Lincoln County, Wisconsin, has about 30,000 human residents and is located in the north central part of the state. The Lincoln County Humane Society (LCHS) is a private non-profit that provides sheltering services for local governments. I spoke to a representative at the shelter who informed me that LCHS has a contract with the county for dog sheltering, and also has agreements with the two cities in the county — Merrill (population 10,000) and Tomahawk (population 3000). She told me that although LCHS is not contractually obligated for cat sheltering or taking in owner surrenders, LCHS provides both services because they view that as part of their mission. The shelter’s website states that, although they do accept owner surrenders, they do not accept aggressive animals. The shelter representative told me that LCHS has an appointment system for owner surrenders, but they make exceptions for cases where a person cannot wait for an appointment. They ask for a donation for owner surrenders but do not require a donation. They do not offer owner-requested euthanasia. LCHS recently posted their statistics for 2012, and they reported a 98% live release rate for the year. Their modified live release rate (which includes animals who died in shelter care in the “euthanasia” category) was 95%. The shelter reports a percentage for each type of disposition rather than the actual number. LCHS’s total intake in 2012 was 1258 animals. This is a high intake (42 animals per 1000 population). LCHS has a TNR program for cats, although the shelter representative told me that they generally cannot release the cats back to the location where they were trapped, due to local opposition. Instead, they have a barn cat program to re-home the cats. I asked the LCHS representative if 2012 was the shelter’s first year of a 90% or better live release rate, and she said that the shelter had followed the same policies for several years but last year was the first time that they had a computer system to track their statistics. She mentioned that Lincoln County is rural and not wealthy, with high unemployment, and that an important part of their program was a Petsmart grant that provides low-income spay-neuter services and vaccinations. The county does not have any breed bans and does not have a mandatory spay-neuter rule. Lincoln County, WI, is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

Douglas County has a population of 47,000 people and is located on the western border of Nevada. The county seat is Minden, which has 3,000 people. Minden is next to Gardnerville, which has a population of 5700. Minden and Gardnerville are both census-designated areas, and therefore are not listed individually in the right sidebar. Douglas County Animal Care and Services (aka the Douglas County Animal Shelter (DCAS)) is a municipal agency that does animal control and has a shelter in Gardnerville that serves the county, Gardnerville, and Minden. DCAS distributes pet food to those who cannot afford it. The Douglas Animal Welfare Group (DAWG) is a private organization that works closely with the shelter and provides many services. When I called DCAS for more information I was told that the shelter has a waiting list for owner surrenders and encourages owners to rehome their pets through social media. DCAS will make an exception to the waiting list for people who cannot continue to care for a pet, but such exceptions are rarely needed. Another aspect of intake management in Douglas County is that cats are considered free roaming. There is an area rescue, the Wylie Animal Rescue Foundation (WARF), that takes in cats, and DCAS and DAWG together fund a TNR program, but community cats are not impounded by DCAS. The DCAS statistician told me that in 2012 the shelter took in 721 animals. They had 360 adoptions (the adoption figure includes a small number of transfers to rescues) and returned 367 animals to their owners. They euthanized 15 animals, for a live release rate of 98%. Douglas County, NV, is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

We now have some solid evidence that managed intake is a better policy for public animal shelters than open admission. Read on for two case studies. In this blog, I’ve documented well over 200 communities that are highly successful at saving shelter animals. Many of these communities have shelters that unconditionally take in any animal that an owner wants to surrender (generally referred to as “open admission”), but many others have instituted a Help Desk, appointment system, or waiting list for owner surrenders (which are aspects of managed intake). In this post are two statistical case studies of communities that have changed their owner surrender policies, and the outcome of the changes. Both of these case studies involve public shelters that are responsible for taking in strays in their jurisdictions. One of the communities instituted an appointment system, and the other adopted a waiting list. Then they kept statistics to see what happened. CASE STUDY #1: LYNCHBURG, VIRGINA. Lynchburg is an independent city in Virginia. It is bordered by three counties — Amherst, Bedford, and Campbell. In October of 2009, the Lynchburg Humane Society instituted a policy that owners who wanted to surrender a pet to the shelter had to make an appointment. The shelter makes exceptions to the policy for people who need to surrender a pet immediately. The Lynchburg shelter director, Makena Yarbrough, contacted the shelters in the adjoining counties and told them if any person from Lynchburg showed up at their shelter with an animal to surrender, the Lynchburg shelter would come get that animal immediately. It has proven to be very rare for Lynchburg residents to try to surrender pets in the surrounding counties; for example, in 2012 the Lynchburg shelter was contacted only 3 times to come pick up a Lynchburg animal. Nor does the data show an increase in strays. In fact, the data show the opposite — for Lynchburg and the three contiguous counties, the number of strays impounded dropped from 4524 in 2009 to 4410 in 2010, the first full year of the new policy (Virginia Department of Agriculture statistics). CASE STUDY #2: DOUGLAS COUNTY, NEVADA. The Douglas County Animal Shelter (DCAS) has a waiting list (subject to exceptions in emergency situations) and the shelter has for years now kept track of what happens to animals on the list. The DCAS statistician told me that 86% of people who were on the waiting list had placed their pets in new homes themselves on follow up. He talked about how the world of animal sheltering is being revolutionized by social media. In the old days costly and seldom-read newspaper classified ads were the primary way for an owner to publicize a pet, but today people use Craigslist and Facebook, where photos and a description of a pet can be seen by hundreds of people. I asked whether there were any instances of people abandoning pets after being placed on the waiting list. He said that has happened in an occasional case over the years, but because of their record keeping they have been able to identify animals who are abandoned and refer the cases to local officials. I asked if there was any possibility that owners who wanted to surrender animals were taking them to Carson City (an independent city north of Douglas County) rather than DCAS, and he said that the Carson City shelter checks identification and only accepts animals from their jurisdiction. The case studies above are relevant to one of the biggest controversies in shelter management today — open admission versus managed intake. The argument made in support of open admission is that if shelters refuse to take in animals upon presentation, most owners will dump their pets in the street where they will be killed by cars or suffer from hunger and neglect. Conversely, supporters of managed intake argue that the great majority of people will not abandon their pets if they are asked to wait until the shelter can help them, and that managing the flow of intake allows shelters to avoid overcrowding and gather information about each pet. Managed intake also allows the shelter to work with the owner to solve problems such as vet bills, finding pet-friendly housing, or behavior issues that have led the owner to want to give up the pet, and thus head off surrender entirely in a large number of cases. And many owners have been happy to rehome pets themselves when helped to do so by the shelter, because then they have the satisfaction of helping to select the new home for their pet. The two case studies presented here provide some strong evidence to support the conclusion that pet owners are responsible and are willing to help the shelter help their pet. There is another reason that shelters should adopt managed intake, though, and that is that shelters actually shape community expectations of responsible ownership by the policies they adopt. If we expect people to abandon animals at the drop of a hat, and we design owner surrender policies with that in mind, then we are actually encouraging abandonment because we are establishing it as a cultural norm. Our cultural expectations for how parents behave toward their children is illuminating on this issue. We expect parents to continue to care for their children even if the parents lose their employment, lose their house, or have a child who is sick or difficult to deal with due to behavior problems. Pets aren’t children, but if we want pet owners to feel more responsibility toward their pets, then it behooves us to to compare society’s treatment of parents with the way we treat pet owners. Society has two ways to encourage parental responsibility. First, there is a diversified network of social services — a “safety net” — to help parents keep their children. Subsidized health care, housing, and nutrition are all available to families in difficulty. The social safety net is far from perfect, but it is rare in our country for a parent to be forced to give up a child due to not being able to provide the basics of life. Second, there are strict laws against child abandonment, and those laws are enforced. Assistance to struggling parents and penalties for child abandonment both serve to reinforce the societal expectation that parents will provide care for their children in spite of any difficulties they may face. The safety net for parents and the penalties for abandonment serve to strengthen and reinforce what parents already want to do, which is care for their children as best they can. Instead of encouraging responsibility in pet owners by providing a safety net and prosecuting animal abandonment, society has traditionally done the opposite and encouraged irresponsibility. The social message conveyed by open admission shelters is that taking a pet to the shelter is the right thing to do when an owner is having difficulty financially or the pet has behavior issues or for any other problem. Every time someone walks into a shelter and says “I want to surrender my pet” and the shelter says “OK, hand him over, goodbye,” the shelter is encouraging owner irresponsibility. It’s a vicious circle — open admission policies encourage people to be irresponsible, and then shelter officials claim that open admission is necessary because people are irresponsible. Traditional shelters go even further toward encouraging irresponsibility by hiding their statistics and not telling people how likely it is that their pet will be killed. They allow the owner to walk away thinking that the shelter will find their pet a good home. Can we change society’s expectations for pet owners to more closely match society’s expectations for parents? The two case studies above indicate that not only is the answer “yes,” but that the public is already way out ahead on this issue. The great majority of pet owners, just like the great majority of parents, want to be responsible. All the shelter has to do is help them. A substantial percentage of people who bring their pet to a shelter do so because of financial, health, housing, or behavior issues. A Help Desk or an appointment system can identify those people and provide help for them to keep their pet. Shelters can recruit volunteers to run their social safety net programs and the programs can be funded by donations or grants. These programs are money savers because they can sharply reduce intake. When shelters decide to adopt managed intake policies, they should at the same time institute a Help Desk or interview procedure to identify cases where intervention can help the owner keep the pet. Another way to encourage owner responsibility is to ask owners to help place their pets. Every shelter should have a marketing program in place, including a presence on social media. Shelters can publicize animals that owners want to rehome, and also show owners how to network for the animal in their own contact lists. Good shelters usually have volunteer professional photographers, and these volunteers can take photos of pets. Shelter marketing volunteers can help the owner write up an accurate and appealing description. In essence, the pet’s owner becomes a foster home for the pet until placed. Douglas County’s finding that 86% of owners find new homes for their pets, mostly through social media, is impressive evidence that social media works. A third way for shelters to encourage owner responsibility is to network for the pet with local rescues. Here again, the shelter’s expertise and knowledge of the local situation can be invaluable. In the interviews I do for this blog it’s becoming more and more common to hear shelter managers say that one way they manage intake is by diverting owner surrenders to rescues. Turning to enforcement, shelters can encourage owner responsibility by monitoring their appointments lists and waiting lists to keep tabs on the animals. This will allow the shelter to identify cases where abandonment is suspected and refer them to law enforcement. Douglas County has shown that it’s possible to track animals and refer cases of abandonment for prosecution. People often refer to animal abandonment as “owner irresponsibility,” but in reality animal abandonment is a crime, and it should be regarded as such. The proper answer to animal abandonment is not to say “people will be irresponsible and therefore we have to have open admission to accommodate their irresponsibility,” the proper answer is to treat abandonment as a serious crime and enforce the laws against it. Douglas County has shown that not only is such enforcement practical, but also that the need for it is rare. Managed intake at animal shelters is just one part of the great wave of change that is occurring to transform public shelters from places where most animals are killed to places where 90% or more leave by the front door. Shelter managers should not be afraid to adopt managed intake, because (1) it is the right thing to do from an efficiency and management aspect, (2) it is the right thing to do in terms of shaping cultural norms about an owner’s duty to a pet, and (3) the statistics we have so far show that pet owners respond in a positive way.

A little more than a year ago an event happened that promised to be a turning point for efforts to reduce shelter killing of cats. That event was the release of a draft whitepaper in California. The stakeholders who drafted the whitepaper included HSUS, the ASPCA, Maddie’s Fund, and Dr. Kate Hurley, director of the Koret Shelter Medicine Program at UC Davis. The whitepaper made lots of recommendations, but some of the most revolutionary ones applied to cats. For details on the recommendations, see this post from September 2013. Since the whitepaper was issued, the concept of shelter-neuter-return has become a particularly important part of the mix. Dr. Julie Levy, professor of shelter medicine at the University of Florida Maddie’s shelter medicine program, has been an effective spokesperson for shelter-neuter-return. In the short time since the whitepaper came out, the situation for cats has changed from dire to hopeful. Communities are adopting the new ideas for cats so fast that I can’t keep up with reporting them. Just a few days ago, the Columbus, Ohio, city shelter reported that its new cat program, which has been in effect for less than two months, has reduced the killing of admitted cats by 58%. Columbus is the 15th largest city in the United States and the metro area has over 2.3 million people, so this is a big deal. The proposals made for cats in the whitepaper and with shelter-neuter-return are radical, and represent a major break from the way things have always been done. So why have those proposals met with such wide interest in the traditional shelter world and been implemented in so many places? Those of us in the No Kill movement have seen so much resistance to change in the past from the traditional shelter establishment that it’s surprising to see this rapid adoption of radical new techniques. I think there are several reasons that this change has happened so fast and is working so well. One reason is that the big national organizations like HSUS, the ASPCA, and Maddie’s Fund signed on to the new ideas. The traditional shelter establishment has been accustomed to look to these organizations for leadership. The ASPCA was founded in the 1800s, and HSUS has been counseling shelters for decades. Maddie’s Fund is a more recent organization and is specifically dedicated to No Kill, but it has earned the respect of the traditional shelter establishment with its emphasis on practical solutions. The traditional shelter establishment is willing to accept recommendations from these organizations that they trust where they might not from other sources. A second reason that these new proposals have been adopted so quickly is that the recommendations for cats were brilliant, brand-new ideas that were presented in detail and backed up with data. The efforts of many people went into this, but certainly Dr. Kate Hurley, Dr. Julie Levy, and Jennifer Fearing have had a lot to do with it. Dr. Hurley has been promoting these new ideas in an extremely effective way, with compelling presentations showing why the old ways of handling cats are futile and why the new ways can change those outcomes. Dr. Levy’s presentations cite communities that have implemented the new procedures and describe how they have worked. Jennifer Fearing was very instrumental in pulling everything together and getting buy-in. The new cat recommendations are not vague exhortations such as “have a foster program” or “increase adoptions” or “take killing off the table.” Dr. Hurley’s presentations are full of data, which gives them tremendous credibility and impact. Dr. Levy’s presentations show exactly how particular communities got from point A to point B. A third reason that the new proposals have been so popular is that there is no pressure to adopt all of them at one time. Shelters are free to experiment and do what they think their community will accept and what will work in their individual circumstances. The Columbus shelter, for example, implemented the part having to do with not accepting owner-surrendered cats unless the shelter has room. Other shelters might choose to start with shelter-neuter-return of strays. The new programs are additive, so shelters do not have to feel that they would have the burden of changing everything at once. A fourth reason that the new cat proposals have been spreading so fast is that they have been shown to work in large, demographically challenged communities. A criticism that No Kill has faced in the past is the accusation that it can work only in limited circumstances such as small communities, or communities with better than average financial support or education levels. I have not done a formal analysis of the effect of education levels, wealth, and political values on No Kill success, but I have an impression from my researches that No Kill is more common in (although by no means restricted to) communities that are wealthy, educated, liberal, and perhaps have a higher proportion of young people and conservation-minded people. What some people call “crunchy granola” communities, like Portland, Seattle, Charlottesville, Austin, etc. The new cat programs, by contrast, do not seem to suffer from that limitation. One of Dr. Levy’s examples is Jacksonville, which is a big city in the deep south that does not fit the traditional picture of a No Kill community. Another promising thing about the new cat proposals has been that people from the No Kill movement and the traditional shelter establishment have for the most part had a civil discussion about the problematic elements of the proposals. Francis Battista recently wrote an excellent, thoughtful blog about this process, in which he discussed some of the potential issues with the new proposals and how those problems can be addressed. Unfortunately, not everyone in the No Kill movement has been so pragmatic about it, but on the whole the discussion has been goal-oriented rather than inflammatory. What can we learn from the success of the new cat proposals? One conclusion may be that the time has arrived for cooperation between No Kill and the large national organizations like HSUS and the ASPCA. The whitepaper and shelter-neuter-return proposals represent a highly effective collaboration between the more progressive elements of No Kill and the younger and more progressive elements of the traditional shelter establishment. The positive and rapid reaction to the cat proposals shows how powerful that coalition can be. Another thing that the cat proposals make clear is that No Kill is not a static set of programs, but instead is a dynamic process that will grow and change as we learn. Shelter-neuter-return is a brand new approach. Managed admissions is a recent breakthrough. “No Kill” has become an umbrella term that refers to a large group of many different people who are working in a variety of different ways toward the goal of saving shelter animals. The more people we have on board and the more freedom they have to think creatively and put forward new ideas, the better off we will be.

Georgetown, Texas, is a city of 47,000 people in Williamson County just north of Austin. The Georgetown Animal Shelter is run by the city and provides animal control and sheltering services for people who reside within the city limits. The shelter’s website describes the shelter as “an open door shelter that accepts all dogs and cats found within the city limits or surrendered by owners that live within the city limits.” It does not mention any conditions for owner surrenders. The city of Georgetown has announced that it achieved a 90% live release rate for its most recent fiscal year, from October 1, 2013, to September 30, 2014. The city noted that intake was 12% higher than in the previous fiscal year, at 1863 impounded animals. (That intake is high, at a rate of 40 per 1000 people.) Adoptions and returns-to-owner were also higher. The shelter manager said the shelter has been making increased efforts to find owners of strays and to work with owners to return pets to their homes. In the three preceding fiscal years, the shelter reported live release rates of 81%, 85%, and 90%. In a 2012 interview, the shelter manager attributed the shelter’s live release rate to volunteers, a barn cat program, an initiative to have shelter staff train dogs as they are cared for each day, and adoption outreach. Georgetown, TX, is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

Boston University has just published the results from its 21st-Century Mayor’s Leadership Survey. The purpose of this survey is to improve how cities function, and the methodology included interviewing over 70 mayors from representative cities both large and small. One of the questions asked during the interviews was: “Which three cities (either domestic or foreign) do you most often look to for policy and/or management ideas?” The report lists the 18 cities most commonly mentioned by the mayors (see page 29 of the report) and the percentage of mayors who mentioned each city. The results are stunning. Of the top 10 cities cited for policy and management ideas, five of them are No Kill (#3 Austin, #4 Denver, #5 Portland, #7 Salt Lake City, and #9 Seattle), one is in the 80-90% live release range (#10 San Francisco), three have active efforts in place to get to No Kill (#1 New York City, #6 Philadelphia, and #8 Los Angeles), and the remaining one, (#2 Boston), is probably doing better or much better than average but we do not have numbers to verify it. On page 34 of the study is a list of the mayors’ responses to the question: “What is the most recent idea you have learned about from another city (domestic or foreign) and then brought to your own?” Of the 48 ideas listed, one is “No Kill animal shelter.” This study shows pretty conclusively that the most admired cities in the United States, the ones that other cities look to for leadership, have a commitment to No Kill. It seems obvious from this survey that the best mayors in the United States are keenly interested in No Kill sheltering, realize that it is an innovative and progressive idea, and look at it as a strong positive for their cities. One encouraging fact is that the No Kill movement is already doing many things to help mayors achieve their No Kill goals. In numerous cities advocates have formed large non-profits that are assisting the cities with fundraising for medical treatments, fostering neonatal kittens, TNR, shelter-neuter-return programs, adoption events, volunteer management, publicity, and more. In some cities, like Austin, Reno, Atlanta, Kansas City, and New York, the non-profits partner with the city shelter or have contracted to run the shelter. In addition to the proliferation of No Kill non-profits, the No Kill movement has stepped up to provide resources for city leaders who want to create a No Kill shelter. Bonney Brown and Diane Blankenburg teach a certificate program at the University of the Pacific for lifesaving shelter management. Maddie’s Fund has created a free online library getting into the nuts and bolts of management of a successful No Kill shelter. We have “how to” workshops taught each year by American Pets Alive in Austin. There are several national conferences, including those put on by Best Friends, the No Kill Advocacy Center, the Michigan Pet Fund Alliance, and New Mexico Pets Alive, among others. This is an exciting new era for No Kill.  With mayors on board, the only obstacle left is the actual implementation. That’s a daunting challenge, but there are lots of knowledgeable No Kill advocates and leaders who are willing to partner with cities to make No Kill a reality.

Lynchburg is an independent city of about 76,000 people in Virginia, located southwest of Charlottesville and east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Lynchburg Humane Society (LHS), is a non-profit that has a contract with the city of Lynchburg for animal services. LHS requires an appointment for owner surrenders and charges a small fee, but states that it will make exceptions for people who need to surrender a pet immediately or cannot pay the fee. The shelter reported a 90% live release rate for the year 2011. LHS did not do quite as well in 2012, when it had an 87% live release rate. For 2013, LHS was back over 90%, reporting a live release rate of 92% for the year, with an intake of 1537 animals. The city of Lynchburg animal control euthanized 25 animals, and the live release rate for the community as a whole in 2013 was 90%. Performance improved in 2014, with a combined live release rate for the shelter and the city animal control of 93%. LHS has struggled with a relatively high number of shelter deaths. They attribute this in large part to their badly outdated shelter building, which has made it difficult to control infectious diseases. If animals who died in shelter care are counted in with euthanasias, the modified live release rate for 2013 was 83%. In 2014, the modified live release rate improved 6 points, to 89%. LHS began fundraising for a new building, but director Makena Yarbrough did not want to wait for it to be built to try to reduce shelter deaths. Last spring she consulted with epidemiologists at Cornell to find out how shelter staff could keep infection under control as much as possible in the old building. She implemented their ideas, including getting as many kittens out of the shelter as fast as possible. Yarbrough started a Kitten Warrior neonatal foster program and made it an all-hands-on-deck event. These efforts were responsible for the 6-point  increase in the modified live release rate from 2013 to 2014, as kitten and cat deaths were 65% lower. As of this past Monday the new shelter building was completed and they are moving animals in.  The grand opening is March 21, 2015. This new shelter should substantially help Lynchburg in its continuing effort to reduce the number of shelter deaths. Many shelters have blogs, but the LHS blog is particularly worth following because it occasionally has posts that analyze its programs from a statistical or outcomes point of view. Three posts that are worth reading for their statistical analyses are linked here: Owners Are Helping Us Save Lives By Waiting TNR Opinion – It Is Time We Fix The Problem Can You Wait Please? It Means Life To Us! Lynchburg is listed in the 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.

Dear Friends — Thank you for all your support of and interest in the blog over the years. I hope all of you will visit and “like” the blog’s new Facebook page: link. The Facebook page will have all the blog posts, as well as some of the most interesting news stories I run across and updates on individual communities. Happy reading! — Susan

The San Diego Animal Welfare Coalition rolled out a big announcement this past week that they have reached zero euthanasia of healthy and treatable animals and that, starting with their new fiscal year on July 1st and going forward, they are committed to no healthy or treatable shelter animals in the county being killed. In the most recent fiscal year for which stats are available (2013 to 2014), the 11 shelters that make up the coalition had an 83% live release rate, with intake of over 40,000 animals. Much of what I’m reading about the coalition sounds really good – they work well together, they pool resources, they have a centralized unit for behavior rehabilitation for dogs, and they transfer animals among themselves so that the animals can get the most appropriate treatment. One thing bothers me though, and that is that owner-requested euthanasia has been much higher than I see with most No Kill shelters – in fiscal year 2013-2014, if owner-requested euthanasias are counted with other euthanasias, the live release rate drops from 83% to 72%. In some places (like northern Virginia) there is a tradition of local shelters offering euthanasia services to the public for old and sick pets. Perhaps that is what is going on here, but the problem is that we have no way to tell without detailed medical records on every ORE. The Louisiana Transport Program saved 779 animals last year. This article about their program has some interesting comments from Dr. Elizabeth Berliner, the director of shelter medicine at Cornell. She says that transport programs are lifesavers, but that following best practices, including veterinary involvement at both the sending and receiving shelters, is very important. She refers readers to the best practices recommendations from the National Federation of Humane Societies. Here’s another article about the Chester County SPCA in Pennsylvania and its recent turnaround. Delaware’s First State Animal Center and SPCA (formerly the Kent County SPCA) has held animal control contracts for Delaware’s three counties and the city of Wilmington for a while now. If I am interpreting the shelter’s posted statistics correctly, they had a live release rate of about 75% in 2014, with an actual intake of over 6,000. Things may change in Delaware soon, as it appears that the state is moving to take over dog control duties. Voice for the Animals has received some nice publicity for its Working Cats program, most recently with an article in the LA Times. In a bizarre twist to the case of a Texas veterinarian who allegedly shot a cat in the head with a bow and arrow, it appears that the local DA may have misapplied the American Veterinary Medical Association’s euthanasia guidelines in finding that there was not sufficient evidence that the cat was killed by a cruel method. The DA appears to have interpreted the AVMA euthanasia guidelines as supporting the idea that an arrow to the head from a distance is equivalent to the controlled use of a captive bolt or gunshot at close range. The AVMA says that the DA reached this conclusion without asking their opinion on the issue. In related news, Alley Cat Allies had great turnout and support for their workshops and vigils in Texas in response to the case. It’s not too soon to start thinking about what you will do for National Feral Cat Day, which is on October 16th this year. Another great post from Christie Keith, who is a national treasure for the No Kill movement. This one discusses why adoption promotions should be upbeat – and the exceptions to that rule. One thing I like about Keith’s posts is that she not only explains what works, but why it works. Tawny Hammond has hit the ground running in Austin in her new job as director of the city shelter. That’s by necessity, as Austin shelters have had increased intake due to the recent floods. Hammond wants to raise the shelter’s profile in the community, and she also wants to address concerns expressed by some volunteers that dogs are not getting enough exercise.

We hear a lot about No Kill programs, and very little about No Kill models. That’s too bad, because the programs are only one aspect of getting to No Kill. What are the programs, and what are the models? A No Kill program is any particular initiative or technique that a shelter uses to increase lifesaving. Many of the most important No Kill programs were developed by Richard Avanzino in the years from 1976 (when he was hired as president of the San Francisco SPCA) to 1989. The San Francisco SPCA during those years had a contract to do animal control and sheltering for the city. The programs Avanzino developed included a foster network,  integrating volunteers into most shelter operations, offsite adoptions, pet retention, behavior training, creative marketing, engaging the public, etc. Avanzino did not develop all of the programs that we think of today as part of No Kill operations. Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) for feral cats was developed back in the 1950s in England and the 1970s in the United States, independent of the shelters. The concept of open adoptions was pioneered by people in the traditional shelter industry in the 1990s. The low-cost spay-neuter movement started in the early 1970s. And in just the last three years we’ve had a revolution in cat sheltering with the new community cat paradigms. Many of the programs are common sense, and people in the 1980s and 1990s like Bob Rohde in Denver and Bert Troughton in New Hampshire independently developed foster, volunteer, and other programs for their progressive shelters. But even though Avanzino did not develop all of the programs himself, and even though others worked on similar initiatives, Avanzino was the one who first advocated at the national level for shelters everywhere to put a comprehensive group of lifesaving programs into practice. So that is a short history of No Kill programs. What about No Kill models? Avanzino realized early on when he started work at the San Francisco SPCA that full implementation of lifesaving programs was being hampered by the SPCA’s contract with the city. The SPCA was responsible under the contract for both animal control and sheltering, but the amount of money the city paid was not enough to do the job correctly. Every year the SPCA had to make up the difference out of funds donated by the private sector. Finally, in 1989, the SPCA ended its contract with the city over the funding issue. In the years from 1989 to 1994 Avanzino built a new model for No Kill – a public-private model that charged the city with carrying out its responsibilities of animal control and the private sector with serving as back-up for shelter lifesaving. The model that emerged in San Francisco consisted of two agencies, the San Francisco SPCA and a new city shelter. The new city-run shelter was responsible for animal control and return-to-owner, and also did many adoptions. The San Francisco SPCA pulled at-risk animals from the city shelter, did medical care and behavior training as needed, and adopted them out. This arrangement was formalized in 1994 in the famous Adoption Pact, in which the SPCA guaranteed to take any healthy animal that the city shelter could not place through its adoption program. The SPCA also worked toward taking all treatable animals, although it did not reach that goal in the 1990s. The public-private model freed the SPCA to spend more resources on spay-neuter, TNR, and other lifesaving initiatives while the city concentrated on the core functions of animal control and basic sheltering. The model worked extremely well, and by the time Avanzino left the San Francisco SPCA at the end of 1998 to head Maddie’s Fund, San Francisco as a community was saving roughly 70% of its shelter animals. That is not a great percentage by today’s standards, but it was extraordinary in 1998. The average live release rate for the nation as a whole in the year 2000 was on the order of 25-35%. Shelter medicine, which is so critical to high rates of lifesaving, barely existed in the 1990s. In fact, the first class in shelter medicine was not held until 1999. Under the conditions of the time, the San Francisco SPCA’s live release rate in 1998 was a stunning success. Not every community requires a complicated model to succeed. No Kill programs by themselves, put in place at a city or county shelter, have worked in some communities, particularly small communities with adequate resources. But on the whole shelters seem to be able to get to No Kill faster and to sustain higher rates of lifesaving if they are part of a public-private network of some type. Lots of cities have successfully used the San Francisco model, and we can think of that as the classic approach – the city shelter that works with a large private organization that is dedicated, first and foremost, to pulling at-risk animals from the shelter. This classic model, combined with a third large agency that deals primarily with feral and community cats, has produced extremely high live release rates in Jacksonville and Austin and, importantly, has proven to be sustainable. The classic San Francisco model is not the only one that works. There are other approaches, such as coalitions across jurisdictional lines (the Portland and Denver metro areas are examples), and New York City’s model of a rescue consortium that works with the city shelter through a non-profit umbrella agency. We also have examples (Atlanta, Kansas City MO) of cities where private organizations have bid on the contract to run the city shelter and are making it work with little or no help from other large, non-profit animal organizations. It is my impression that when larger cities use a contract model where the contractor has little outside help they struggle more than cities that are using the San Francisco or coalition models. Smaller cities, however, can do extremely well with the model of a local non-profit doing animal sheltering by contract with just rescue support – Charlottesville and Lynchburg, both in Virginia, come to mind. One thing that seems to be common to the most successful public-private models in large cities is that the public shelter, instead of trying to work with 50 or 100 or 200 individual rescues, is working primarily with one or a small number of partners. In Austin, it’s Austin Pets Alive. In Jacksonville, it’s the Jacksonville Humane Society and First Coast No More Homeless Pets. City shelters have limited time to devote to networking, and it greatly helps their efficiency and their willingness to work with the private sector when they have one or two large, well-organized non-profits to deal with rather than a myriad of individual groups. The bottom line from all this is that experience shows that for a large jurisdiction to succeed at getting to No Kill and sustaining it we need to think about both programs and models. A large city is not likely to achieve No Kill simply from implementing programs. The idea that all you have to do to get to No Kill is to hire a good director for the city shelter and implement a few programs is greatly oversimplified. The frequent failure of this approach when it has been tried without any consideration for the model being used has resulted in a lot of confusion, discouragement, and angst on the part of advocates when their “proven” programs fail to produce the desired result. The answer to this problem would appear to be that advocates should, from the beginning, think about how they are going to supply the public side of the partnership. If no suitable private organization exists, will they need to build one in order to succeed? When I have proposed this idea to advocates in the past I’ve gotten a lot of pushback. It’s much more complicated for advocates to think about forming a non-profit and building it into a large organization than it is to just complain to city leaders about the shelter. Complaining can be done from the comfort of home, while building an organization takes a lot of work and requires shouldering some risk of failure. The great majority of No Kill leaders today realize that the public-private model is a key to success, as you can see from simply looking at where the large national organizations are putting their money and on-the-ground support. But are they articulating this realization in a way that is getting to advocates? Are they making an effective counterargument to the people who maintain that all you need is a new director and a few programs for No Kill to happen overnight anywhere? For advocates who are not willing to do the work of building large non-profits from scratch, there is another possible route to take in some cities. Many cities have large humane societies or SPCAs that have been around for decades – in some cases since the 1800s. These organizations are often not doing much to help the city shelter. Instead of pressuring the city shelter to reform (which, without the necessary resources, can be like telling a person to pull themselves up by their bootstraps) advocates could work with the legacy humane societies to encourage them to start pulling at-risk animals from the city shelter. Too often I see advocates who are all over the city shelter but are ignoring the large legacy humane organization that might be just a couple of blocks away. The need for more attention to No Kill models is why I was glad to see Brent Toellner’s recent blog post (link is here) that provides a thoughtful look at various models. Toellner makes the very important point that the public-private model is not an end in itself. Instead, it is a way to make sure that the shelter has the resources it needs to do its job. In San Francisco, the resources available for shelter lifesaving essentially doubled when the city set up its own shelter operation and the San Francisco SPCA took the role of backup. Getting to a 90%+ live release rate requires having the resources for medical treatment and behavior rehabilitation. Resources can also allow a city to have a modern shelter in a good location rather than an animal warehouse next to the city dump. And resources can greatly help with recruiting talented people. There are many things to think of in making an effort to get a city to No Kill. This blog post, long as it is, covers only a fraction of the relevant considerations. A great place for advocates to start is talking to people who have made No Kill happen in a city of relatively the same size, with similar conditions. Mentoring may be as important as programs and models, but that will have to be the subject of another post.

Tompkins County is located in the south central part of New York state just below the Finger Lakes. The population of the county is about 102,000, plus approximately 20,000 non-resident students who attend college in Ithaca, the county seat. The Tompkins County SPCA (TCSPCA) has contracted with the county and with several cities and towns within the county for animal control and sheltering services. The towns include Caroline (population 3300), Danby (3300), Enfield (3500), the city of Ithaca (30,000), the town of Ithaca (20,000), Lansing (11,000), Newfield (5200), and Ulysses (4900). TCSPCA’s animal control does not pick up stray cats unless they are injured or in distress. The shelter accepts owner surrenders from the county but asks owners to make an appointment and may require a wait of “several days.” If it is an emergency situation, the shelter will accept the animal immediately. TCSPCA has had a series of notable directors. The well-known author and activist Nathan Winograd started as director of TCSPCA in mid-2001. He was followed by Abigail Smith, who headed up the shelter until accepting a job as director of the Austin Animal Center in 2011. Smith was replaced at TCSPCA by Jim Bouderau, who took over as shelter director in May of 2011. The shelter has reported a live release rate of 90% or more since the calendar year 2002 report, with one exception. In the transition year of 2011 TCSPCA was just below 90%, with a live release rate for the year of 89.3%. In 2012 the live release rate was back up to 92%, with an intake of 1853 dogs and cats. In 2013 the live release rate was again 92%, with an intake of 1822 dogs and cats. If owner-requested euthanasia and animals who died or were lost in shelter care are included with euthanasias, the live release rate was 91% in 2012 and 90% in 2013. The shelter adopted out 1430 animals in 2013, which is an excellent rate of 14 adoptions per 1000 people. They have taken in 60 dogs from California since last August because they had more demand for dogs than supply. Tompkins County, NY, was originally listed by this blog on May 10, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.