OUT THE FRONT DOOR

[Dear Readers – This is the first in a series of occasional posts on shelter data. Not statistics on individual shelters, but more general things such as how to calculate success rates, how adoption rates have changed over time, and, today’s topic, the number of animal shelters in the United States. I get so many requests from people for this kind of data that it seems as though there is really a need for it, and it can be hard to find. I will collect these posts – and a few older posts on data topics – in a “Shelter Data” tab in the blog’s header.] Did you ever wonder how many public shelters there are in the United States? By “public shelter” I mean a shelter that is charged with impounding strays and other animals taken in by animal control, and usually takes in owner surrenders as well. A public shelter may be run by a city or county government, or the government may contract with a private entity to run the shelter. The surprising fact is that no one seems to know for sure how many of these shelters exist in the United States. One estimate often cited is about 5000 shelters. This estimate was made by the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy for surveys they did in the 1990s, but about 1/4th of the shelters included were private. In 1999 HSUS developed a list of about 3500 shelters, although some of these were duplicates. Today we usually hear one or the other of these figures cited as the number of public shelters in the United States. The 3500 figure correlates pretty well with the number of counties in the United States plus the larger cities. We have 3144 counties in the United States according to the United States Census Bureau. The National League of Cities, using a slightly older census, has identified 3033 counties that have governments. There are about 300 cities in the United States with 100,000 or more people, and another 362 cities with a population of 50,000 to 100,000. If you reduce the number of counties slightly to account for the few counties that have no animal shelter, you could derive an estimate of about 3500 for all counties, plus cities of 50,000 or more. This estimate of 3500 is probably good if you don’t mind missing small shelters, but it may be too low if you want to capture all public shelters. The National League puts the total number of city/town governments in the United States at 19,492 (this does not count townships or special districts). If we subtract the 662 cities of 50,000 population or more, that leaves 18,830 small jurisdictions that could potentially have small shelters. Many of these jurisdictions (probably the great majority of them) do not have their own public shelters because they are served by a larger nearby jurisdiction, but some of them do have small community shelters. Thus, the estimate of 5000 shelters in the United States may be closer to the mark if you want to cover all public shelters. But as you can see, both the 3500 and the 5000 estimates have a wide potential margin of error. Is there any easy way to get an actual count or a better estimate of the number of public shelters in the United States? One way to get a better estimate might be to look at states that have reporting requirements for public shelters. There are several states, including Colorado, Michigan, California, North Carolina, and Virginia that require public shelters to report to the state each year. In theory one could figure out the number of public shelters in all of those states and then extrapolate to the United States population. In practice, this would be time consuming because many private shelters and rescues are also subject to reporting requirements, so a lot of research would be involved to sort out the public shelters. Plus, there is no guarantee that states that require reporting are representative of the other states. Another way might be to find out from the makers of the various shelter software programs how many shelters use each program, and add them up – or to count the shelters on Petfinder. The problem is that, as with the state databases, there are a great many private shelters that use shelter software, and a great many private shelters and rescues that use Petfinder. There is no easy way to separate out the public shelters from the rest. One could make an actual count by looking at every county and every city and town, but with over 20,000 of those jurisdictions in the United States it would be an enormous task. Each community would have to be researched to find out if it has a public shelter. In many communities telephone calls would have to be made to determine where strays and owner surrenders from the jurisdiction are sheltered, because the information is often not easily accessible online. And even if we could derive an exact number and create a list of public shelters it would be something of a moving target, since governments frequently change their animal sheltering arrangements. Another problem would be how to account for large private shelters that voluntarily take in owner surrenders from the public but do not take in strays and do not have any contract with a city or county. These large humane societies might take in half or more of the homeless animals in their jurisdiction, even though they are not municipal shelters and do not contract with the local government for animal sheltering. Why is it important for us to know the number of public shelters? If we want to measure how we are doing in the United States at saving the lives of homeless animals, we have to know how many homeless animals there are each year and what happens to them. If we look at all shelters, both public and private, then we have a lot of transfers of animals from one shelter to another, making it difficult or impossible to know how many animals we are dealing with. What we need to know is the number of animals impounded by animal control plus the number of owner surrenders in each jurisdiction, and that means limiting our inquiry to those public shelters that have animal control duties, plus any private shelters in the community that take in significant numbers of owner surrenders directly from the public (since they are serving a public function). Without that data we will never know for sure how we are doing. I think if we are ever going to be able to have accurate, up-to-date counts of animals coming into shelters in the United States we may need to rely on private organizations doing counts on a state-by-state basis. The Michigan Pet Fund Alliance has a project of this sort, where they list shelters each year by category. They have a head start on this project because Michigan is one of the states that requires shelters to report, but they have also invested the time to determine if each shelter is public or private and how it handles admissions. The shelter federation in New Hampshire records data for the state’s public shelters, although they make only aggregate data available and not the data from each shelter. Best Friends could probably tell us how many public shelters are in Utah and their intake and disposition of animals. State alliances and organizations are ideally suited to simplify the task of identifying public shelters, because coalitions of people who work on sheltering within a state will have a great deal of knowledge about local situations starting out and will need to spend much less time on research than an outsider would. Perhaps one of these days one of the big national organizations will offer grants to state alliances to collect such data in a standard format and make it available. State alliances that would pitch in and do this task, especially where combined with state reporting systems, could quickly solve our data-collection problem and give us valuable information about how we are doing nationwide at shelter lifesaving.

The Asheville Humane Society (AHS), which handles animal sheltering for the city of Asheville and Buncombe County in North Carolina, has hired a new director, Tracy Elliott. Like many shelter directors these days, Elliott comes from a non-traditional background, having never worked in animal welfare. Instead, his career has been in non-profit management and business. AHS did a nationwide search and selected Elliott from more than 140 applicants. AHS reports that in November and December of last year it had a live release rate of over 90%. The city of Evanston, Illinois, is moving closer to formalizing its relationship with Saving Animals for Evanston (SAFE), a group that has been working with the police department to save 96% of animals, not including returns-to-owner, in the past year. If SAFE is appointed to run the city shelter it will replace the previous operator, which the city terminated due to citizen complaints about its high kill rate. The executive director and the director of operations at the Greenhill Humane Society, which holds the animal sheltering contract for Eugene, Oregon, have graduated from the animal shelter management program taught by Bonney Brown and Diane Blankenburg at the University of the Pacific. The Tri-County Humane Society in St. Cloud, Minnesota, which takes in about 3750 animals per year, is reporting a 97% live release rate so far this year. The director credits their improvement to a new approach to feral cats including barn cat and return-to-field initiatives, low-cost and free adoptions, social media, fosters, and veterinary care. The Charleston Animal Society in South Carolina, which handles more than 90% of the community’s homeless pets, is reportedly running at a 92% live release rate. The Society has a 10-point program, including reducing animal cruelty, a medical fund for treating sick and injured animals, an aggressive lost-and-found program, return-to-field for community cats, vaccination clinics, and humane education. The Elmbrook Humane Society in Brookfield, Wisconsin, is reaching out to help its neighbor, the Humane Animal Welfare Society of Waukesha (HAWS), increase its live release rate for cats. Elmbrook will take adoptable cats to its own adoption facility, and HAWS is offering a return-to-field program for community cats. Waco’s mayor looks back on Waco’s three-year effort to go No Kill in this article. The efforts have included ordinance changes, spay-neuter, fundraising for a new shelter, hiring a full-time veterinarian, and consulting with Target Zero. The shelter and its regional partners report being at a 90%+ live release rate so far this year. The Flathead County Animal Shelter, a No Kill municipal shelter in Kalispell, Montana, recently held an open-house adoption event to showcase a renovation of its facility. The new rooms allow the dogs and cats to be more relaxed, which helps them get adopted more quickly. The director said that animals are getting adopted much more quickly than they were a few years ago. Intake at the shelter is down, which the director attributes to spay-neuter programs and the public becoming better at caring for their pets. The Best Friends super adoption event in Los Angeles last weekend was a big success, with 522 pets finding homes. The adopted pets included one bunny and one pig. The Nevada Humane Society (NHS), which provides No Kill animal sheltering for Washoe County and Reno, took over animal sheltering last year for Carson City. In spite of an old shelter building, the NHS director is reporting a 97% live release rate for Carson City in recent months. The director credits adoption marketing, microchipping, and aggressive return-to-owner efforts, while warning that the save rate may fall some as kitten season sets in. Los Angeles is home to pup-up cafes. The Chester County SPCA, which serves two counties in Pennsylvania and has been reporting live release rates of over 90% for the last 6 months, has received a $60,000 grant from the Petco Foundation. The grant will be used for programs including targeted spay-neuter, free vaccinations, and wellness care. Prince George’s County in Maryland has a draconian pit bull ban and a live release rate of only 64%, much lower than other DC-metro-area shelters. The director of the shelter, Rodney Taylor, wants the ban repealed. In the meantime he is sending pit bulls to other organizations such as the Fairfax County Animal Shelter in northern Virginia, a No Kill municipal shelter. He has also invited Aimee Sadler to teach the staff how to run dog play groups. He wants to get the live release rate to 90%. The long-running concern about whether organizations that do TNR for feral cats in Virginia could be criminally prosecuted has finally been put to rest. Robin Starr of the Richmond SPCA reports that Virginia’s Attorney General has retracted a 2013 opinion letter that interpreted the “return” part of TNR as illegal. Starr and her board had continued with their TNR program in spite of the threat of prosecution, and have now been vindicated. The ASPCA has provided this summary of the recommended capacity for communal cat rooms. Here is a nice article from Arin Greenwood of the Huffington Post about the rapid progress that No Kill sheltering is making. She touches on some of the most important trends, including the growing number of people who are willing to adopt from a shelter, the use of transports to take advantage of the shortage of shelter dogs in some areas, great marketing, and outreach efforts.

We hear a lot about police officers shooting family pets with little or no provocation. In a recent case in Round Rock, Texas, a police officer answering a call at a private home was bitten in the leg – twice – by an excitable Aussie that lunged at him when the owner’s child opened the door. Instead of shooting, the officer backed up and tried to calm the dog. Fortunately the owner got to the door quickly and collared the dog. The only consequence of the incident is that the dog will have to do a 10-day home quarantine. The officer, Randall Frederick, received a well-deserved medal for the way he handled the situation. Police officers in the town received mandatory training in how to handle dog situations after several complaints. (Round Rock is a No Kill community, with animal sheltering provided by the Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter.) The Clear the Shelters event on August 15th, which was sponsored by NBC and Telemundo, found homes for more than 19,000 pets. The Richmond SPCA, one of the many participating shelters, had only 3 dogs left at the end of the event. County shelters in two counties in Michigan – Berrien and Van Buren – are permanently ending the use of gas chambers. In Berrien, it took a resolution of the county commissioners to force an end to the practice. In Van Buren the current director says she has never used the chamber, and now it has been dismantled and sold for scrap. In a short interview, Tawny Hammond, the new Chief Animal Services Officer for the city of Austin, talks about her short list of goals. She wants to increase adoptions by fine-tuning social media based on her experience in Fairfax County, Virginia, solve the problem of dogs not getting enough attention by an all-hands-on-deck effort to walk dogs and recruit more volunteer dog walkers, and “stay flexible.” Discover has an interesting article on the explosion in recent years of research on dog cognition and how dogs and humans co-evolved. The article discusses a new book which suggest that dogs might have been the secret weapon that allowed humans to replace Neanderthals in the evolutionary battle for survival. It also describes the rise of “citizen science,” which involves ordinary people providing information about their dogs. Scientists can then use the information to create large data sets on various topics of research about dogs. In other dog-research news, this journal article that appeared in PeerJ reports on a brain imaging study that found that dogs, like humans and monkeys, have an area of the brain dedicated to facial recognition. The facial recognition area in dogs responds to both human and dog faces. The authors posit that this brain development may be what allows dogs to interpret social cues from humans so well. Belinda Lewis, who runs the shelter in Fort Wayne, Indiana, is resigning early next year. This might be a good opportunity for someone who feels that they have what it takes to turn a shelter around. Some progress has reportedly been made in recent years in Fort Wayne but there is much left to do. The Gainesville newspaper has a nice feature on the progress made by Alachua County Animal Services after joining the Million Cat Challenge. Alachua County is home turf for Dr. Julie Levy of the University of Florida, one of the founders of the Million Cat Challenge. Gainesville has had several organizations working hard for years to bring up its live release rate, and with help from the Million Cat Challenge it may finally reach its goal of stopping the killing of healthy and treatable animals. The ambitious renovation project for the Waco city shelter recently got a boost from McLennan County, which gave the city two pieces of land adjacent to the shelter grounds. The renovation is expected to cost $2.6 million, and the project will go up for bid shortly. The city hopes to award the contract in October. According to Wiley Stem, who has been one of the driving forces behind Waco’s No Kill effort, the shelter’s live release rate is now around 85%. LifeLine’s Fulton County shelter in Atlanta, which is closing in on a 90% live release rate, received a $40,000 donation from an Atlanta company, Anisa International, to build a meet-and-greet area and more outdoor play space. The county shelter was built long before LifeLine took over the contract, and is showing its age. As you no doubt know, this August marks the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Brent Toellner of Kansas City Pet Project has posted his trip diary as a volunteer in Louisiana taking care of dogs evacuated following Katrina. Toellner will be writing more about Katrina this week.

Berkeley is a city of 113,000 people just across the bay from San Francisco. Berkeley Animal Care Services (BACS) handles animal control and sheltering for Berkeley. BACS also handles animal sheltering for the nearby cities of Piedmont (population 11,000), Emeryville (population 10,000), and Albany (population 19,000). (Emeryville contracts with Piedmont for animal control, and both cities contract with BACS for animal sheltering. Albany contracts with BACS for both animal control and sheltering.) BACS moved into a new shelter building in early 2013. The history of BACS and the decade-long effort to build the new shelter is described here. I called BACS to ask about their owner surrender policy and was told that residents of the four jurisdictions served by BACS may surrender an animal at any time with a small fee ($20 for a cat, $20 for a licensed dog, and $30 for an unlicensed dog). In 2012, BACS had a 91% live release rate with an intake of 1863 animals (scroll down in the link for the report). The shelter reported zero animals in the “died/lost in shelter care” category during the year and 3 owner-requested euthanasias were performed, so the live release rate is unchanged if those categories are counted as euthanasias. In 2013, BACS took in 1641 dogs and cats and had a 90% live release rate. The shelter reported 1 owner-requested euthanasia and 1 animal in the died/lost category, and the live release rate is unchanged if those deaths are included with euthanasias. BACS transfers a high percentage of its animals (796 in 2012 and 668 in 2013) to community organizations. Two private organizations —  the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society (BEBHS), and Home At Last Animal Rescue (HAL) — are part of a coalition to support BACS. The group is known as the Berkeley Alliance for Homeless Animals Coalition (BAHAC). Berkeley, California, was originally listed by this blog on April 18, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Nelson County, Virginia, is a rural county midway between Charlottesville and Lynchburg. The population is about 15,000. Nelson County Animal Control (NCAC) is the municipal agency that takes in strays and owner surrenders for the county. In November 2012, a new animal control director with a background in management took over. The new director stated in a January 2013 interview that euthanasia is generally performed only on animals who are aggressive or sick. The Humane Society/SPCA of Nelson County (HSNC) is a private agency that pulls animals from NCAC and has an adoption center. In an article about its medical fund, HSNC reported that it takes in about 1000 animals per year. HSNC also accepts owner surrenders, but only if they have space and evaluate the animal as adoptable. In addition to its adoption center, HSNC uses transports to rescues to place animals. I confirmed in a phone call to HSNC that all transfers are to No Kill organizations.  HSNC has a stated goal for the county of ensuring that “no healthy, non-aggressive animal is euthanized.” NCAC and HSNC both report to the Virginia state database. In 2014, the combined live release rate for both NCAC and HSNC was 92% (88% if animals who died or were lost in shelter care are counted as euthanasias). This number probably understates the actual live release rate because I did not count any transfers from NCAC as live releases. The purpose of this was to avoid double counting of live releases since the majority of the transfers went to HSNC. In 2013 and 2012 the combined live release rates for NCAC and HSNC were in the 80th percentile. Nelson County has a very high intake of dogs and cats. The combined total intake of NCAC and HSNC for 2014, not counting transfers from NCAC, was 1386, which is 92 animals for every 1000 people in the community. Average intake for the US as a whole is thought to be from 15 to 30 animals per 1000 people. Nelson County, Virginia, is counted in the blog’s Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

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

[For today’s News Bit and the Running Totals, click here.] The Million Cat Challenge launched on December 10, 2014, and has proven to be wildly popular. I thought it would be fun to see a list of shelters that had signed on as of the 1-month anniversary, and here they are. Every shelter’s participation is valuable, but one thing that surprised me about this list is the number of large, traditional “open admission” shelters that have signed on already. Wow! Alachua County Humane Society Gainesville, Florida Alaqua Animal Refuge Freeport, Florida All About Animals Rescue/Macomb County Animal Control Warren, Michigan Al-Van Humane Society South Haven, Michigan Animal Care and Control Team of Philadelphia Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Animal Friends, Inc. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Animal Humane Society Golden Valley, Minnesota Animal Refuge League Westbrook, Maine Animal Rescue League Marshalltown, Iowa Animal Rescue League of Southern RI Peace Dale, Rhode Island Animal Welfare Agency South Central Ontario Kitchener, Ontario, Canada Animal Welfare League of Alexandria Alexandria, Virginia Animal Welfare League of Arlington Arlington, Virginia Animalkind Inc Hudson, New York Arizona Humane Society Phoenix, Arizona Arlington Animal Services Arlington, Texas Asheville Humane Society/Buncombe County Animal Shelter Asheville, North Carolina Austin Pets Alive! Austin, Texas Barry County Animal Shelter Hastings, Michigan Boone County Animal Care Columbia, Missouri Cache Humane Society Logan, Utah Capital Area Humane Society Lansing, Michigan Carteret County Humane Society, Inc Newport, North Carolina Cat Adoption Team Sherwood, Oregon Cat Depot Sarasota, Florida Cedar Rapids Animal Care & Control Cedar Rapids, Iowa Charleston Animal Society North Charleston, South Carolina Chautauqua County Humane Society Jamestown, New York Chemung County Humane Society and SPCA Elmira, New York Cheyenne Animal Shelter Cheyenne, Wyoming Chico Animal Shelter Chico, California City of Chicago Commission on Animal Care and Control Chicago, Illinois City of Hamilton Animal Services Hamilton, Ontario, Canada City of Sacramento Animal Care Services Sacramento, California City of San Antonio Animal Care Services San Antonio, Texas City of San Jose Animal Care and Services San Jose, California City of Stockton Animal Services Stockton, California City of Waco Animal Shelter Waco, Texas Clay County Animal Care and Control Fleming Island, Florida Cleveland Animal Protective League Cleveland, Ohio Clovis Animal Services Clovis, California Coastal Humane Society Brunswick, Maine Collier County Domestic Animal Services Naples, Florida Columbia Humane Society St. Helens, Oregon Companion Animal Alliance of Baton Rouge Baton Rouge, Louisiana Contra Costa County Animal Services Department Martinez, California Coulee Region Humane Society Onalaska, Wisconsin Dakin Humane Society Springfield & Leverett, Massachusetts Denver Animal Shelter Denver, Colorado Dogs & Cats Forever, Inc. Fort Pierce, Florida Edmonton Humane Society Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Flagler Humane Society Palm Coast, Florida Flathead County Animal Shelter Kalispell, Montana Fond du Lac Humane Society Fond du Lac, Wisconsin Georgian Triangle Humane Society Collingwood, Ontario, Canada Gifford Cat Shelter Brighton, Massachusetts Great Plains SPCA Merriam, Kansas Habersham County Animal Care & Control Clarkesville, Georgia Halifax Humane Society Daytona Beach, Florida Happy Tails Rock Falls, Illinois Harbor Humane Society West Olive, Michigan Heart of the Valley Animal Shelter Bozeman, Montana Helping Paws Animal Sanctuary Saint James City, Florida Humane Society of Polk County Winter Haven, Florida Humane Society Calumet Area Munster, Indiana Humane Society for Greater Nashua Nashua, New Hampshire Humane Society for Southwest Washington Vancouver, Washington Humane Society of Carroll County Westminster, Maryland Humane Society of Huron Valley Ann Arbor, Michigan Humane Society of Kandiyohi & Meeker Counties Willmar, Minnesota Humane Society of Sarasota County Sarasota, Florida Humane Society of Tampa Bay Tampa, Florida Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region Colorado Springs/Pueblo, Colorado Humane Society of Washington County Hagerstown, Maryland Humane Society of West Michigan Grand Rapids, Michigan Humane Society Silicon Valley Milpitas, California Huntsville Animal Services Huntsville, Alabama Independent Cat Society Westville, Texas Jacksonville Animal Care and Protective Services Jacksonville, Florida Jacksonville Humane Society Jacksonville, Florida Kanawha-Charleston Humane Association Charleston, West Virginia Kenai Animal Shelter Kenai, Alaska Kern County Animal Services Bakersfield, California Kings County Animal Services Hanford, California Kokomo Humane Society Kokomo, Indiana Lawrence Humane Society Lawrence, Oklahoma Lee County Domestic Animal Services Fort Meyers, Florida Lexington Humane Society Lexington, Kentucky Long Beach Animal Care Services Long Beach, California Louisville Metro Animal Services Louisville, Kentucky Lynchburg Humane Society Lynchburg, Virginia Mat-Su Animal Care and Regulation Shelter Palmer, Alaska Miami-Dade Animal Services Miami, Florida Michigan Humane Society Detroit, Michigan Milwaukee Area Domestic Animal Control Commission Milwaukee, Wisconsin Montreal SPCA Montreal, Quebec, Canada Naples Cat Alliance Collier County, Florida Nate’s Honor Animal Rescue Bradenton, Florida Nevada Humane Society/Carson City Carson City, Nevada Norfolk SPCA Norfolk, Virginia OC Animal Care Orange, California Oktibbeha County Humane Society Starkville, Mississippi Oshkosh Area Humane Society Oshkosh, Wisconsin Pasco County Animal Services Land O Lakes, Florida PAWS of Bainbridge Island and North Kitsap Bainbridge Island, Washington Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League of the Palm Beaches, Inc. Palm Beach County, Florida PEI Humane Society Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada Pet Resource Center Tampa, Florida Pets Alive Middletown, North Carolina Pets Alive WNY Pendleton, New York Placer SPCA Roseville, California Potter League for Animals Newport, Rhode Island Progressive Animal Welfare Society Lynnwood, Washington Providence Animal Rescue League Providence, Rhode Island Quincy Humane Society Quincy, Illinois Rancho Cucamonga Animal Care and Adoption Center Rancho Cucamonga, California Rochester Animal Services Monroe County, New York Sacramento SPCA Sacramento, California Saint Louis County Animal Care and Control Services Olivette, Missouri Salem Friends of Felines Salem, Oregon Salinas Animal Services Salinas, California San Diego Humane Society Oceanside, California San Francisco SPCA San Francisco, California Seattle Humane Society Bellevue, Washington Second Chance Animal Shelter East Brookfield, Massachusetts Second Chance Pet Network Dryden, Ontario Silicon Valley Animal Control Authority Santa Clara, California Sonoma County Animal Services Santa Rosa, California South Suburban Humane Society Chicago Heights, Tennesse Southern Pines Animal Shelter Hattiesburg, Mississippi Spartanburg Humane Society Spartanburg, South Carolina SPCA of Brevard Titusville, Florida SPCA of Wake County Raleigh, North Carolina St. Francis Animal Rescue of Venice, Inc Venice, Florida St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center Madison, New Jersey Tacoma-Pierce County Humane Society Tacoma, Washington The Animal Foundation Las Vegas, Nevada Town Cats Morgan Hill, California Tri County Humane Society Saint Cloud, Minnesota Trust Again Pet Shelter, Inc. Zolfo Springs, Florida Ventura County Animal Services Camarillo, California Virginia Beach Animal Care and Adoption Center Virginia Beach, Virginia Wake County Animal Center Raleigh, North Carolina Washington Humane Society Washington, DC Wayside Waifs Kansas City, Missouri Westerly Animal Shelter Westerly, Rhode Island Whidbey Animals’ Improvement Foundation (WAIF) Coupeville, Washington Wisconsin Humane Society Milwaukee, Wisconsin Women’s Humane Society Bensalem, Pennsylvania Woods Humane Society San Luis Obispo, California Yavapai Humane Society Prescott, Arizona Yolo County Animal Services Woodland, California

Rio Blanco County is located in the northwestern part of Colorado on the Utah border. The 2010 census counted 6700 county residents, including the towns of Rangely (population 2400) and Meeker (2500). The County has two animal shelters, one serving Rangely and the other serving Meeker. Both shelters also accept animals picked up by the sheriff in unincorporated areas of the county. The Rangely Animal Shelter (RAS) is a municipal agency that handles animal control and sheltering for Rangely. Animals are vaccinated, neutered, and microchipped before being adopted. The RAS manager told me that they have a small, waivable fee for owner surrenders and will either take them in immediately or help the owner place the pet. They have a TNR program and they adopt out kittens born to feral mothers. The statistics submitted to the state by RAS for 2012 show a live release rate of 99%. The live release rate does not change if the one animal who died in shelter care in 2012 is included with euthanasias. In 2013, RAS took in 313 animals and had a 99.7% live release rate. The live release rate was 99.3% if the one animal who died in shelter care is included with euthanasias. The Meeker Animal Shelter (MAS) is also a municipal agency that provides animal control as well as sheltering. I spoke to the animal control officer, who told me that although MAS does not impound cats, she will respond to calls about sick or injured cats and take them to a local veterinarian. MAS accepts owner surrenders subject, at times, to a monitored waiting list. A rescue in Meeker called the Cat Coalition does TNR in the area. MAS took in 107 dogs in 2012 and had a 99% live release rate. The shelter took in 115 dogs in 2013 with a live release rate of 100%. No animals died or were lost in shelter care in 2013. Rio Blanco County was originally listed by this blog on December 9, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Kirby, Texas is a community of about 8,000 people in the San Antonio metro area. The city has a municipal agency, Kirby Animal Care Services, that handles animal control and sheltering for the city. The shelter describes itself as open intake and states that “no animal from our community in need is EVER turned away.” The city hired Christie Banduch in June of 2011. Before Banduch was hired, the shelter had a live release rate of 4% (that’s not a typo). In an e-mail to me, Banduch described the challenges she faced when she took over as including workload (she was the sole employee at that time for a facility with an intake of up to 100 animals per month), location (the shelter was hard to find and did not show up on GPS), and sanitation (the shelter was filthy and there were no cleaning supplies, vaccines, or dewormers). Banduch was able to turn things around right away, and statistics she sent me show that in her first full year running the shelter the live release rate shot up to 83%. In Banduch’s second year running the shelter (July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013) she reported a live release rate of 92%, with an intake of 839 animals. If animals who died or were lost in shelter care are included with euthanasias, the live release rate was 91%. The shelter has good relationships with rescues, who pulled 215 dogs and 240 cats during the fiscal year. Banduch recently sent me uploadable statistics for calendar year 2013, which show an intake of 1040 cats and dogs, with a live release rate of 95%. There were no animals lost in shelter care in 2013. If animals who died are included with euthanasias, the live release rate is 94%. Here is a link to the 2013 statistics: Kirby TX 2013 statistics Kirby, Texas, was originally listed by this blog on July 5, 2013, based on their 2012-2013 fiscal-year statistics. This post is a revision and update with calendar-year 2013 statistics.

A lot has happened in the No Kill world in 2014, and a lot of progress has been made. In fact, I think 2014 has been one of the most important years for No Kill since the 1990s. To celebrate the year I’m going to have a series of blog posts discussing some of the major events and accomplishments of 2014. Today I’d like to start out by listing some of No Kill’s notable people of the year. In coming days I’ll be looking at organizations and particular innovations in 2014. Drs. Kate Hurley and Julie Levy are in the process of revolutionizing how shelters handle cats. They have developed recommendations that combine managed admission and “shelter-neuter-return” techniques for a roadmap to saving every healthy or treatable cat. This has been the huge news story in the shelter world in 2014, and the good news is that this story will be even bigger in 2015, with the recent rollout of the Million Cat Challenge. I will be discussing the Million Cat Challenge in more detail in a post later this month. Bonney Brown and Diane Blankenburg are teaching a certificate course at the University of the Pacific in “lifesaving-centered” animal shelter management. This is the first university-level series of courses in lifesaving shelter management that has ever been taught by people who have actually succeeded at getting to 90% with a large urban shelter. This certificate is extremely important because it can help people get hired as shelter managers who do not have the traditional qualifications of long years in animal control or shelter operations. Rebecca Guinn, founder of LifeLine Animal Project in Atlanta, has proven the “power of one” by forming a non-profit that took over the animal sheltering contract in 2013 for Fulton and DeKalb counties. LifeLine is not at a 90% save rate yet, but it looks like a lot of progress was made in 2014. Guinn is right in the center of two of the most important trends in No Kill. One is that No Kill advocates are forming non-profits and taking over city shelters rather than waiting for shelters to reform. The other is that big cities are going No Kill these days faster than smaller communities. It used to be thought that No Kill was harder to achieve in big cities, but people like Guinn are proving that idea wrong. Rick DuCharme and Peter Marsh have started an effort — Target Zero — to take No Kill to some tough venues, including places where past No Kill efforts have failed. They have had some success already, but to me the most notable point about what they are doing is that they are not shrinking from any challenge. In fact, their “fellow city” list, which includes Waco, Pensacola, Indianapolis, and Baton Rouge, looks as though they deliberately picked the hardest cities they could find. In the past, people have often carefully selected their venues for No Kill efforts. DuCharme and Marsh have blown that approach out of the water. Dr. Ellen Jefferson is another example of someone who picked a very tough city to reform when she expanded her successful Austin program to San Antonio. In its fiscal year ending in 2014, San Antonio had an 81.3% live release rate. This is an enormous accomplishment. Many people were involved in it, of course, but Dr. Jefferson’s formation of San Antonio Pets Alive! really lit the fire. There are many other people who did notable things in 2014 to advance the cause of No Kill, and there have been a lot of incremental changes at the city and county level. It’s a positive sign for the movement when there are far too many people with significant accomplishments to fit into any one list.

2014 was the year when it became impossible for one part-time person to keep up with reporting on all the communities getting to No Kill — at least, it became impossible for this part-time person. I updated over 100 shelters in over 230 communities in 2014, plus several “Worth Watching” communities. I’ve also been watching lots of larger communities that are well on the way to No Kill. There’s been no time to keep track of all the small communities with No Kill efforts because there are so many of them. I’ve been meditating what to do about the “Running Total,” now that it no longer provides a good snapshot of the true total of No Kill communities. I may change it to a population-based rather than community-based total, with a caveat that it includes only larger jurisdictions. With No Kill spreading so fast, the population total may give a better picture of the true situation. Or it might be better to switch to an emphasis on the number of animals killed in shelters each year, which has been steadily declining. There is another trend that may be even more important than the number of new 90% communities, and that is that the median live release rate of shelters that are not at 90% seems to be going up. Just 3 or 4 years ago most knowledgeable people would have estimated that shelters were killing about 50% of intake nationwide. Today, HSUS estimates that we have a nationwide live release rate of about 60%. Actual nationwide data on live release rates does not exist, so I have to go on impressions, but it seems to me based on what I’ve seen in my research for the blog that the HSUS estimate is close to the mark. A 10% increase in the average live release rate may not sound like much, but it means about 700,000 more lives saved per year. If we get another 10% increase in the live release rate in 2015, and 200,000 or more additional lives saved by the Million Cat Challenge, we could easily be under 2 million euthanasias for shelters nationwide in 2015, for a live release rate of about 73%. And that is just if current trends continue. If current trends improve, the 2015 live release rate nationwide could be even higher. So all-in-all it’s a good picture. Not the overnight change we’d all like to see, but moving forward at a good clip on what seems to be a very sustainable path. One caveat is that we may run into a slowdown in improvement when we hit the 70% or 80% mark nationwide. I’ve heard from many people that it gets harder to improve as the save rate goes up from 70% to 80%, and even more from 80% to 90%. One thing that may be key as shelters get to 70% is the aid and support they get from non-profit organizations in the community.

San Francisco is a combined city and county located in northern California. It has a population of about 837,000 people. The city/county shelter is San Francisco Animal Care And Control (ACC). The ACC performs all the functions of a municipal shelter, including animal control and accepting owner surrenders, and it has an adoption center. It has had a partnership known as the “Adoption Pact” with the private San Francisco SPCA since 1994. The SPCA pulls animals from ACC under the agreement, and it also does some intake directly from the public. The San Francisco SPCA has been recognized as a leader in the field of animal sheltering since back in the 1800s. And of course it is well-known for its origination of the No Kill communities concept in the 1990s. The SPCA today continues to be innovative, as with its shelter-neuter-return program for community cats. In addition to animals that the SPCA accepts from ACC under the Adoption Pact, it also takes in many animals from outside of San Francisco, including under an agreement with Stockton. The ACC and the SPCA have reported their combined statistics for years. In the 1990s the Adoption Pact achieved live release rates of over 75%, which was the highest of any major city at that time. In more recent years the combined live release rates have generally been in the mid-80% range. In 2013, the coalition finally broke the 90% barrier, with a combined 92% live release rate (excluding transfers between ACC and the SPCA). The ACC offers owner-requested-euthanasia, and if that number plus animals who died in shelter care are counted as euthanasias the live release rate was 89%.