directly from the public. The representative told me that HHS also takes in owner surrenders from the public, subject to a waiting list when the shelter is full. The representative did not know if any exceptions could be made to the waiting list for people who have to surrender an animal immediately. There is a small fee for owner surrenders who are up-to-date on vetting, with a higher fee if HHS will have to supply the vetting. In 2012, Alpena County animal control reported that it impounded 115 cats and dogs, returned 53 of them to their owners, transferred 57, and euthanized 4. HHS reported an intake of 450 cats and dogs, with a live release rate of 90%. If we combine the statistics for both organizations, the live release rate for the county for 2012 was 91%. Alpena County is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

Dear Readers, You may recall that I recently listed St. George, Utah, as a 90%+ shelter in the right sidebar. The listing was based on statistics for the St. George shelter for calendar year 2013 that were sent to me by Best Friends. A few days after I posted the listing I received an alert that referenced a recent article about the St. George shelter referring to problems in the past when the shelter was under previous management. I wasn’t too concerned about the article, because I thought the change in management must have happened before 2013 since the Best Friend’s statistics showed a 97% live release rate in 2013. I was curious about it, though, so I searched the author’s name to find the previous article. Well, it turns out that new management did not take over until the summer of 2013, and the deficiencies described in the article under the old management included heartsticking, along with other serious and cruel practices. It sounds as though the St. George shelter was a nightmare for the first half of 2013, until new management took over and turned it around. Since my listing was for the entire year of 2013, I have deleted the listing. I want to emphasize that St. George now has a new shelter manager and there is ample evidence that they have turned around and currently are saving over 90%. I cannot list them as a 90%+ shelter for 2013, though, because (a) I don’t trust the statistics for the first half of 2013 that were compiled under the old, bad management, and (b) the new management has not gone through a kitten season yet. I hope I’ll be able to re-list St. George next year based on their 2014 calendar-year statistics if their new management keeps up the good work. I also want to emphasize that I think Best Friends provided me the statistics in good faith and that it was my failure to do adequate research that led to the listing being made in the first place. Lots of people provide me with statistics, and I appreciate that because sometimes it’s the only way I have of becoming aware of a good shelter. But it’s my responsibility to check out each situation thoroughly and I failed to do that with St. George. This incident is as good a time as any to ask a question that I’ve been mulling over for a while. Should I restrict listings in the right sidebar to those shelters that have made their statistics available as public information, either by posting statistics online or by submitting them to a reputable database such as Maddie’s Fund or a state agency? I think that shelters are likely to be more careful and accurate with statistics that are made available to the general public than they are with statistics sent privately to a blogger. If I go the route of requiring a public listing of statistics, it will mean delisting quite a few communities who have been sending me their statistics privately. These are mostly small shelters whose websites do not allow for much flexibility. What do you think? Should I get tougher with transparency requirements, or leave things as they are? You can leave a comment or e-mail me at the address listed on the “contact” page above.

Friedrich Engels, one of the original philosophers of communist political theory, once said that there would be no need to abolish the state by force because it would wither away once the principles of social and economic justice were broadly understood. Somewhat similarly, many people feel that once the “pet overpopulation” problem is solved, animal shelters will wither away, or at least shrink to very small agencies that deal only with emergency situations involving sick, injured, and dangerous animals. I believe this idea of the animal shelter withering away, which was originated by No Kill critics but is shared by many No Kill advocates, is actually an assault on the core values of No Kill. Before we can have this discussion we need to define “pet overpopulation,” and right away we have an important philosophical divide. Many people (including me) think the proper definition of “pet overpopulation” for cats and dogs is when there are more cats and dogs needing homes in a given year than there are homes for them. The people who believe in the withering away of the animal shelter, however, define “pet overpopulation” somewhat differently, as anytime you have adoptable animals coming into an animal shelter. Since the year 2000, animal shelter intake has stayed roughly the same nationwide (as best we can tell from the limited statistics available) at about 7 million cats and dogs per year. People who define pet overpopulation as adoptable animals coming into animal shelters believe that we need to concentrate on reducing that 7 million number. People who look at it as a supply and demand issue disagree, and feel that what we need to do is balance intake with live dispositions. Further reduction of intake is only needed if the number of available homes is insufficient for the current intake. Since the year 2000, supply and demand for healthy and treatable shelter dogs in the United States have been in rough balance. For cats, TNR has grown dramatically and we now also have the new breakthroughs of SNR and balancing cat intake with shelter capacity, which have obviated the need for killing healthy or treatable shelter cats. Since this is the case, I believe we need to change our efforts away from further increases in spay-neuter targeted at pet owners, and toward placing shelter animals in the available home or field situations, including emphasizing adoptions, return-to-owner, transports, TNR, and SNR. Note that I did not say we should “reduce” spay-neuter efforts aimed at owned pets. Those efforts are still important, but spay-neuter rates of owned pets are very high already, on the order of 80-95%, and we have just about squeezed all the juice out of that orange. We can probably get some additional benefit from micro-targeting by zip code and going door-to-door in neighborhoods where pit bulls are being bred, but otherwise, a maintenance effort for spay-neuter of owned pets is all we need. Obsessing over the idea that we need to make the animal shelter wither away by doubling down on spay-neuter will be a waste of time and resources. But this issue goes far beyond the proper place of spay-neuter. It has broader implications that go to the heart of what No Kill stands for and what the future of No Kill will be. We have replenishment of the dog population from sources that we cannot control. For dogs, we have commercial breeders who sell large numbers of dogs to individuals. Even with good pet retention programs, sometimes these owners will want to or have to give up their dogs. We will never get everyone to spay and neuter their dogs, so there will continue to be some surprise puppies. And sometimes dogs will get lost and their owners either won’t look for them or will look in the wrong places. Rather than keep knocking ourselves out trying to make the world of dog owners perfect, which is never going to happen, we might as well accept that we are going to have a certain number of dogs a year who need rehoming. Cats are a completely different story than dogs, but cats also are going to need continuing sheltering. There is a reservoir population of feral cats that replenishes the supply of cats. There are virtually no feral dogs in United States cities anymore, but there are lots of feral cats everywhere. Because cats can live in the wild we will never be able to reduce the feral cat population to zero, any more than we could reduce the raccoon or squirrel populations to zero. Rather than thinking of this as a bad thing, we should welcome it. Rather than looking at 7 million animals a year going into shelters as a problem we need to fix (which may be futile since we haven’t figured out how to fix it in the last 15 years) we should look at it as an opportunity to maintain a safety net and a compassionate marketplace for pets. In a recent article I posited that the number of people adopting dogs will continue to rise, causing a shortage of adoptable dogs. If this happens, instead of celebrating it perhaps we should attempt to find dogs to meet that demand. Some people who believe in the withering away of the animal shelter think that private organizations will take over specialized duties that used to belong to the animal shelter. For example, one organization might do TNR and SNR, while another organization serves as a clearinghouse for lost pets, another one rehabilitates dogs with behavior problems, etc. While the policies are good, I think the idea of completely separating these functions into different entities is a bad idea. Animal control and sheltering are a “natural monopoly” in the same way that utilities and cable service are natural monopolies. The reason that communities have historically had animal control and sheltering concentrated in one entity, or in a small number of entities that work closely together, is precisely because the efficiencies of that arrangement are so high. It is fine to have separate groups that do TNR, behavior rehabilitation, etc., but we also need a central clearinghouse so that each small group does not have to reinvent the wheel by doing all the associated tasks of animal impoundment, record keeping, evaluation, handling, etc. separately. Dogs and cats would be hurt by fragmenting the animal care system, because it would fragment and weaken their safety net. The safety net for dogs and cats depends above all on people communicating and networking — on community engagement. The shelter is a natural place for that network to form. The behaviorist who wants to get routine health screening for dogs being rehabilitated knows the veterinarians. The people who do TNR have met city council members at the shelter’s yearly fundraiser, and they know who will be sympathetic to the cats when changes in ordinances are being discussed. The SNR people can coordinate much better with the Lost and Found people if they know them personally and work with them every day. Getting consensus on changes that are needed is much easier when everyone is in touch with the big picture. Centralized shelters also serve as a magnet for media exposure and attracting new people and donations. People who would never think about donating to a pet retention group will donate to the shelter, which can then funnel money to pet retention. Fundraising, which is of course a critical aspect of the safety net, is much easier with one strong local presence that gets a lot of publicity, and publicity is much easier for the shelter to get than it would be for a bunch of small, specialized groups. Publicity is also key to attracting adopters and new volunteers and fosters. Perhaps the most important reason that the withering away of the animal shelter would be a bad thing is that it would mean giving up the shelter’s place in the pet market. We need a marketplace for pets where the suppliers are concerned above all with the welfare of the pets they are supplying. As I discussed in the post about the coming shelter dog shortage, we as animal advocates have to start thinking about what we want the pet marketplace of the future to look like. If the shelter withers away, then where will people go when they want a pet? If there is no shelter where they can adopt, then they will go to commercial breeders, including backyard breeders and puppy mills. The withering away of the animal shelter, if it happens, will be a bonanza to people who want to breed cats and dogs for money. In 2012, about 35% of dog and cat acquisitions were from animal shelters or rescues (which generally acquire their animals from shelters or as owner surrenders) or places like PetSmart and Petco that provide space for shelter and rescue animal adoptions. (Data courtesy of the American Pet Products Association.) That’s more than 1/3 of the pet market that is currently held by animal shelters, either directly or indirectly through rescues. If shelters wither away and give up this market to commercial breeders it will be a disaster for dogs and cats, because there will no longer be any suppliers in the pet market who actually care about the well-being of pets. Rather than continuing to obsess over cutting shelter admissions more and more we should be obsessing over increasing this market share as much as we can. Today there is something of a trend for people to adopt pets rather than buy. We need to spend our time trying to encourage the public’s desire to adopt, instead of spending our time trying (futilely) to further increase spaying and neutering of owned pets. The No Kill movement in particular needs to think about where we want to go with animal sheltering, and we need to fight back against the idea that the most desirable state of affairs is for the animal shelter to wither away because it is no longer needed. The core idea of No Kill has always been to connect the person who wants to adopt with an animal that they can adopt. Continuing to do that in the future will require No Kill to start consciously thinking about the structure we want to see in the pet market and No Kill’s place in the pet market.

Baltimore is an independent city in Maryland with 622,000 human residents. The Baltimore metro area has about 2.7 million people. Animal sheltering is provided for the city by the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS) (not to be confused with the Baltimore County animal shelter). BARCS takes in more than 11,000 animals per year. BARCS is a non-profit that was formed in 2005 from the old municipal shelter for the purpose of working with the city’s animal control. Jennifer Brause was the founder of BARCS and has been its executive director since 2006. At the time of the takeover, the city shelter had a save rate of only 2% (not a typo). The shelter accepts owner surrenders on a drop-off basis, with the only requirement being to provide identification and complete a questionnaire about the pet. BARCS accepts owner surrenders from outside its jurisdiction for a fee. BARCS does not post its statistics on its website, but it reported a 78% live release rate in 2013 and stated in 2014 that it was running at 80% as of September. Baltimore was one of the cities that was featured at last year’s Best Friends national conference, and here is the playbook that the Baltimore shelter prepared for the conference. The playbook details the shelter’s plans for further improvement. (The playbooks for other cities that were featured at the 2014 conference are at this link.) BARCS has teamed up with the Baltimore Humane Society and the Maryland SPCA, which is headquartered in Baltimore, to form the Baltimore Animal Welfare Alliance. The three shelters cooperate on adoption events, neighborhood-level targeting of spay-neuter efforts, and balancing shelter capacity. Baltimore is counted in the Running Totals as an 80%+ community.

There is a lot of news this week, so let’s get to it: Miami-Dade County Animal Services has announced that it achieved an 81.5% live release rate for dogs and cats in 2014! The shelter had an intake of 27,000 animals. A $4 million budget increase has allowed the shelter to implement a raft of new programs that are having an effect. In other news from Miami, the shelter is now using the Finding Rover face recognition app for lost dogs. Hillsborough County Pet Resources Center, the open admission shelter for Hillsborough County, Florida, is running at an 85% live release rate so far for its 2014-2015 fiscal year (counting animals who died or were lost in shelter care with euthanasias). This covers the 5 colder months, so we can’t guess what the rate for the entire year will be, but things are looking good. Two years ago the live release rate for Hillsborough County, which has a population of 2 million and includes the city of Tampa, was only 46%. When current director Scott Trebatoski started a year ago, he made a lot of changes to adoption procedures, all designed to make the process as smooth and attractive to adopters as possible. He has also repaired relationships with local rescues. Tampa has proven to be a very tough venue for No Kill in the past, so it is encouraging to see this progress. The Clermont To The Rescue Humane Society just started running the Clermont County Animal Shelter in Ohio on January 1st this year. Clermont County has about 200,000 people and is part of the Cincinnati metro area. Manager Eva Devaughn reports that in the first two months under new operation, the shelter has euthanized only 7 cats and dogs, all based on a veterinarian’s recommendation. West Virginia has certainly not been known as a promising venue for No Kill, so every ray of hope in that state is important. The Huntington-Cabell-Wayne Animal Shelter is reporting that it has saved 85% of its dogs this year and has just started a TNR program for feral and community cats. In more West Virginia news, the Mercer County Animal Shelter reports that it has not killed any animals for space in the last 2 months. The shelter is transporting at-risk pets out of the area. Actually, a group of volunteers is doing transports for the shelter, including networking to find receiving rescues and, twice a month, driving 12 to 20 hours round trip. In 2014 the volunteers saved over 1300 animals. Mercer County’s population is 62,000 and its median household income is $26,600, about half the national average. One in five people in the county live in poverty. In more transport news, PetSmart Rescue Waggin’ is helping the Vincennes Animal Shelter in Indiana. PetSmart has picked up animals for transport four times since the arrangement was made in January, and the shelter now has empty cages. Vincennes is a small town in the southwestern part of the state. The town’s population has been declining, and it has no significant population centers near enough to be an easy drive for potential adopters. North Shore Animal League’s Tour for Life rolling adoption event to assist shelters across the United States is celebrating its 15th year. The Brown County, Indiana, shelter is reporting a 98% live release rate for 2014, which is a repeat of its great performance in 2013. A flashback: Seattle’s mayor noted in a recent proclamation honoring the city’s spay-neuter clinic that the Seattle shelter took in 18,401 animals in 1982 and killed 45% of them. Last year, intake was 3,344, and Seattle euthanized only 7% of them. The HSUS Expo is almost here – starting March 30th in New Orleans. In recent years the Expo has become an important event for No Kill leaders, and a lot of them will be there. The only conference that seems to draw more No Kill leaders is the Best Friends National Conference, which will be held this year in Atlanta, Georgia, July 16-19. Austin, Texas, is facing possible changes in the rules that govern shelter vets. The city of Waco, which has been running at a live release rate of over 90% in 2015, is entering the home stretch in its effort to raise $2.5 million for a new shelter. The campaign has raised $2.3 million so far. ACCT Philly took in about 28,000 animals in 2014 and had a 74% live release rate. Adoptions and fosters both showed increases. A 74% live release rate is nothing to cheer about, but Philadelphia has been a very hard case for No Kill for a very long time, and it’s nice to see things at least moving in the right direction.

Otsego County is located in a rural area in the northern part of Michigan’s lower peninsula, and has a population of about 23,000 people. Otsego County Animal Control is the municipal agency that provides animal control and sheltering services for Otsego County. The shelter is supported by the Friends for Life organization, which provides a range of services including Petfinder listings and foster homes. A new shelter building was completed in January 2012 after funds were approved by local taxpayers. I called the shelter to ask about the owner surrender policy, and was told that Otsego County residents do not have to make an appointment or pay a fee to surrender an animal. The shelter appreciates people calling ahead if they wish to surrender an animal, but does not require advance notice. The shelter takes in stray cats as well as dogs. I was told that the county does not have many feral cats, but if they get a call about feral cats they offer TNR. They also sometimes relocate cats through a barn cat program. In 1999, the county adopted a resolution supporting the concept that no adoptable companion animal should be killed. The resolution “was also founded on the belief that ONLY those animals received in a condition of terminal illness or mortal injury that are beyond clinical redemption and/or animals that are deemed aggressive and/or dangerous and cannot be successfully rehabilitated with available resources should be humanely destroyed.” Friends For Life reports that the shelter had a “reclaiming/adoption” rate of 99.5% in 1999 and 98.75% in 2000. I was not able to find statistics for the years from 2001 to 2006, although partial statistics from 2001 and 2002 indicate the shelter had a 90% or higher live release rate in those years. The Michigan state database shows that the shelter reported live release rates as follows from 2007 through 2013: 2007 — 91% 2008 — 95% 2009 —  96% 2010 —  95% 2011 —  95% 2012 — 95% 2013 — 96% Intake for 2013 was 885 cats and dogs. All adopted animals were sterilized. There was one owner-requested euthanasia, but the live release rate does not change if that is counted with euthanasias. (Note: The form that Otsego County Animal Control submitted to the state of Michigan for 2012 contains an error in that it states that 197 cats and dogs were sold for research. I spoke to a shelter official who verified that this was a mistake on the form, that no animals were sold for research, and that the 197 number was for returns-to-owner.) Otsego County, MI, was originally listed by this blog on May 27, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.