OUT THE FRONT DOOR

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%.

The Million Cat Challenge was launched on December 10, 2014. Remember that date, because this is going to be big. As Peter Wolf said in his blog about it, the launch “felt like something historic – as if we’ve entered into a new era of animal sheltering where cats are concerned.” I could not agree more. If the Million Cat Challenge initiatives are fully implemented, they will stop shelter killing of healthy and treatable cats. And the initiatives are not difficult, nor do they require any special talents on the part of shelter leadership. Three reasons why the Million Cat Challenge will be so important: the ideas behind it are great, the people behind it are wonderful advocates, and just about every important organizational player in animal sheltering in the United States today has signed on to it. The organizations that are supporting the Million Cat Challenge include Maddie’s Fund, Best Friends, HSUS, ASPCA, Alley Cat Allies, PetSmart Charities, NACA, NFHS, the Association of Shelter Veterinarians, and the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies. Having the agreement of all of these organizations is crucial, because it will give local shelters with conservative directors the confidence that they need to adopt the new ideas. The designers of the Challenge want every municipal shelter in the country to sign on. The support of almost all of the important national organizations should help make that possible. And confidence will be necessary, because the ideas proposed by the Challenge are revolutionary. The Five Key Initiatives add up to nothing less than a complete overhaul of how cat sheltering is done in the United States. Two of the initiatives, alternatives to intake and removing barriers to adoption, are elaborations on ideas that are already fairly standard in No Kill programs. Another initiative, managed admission, has been around for a few years with great results, but is still somewhat controversial. The other two components of the Five Key Initiatives are completely new – using return-to-field for healthy community cats, and insuring that cat impoundment and length of stay are balanced with shelter capacity. Surprisingly, even though these programs are unconventional, shelters are jumping aboard the bandwagon in big numbers. Almost every shelter I research these days that is making any effort at all to increase live releases for cats is using at least one of the 5 key initiatives. And that includes shelters that no one would think of as cutting edge. It’s almost as though everyone has just been waiting for permission to change the way they handle cats. In addition to offering support from virtually everyone who is anyone in sheltering at the national level, the Challenge makes it as easy and inviting as possible for shelters to participate. Shelters can choose to adopt one of the initiatives or all of them. The Challenge asks each shelter to provide only 3 numbers each year, from 2014 through 2018, as well as the same 3 numbers for the baseline year of 2012. The three numbers are cat intake, cat euthanasia, and cat live releases for each year. Shelters report only once per year, with their estimate for the upcoming year and their actual data for the previous year. What could be easier? Although the goal of the Challenge is to save 1 million cats over the 5-year period, the potential is even greater. No one knows exactly how many cats are being killed by shelters every year currently, but estimates are around 2 million per year. If every shelter adopted all five of the initiatives, that number could fall to well under 500,000, since only unhealthy and untreatable cats would be euthanized. Thus, the upside potential of the Challenge is that it could save over 1.5 million cats every year. Any shelter can participate, even if it is very small or is already No Kill. Existing organizations that support local shelters, such as TNR groups, can get their numbers counted by encouraging their shelters to sign on to the Challenge. The proposals in the Challenge ask shelters to recognize something that is intuitively obvious but has never been fully acknowledged by animal shelters in the United States – cats are different from dogs. Animal shelters originally started as dog pounds, and the methods for impounding and releasing cats were simply borrowed from what had always been done for dogs. The average return-to-owner rate for cats is about 2%, and even the best shelters generally do not even hit double digits. For decades people have simply shaken their heads over the pitiful return-to-owner rates for cats, while shelters continued to kill them. One of the saddest parts of my job in researching shelters is to see those tiny numbers for return-to-owner for cats, even in shelters that are trying hard and are very successful at return-to-owner for dogs. The shelter-capacity and return-to-field initiatives that are part of the Challenge will ensure that far more of those cats find their way back home. The Challenge is the joint project of two well-known shelter medicine specialists and their organizations – Dr. Kate Hurley of the UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program and Dr. Julie Levy of the Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida. For some background on how Dr. Hurley arrived at her ideas about how shelters should handle cats, this article from a 2013 issue of Animal Sheltering magazine is a good read. My favorite quote from the article – “we can just stop euthanizing healthy cats.” And then Dr. Hurley explains in detail why this is not a crazy idea. The Challenge website has a lot of information on how to get started. In addition, Maddie’s Fund is presenting a 90-minute free webcast and Q&A on the Challenge on January 15, 2015. Dr. Levy has emphasized that resources are being made available to allow participants to network with and support each other, and that the Challenge is designed as a collaborative effort.

Best Friends Animal Society, which is located in Kanab, Utah, has a program to improve save rates at Utah shelters. In 2012, I listed 12 Utah communities in the right sidebar based on statistics sent to me by Best Friends. They recently sent me statistics for 2013, which confirmed that all 12 shelters again had live release rates above 90% and added 3 more 90%+ communities. In addition to those 15 communities this post contains an updated listing for Ivins, which was listed separately in 2012 based on statistics sent to me by the shelter director. I contacted the stray-intake shelters in each community to get information on their specific policies. Some of the shelters have a substantial rate of transfers, and I verified with each shelter that transfers are made only to organizations that have a live release rate of 90% or more. Most of these communities have small populations, which shows that even tiny jurisdictions can have successful shelters. The Ivins Animal Shelter and Adoption Center (IASAC) serves as the municipal shelter for the small town of Ivins, Utah (population about 7,000 people). The shelter was established in 2005 and became a non-profit organization in 2007. IASAC accepts owner surrenders from city residents and does not have an appointment requirement or fee. In 2006, the city council passed an ordinance stating a policy that no savable animals should be killed. That ordinance was renewed in 2010. The shelter’s live release rate in 2011 was 97%. In 2012 and 2013, the shelter reported a 99% live release rate. IASAC did not report any owner-requested euthanasias, and had two animals who died in shelter care in 2013. Kanab and Kane County. Kanab is the county seat for Kane County, which is located on Utah’s southern border. Kanab has a population of 3600, and the county’s population is 6200.  Kanab Animal Control, which also serves Kane County, accepts owner surrenders with a $75 fee. The shelter had a live release rate of 100% in 2012 and 2013. The shelter does not perform owner-requested euthanasia unless it is an emergency, and reported no deaths in shelter care in 2012 or 2013. Most of the shelter’s transfers go to Best Friends. Ephraim. The city of Ephraim has 6100 residents and is located in central Utah. Ephraim Animal Control reported a live release rate of 96% in 2012 and 94% in 2013. Owner surrenders are routed directly to rescues by an informal arrangement, with most of them going to Wag-n-Train rescue. The city reported that no animals died in shelter care in 2012 or 2013. Iron County. Iron County is located in southwest Utah and has 43,500 residents. The Iron County Animal Shelter (which is under the jurisdiction of the sheriff’s department) serves the unincorporated part of Iron County, including the townships of Kanarraville, Paragonah, Beryl, Modina, and Newcastle. The shelter accepts owner surrenders from its jurisdiction with a $100 fee. The shelter reported a 99% live release rate in 2012 and 100% in 2013. The shelter does not perform owner-requested euthanasia, and reported no deaths in shelter care in either 2012 or 2013. In the last two years all of the shelter’s transfers have gone to Best Friends except for one animal that went to a sanctuary. Enoch. The city of Enoch is located in southwest Utah in Iron County, and has 5800 residents. The Enoch Animal Shelter serves the city. It accepts owner surrenders with a $100 fee, although the fee is waived for highly adoptable animals. The shelter reported a live release rate of 96% in 2012 and 99% in 2013. The shelter does not do owner-requested euthanasia. If deaths in shelter care are counted in with euthanasias, the live release rate was 95% for 2012 and 98% for 2013. Parowan. The city of Parowan is located in southwest Utah in Iron County, and has 2800 residents. The Parowan Animal Shelter is managed by a committee set up by the mayor called the Parowan Animal Assistance League. The shelter accepts owner-surrendered dogs from its jurisdiction, but does not impound cats. The live release rate was 98% in 2012 and 100% in 2013. They refer owner requests for euthanasia to a local veterinarian, and had no deaths in shelter care in 2012 or 2013. South Ogden and Riverdale. South Ogden and Riverdale are cities in northern Utah. South Ogden has a population of 14,400 people and Riverdale has 7700 people. South Ogden Animal Services serves both cities. The shelter accepts owner surrenders on a space available basis. They reported a live release rate of 97% in 2012 and 99% in 2013. The live release rates do not change if animals who died in shelter care are counted as euthanasias. Heber City, Midway, and Wasatch County. Heber City is the county seat for Wasatch County, which is located in north central Utah. Midway is a city in Wasatch County. Heber City has a population of 11,400, Midway’s population is 3800, and the county’s population is 25,300. The Heber Valley Animal Control Shelter, which serves the two cities and the county, accepts owner surrenders from its jurisdiction. The shelter is operated by Paws For Life, which has a transport program. The shelter’s live release rate was 100% in both 2012 and 2013. It refers owner requests for euthanasia to a veterinarian. If animals who died in shelter care are counted with euthanasias, the live release rate was 98% in 2012 and 100% in 2013. Hurricane. The city of Hurricane is located near the southern border of Utah and has a population of 13,700 people. The Hurricane Animal Shelter accepts owner surrenders with a small fee. The shelter reported a live release rate of 94% in 2012 and 97% in 2013. They treat owner requests for euthanasia as owner surrenders, and include them in their euthanasia total. Their live release rates for 2012 and 2013 are unchanged if animals who died in shelter care are included with euthanasias. Morgan County. Morgan County is in northern Utah not far from Salt Lake City, and it has 9500 people. Morgan County Animal Control serves the county, and accepts owner surrenders from its residents without conditions. The shelter reported a 92% live release rate in 2013. It does not do owner-requested euthanasia, and reported no deaths in shelter care in 2013. Grantsville. Grantsville is a city of 9100 people in northern Utah west of Salt Lake City. Grantsville Animal Control is a unit within the police department. It accepts owner surrenders from city residents without conditions. The city reported a 97% live release rate in 2013. It does not do owner-requested euthanasia. If animals who died in shelter care are included in euthanasias, the live release rate for 2013 was 96%. Roosevelt is a city of 6,000 people in northeastern Utah. The Roosevelt Animal Shelter (RAS) is run by the city. It accepts owner surrenders from the city and from Duchesne County with no conditions, although they ask for a voluntary donation. The shelter took in 1276 animals in 2013, and had a 91% live release rate. The live release rate was 90% if animals who died or were lost in shelter care are counted with euthanasias. RCAS does not offer owner-requested euthanasia. The shelter transfers most of its intake to rescues, including Furever Buddies Dog Rescue and Ashley Valley Community Cats, which does TNR. These Utah cities and counties are counted in the Running Totals as 90%+ communities.

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.

San Miguel County, located on the western border of Colorado, has 7600 residents. Ouray County, bordering San Miguel County to the east, has 4400 people. The counties are in a mountainous and sparsely populated area. Ouray County is so mountainous that it’s known as the Switzerland of America. The most populous cities in Ouray County — Ridgway and the City of Ouray — each have about 1000 inhabitants. The largest city in San Miguel County is Telluride, with a population of 2300. The city of Telluride has its own animal control officers who impound dogs for the city and county. Telluride also has an animal shelter that adopts out dogs. The Second Chance Humane Society (SCHS), located in Ridgway, provides animal sheltering for San Miguel and Ouray counties. SCHS takes in strays and owner surrenders, both cats and dogs. I called SCHS and was told that Ouray county does not have animal control officers, and so stray intake is by citizens bringing in the strays. SCHS has a waiting list for owner surrenders. The state of Colorado collects statistics on animal shelters in the state. In 2012, the city of Telluride took in 40 dogs (4 strays and 36 confiscated), returned 35 to their owners, transferred 3, and euthanized 1 for a live release rate of 97%. SCHS took in 294 dogs and cats in 2012 and had a 97% live release rate. One animal died in shelter care at SCHS, but that did not change the live release rate. In 2013, the city of Telluride took in 47 animals and had a 100% live release rate.  SCHS in 2013 had a substantial increase in intake with 380 animals for the year. Their live release rate was 99% as stated in their 2013 annual report. Ouray and San Miguel Counties were originally listed by this blog on November 12, 2013, based on their 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Back in the 1970s it was not common for people to have their dogs and cats sterilized, and it was common for people to allow their dogs and cats to roam as they pleased. This resulted in a lot of dogs and cats. Shelter intakes back then were about 5 times higher than they are today. Shelter statistics from those days are sketchy, but our best guess from the available evidence is that the situation for homeless pets reached a crisis point around 1970 due to their massive numbers. Killing was the default solution that shelters used for the overwhelming number of animals they received. The Lane County shelter in Eugene, Oregon, was receiving 100 animals a day, for example, even though animal control officers did not take in cats. Shelter intake in Lane County today is a tenth of that number or less. Shelter intake relative to human population back in the 1970s was about 110 per 1000 people, if not more. By comparison, average shelter intake today is estimated to be about 22 per 1000 people. But the number of animals coming into shelters was not the only problem. An even bigger problem was the number of animals that were in the streets, that shelters did not impound. For example, James Child did a study on cats in the early 1980s and found 725 to 1813 free-roaming cats per square mile in one northeastern city. If you wanted a cat or dog in the 1970s all you had to do was wait, and before long you would hear of a friend, neighbor, or relative who had a litter of puppies or kittens to give away. Or you would see someone on the street hawking free or very cheap puppies and kittens. Or you might find a litter of feral kittens in your backyard, or be adopted yourself by a homeless stray. There was no need to buy a dog or cat unless you wanted a particular type of purebred, and there was no need to go to the shelter to adopt because animals needing homes were in your neighborhood. Could shelters have saved all of their animals in the 1970s? Of the No Kill shelters I’ve studied, the ones that have intake per 1000 people of 40 or 50 or more generally seem to use transports a lot, or adopt animals to people outside of their own jurisdiction, in order to get to a 90% or better live release rate. In the 1970s all the jurisdictions were full of animals, so transports and out-of-area adoptions would just take homes from other homeless animals. Shelter workers in the 1970s were not enthusiastic about adoptions generally, because with so many animals needing homes, finding a home for a shelter puppy meant only that another puppy was left out. Adoptions in the 1970s were like a giant game of musical chairs, with not nearly enough chairs. A shelter adoption just meant that a different animal was left standing. In order to save all animals who were admitted to shelters in 1970, one out of every three people who currently owned a pet at that time would have had to adopt another one from a shelter. Then in 1971 another one out of three would have had to adopt, and so on. And with shelters putting intact animals into the environment (because back then shelters did not have the veterinary support to spay and neuter all of their animals), the pet overpopulation situation might well have gotten even worse. In a world where most dogs and cats were intact and a high percentage of them were free-roaming, shelter killing was about the only means that communities had to contain pet population. Shelter killing did not keep homeless dog and cat populations from growing, but it probably did make them grow more slowly than they otherwise would have. Could shelters have simply left animals on the street rather than taking them in only to kill them? In the 1970s, many shelters, perhaps most of them, did leave cats in the street. Cats were typically considered free-roaming and were not impounded except in cities where residents considered them to be nuisances, or public health officials considered them to be health threats. As to leaving dogs in the street, or leaving cats in the street in the cities where they were considered to be nuisances, it is doubtful that citizens in the 1970s would have tolerated that approach. A survey that was done in 1973 of city mayors found that animal nuisance complaints were the number-one complaint that mayors received on any issue. In 1970 there were very few spay-neuter programs and veterinarians did not routinely recommend that people spay and neuter their pets. At that time veterinarians were just getting adjusted to new technologies in anesthesia that made spay surgeries safer than they had been in earlier decades. Very few if any veterinarians were doing pediatric spay-neuter in the 1970s, and even people who did get their dogs and cats spayed often did not do so until after their pet had had a litter or two. That is a very depressing picture. Shelter workers who loved animals and did not want them killed faced options in the 1970s that ranged from bad to worse. So what did they do? They started a gigantic spay-neuter campaign. Today we tend to be bored with spay-neuter. We hear about it all the time, and sometimes it seems as though the “spay-neuter” mantra is just being used as an excuse not to put programs in place to get animals out of the shelter alive. But in the 1970s, the spay-neuter campaign changed the culture, and changed the world for homeless pets. We went from a country where only a minority of people sterilized their pets to a country where more than 80% did. And at the same time people began to value their pets more. That probably was not a coincidence, because the spay-neuter movement included an educational component to encourage the idea that the lives of cats and dogs had value. By the year 2000, shelter intake had plummeted by close to 70%, at the same time that the number of owned pets had more than doubled. If you look at shelter intake in 2000 relative to the number of owned pets, it had declined almost 90% since 1970. It was not the spay-neuter clinics themselves that did all those spay-neuter surgeries – what happened was that the free and low-cost clinics that were popping up all over in the 1970s inspired the veterinary profession to start to recommend spay-neuter as a routine part of health care. Even more important than the startling decline in shelter intake was the decline in homeless, free-roaming dogs in the environment. By the year 2000 feral and homeless dogs (as opposed to dogs who had homes and had strayed) were down to a miniscule number in most places, and continued to be a problem only in a few large urban areas and a few very rural areas. The number of homeless cats stayed high, possibly due to migration back and forth between the domestic and feral cat populations. But in the 1990s TNR became common and it offered a way to control community cats and reduce their nuisance behaviors. The decline in shelter intake, the decline in the number of dogs in the environment, and the growing acceptance of TNR were the factors that made No Kill theoretically possible. The growth of the internet, particularly Petfinder, and the groundbreaking work of shelters like the San Francisco SPCA made it possible to implement No Kill as a practical matter. The first No Kill communities appeared toward the end of the 1990s in San Francisco, New England, and the Denver metro area, plus many small communities in Colorado and one in Michigan. In order for shelters to increase their live releases, they had to have a “market” for their animals. The disappearance of homeless dogs from the environment allowed shelters to adopt out dogs to people who otherwise would have acquired their dog from an unwanted litter in the neighborhood or by adopting a stray. TNR provided an alternative living arrangement for cats where they would be tolerated and even supported in the environment, thus increasing their market as well. The number of adoptions from shelters and rescues went up from about 5% or so of intake in 1970 to over 40% today. This appears to have been largely due to the disappearance of “competing” animals from the environment. It is no accident that the No Kill movement started in the early 1990s, because it was at about that time that the pet overpopulation crisis had abated in the most progressive communities. In less progressive communities – those where spay-neuter rates lagged, and TNR was not in use – No Kill has taken a little longer to get a foothold. In thinking about this history, what stands out to me is the massive effort on the part of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people who devoted a great deal of their time and effort to change the tragic situation for homeless pets. In the 1970s this army of people worked on spay-neuter efforts. Beginning in the early 1990s, with the pet overpopulation problem having been greatly reduced in many places, the army began to work on increasing live releases. No Kill, more than most movements, is made up of lots of individual heroes. It is a true grass roots movement. As Rich Avanzino would say, the founders of No Kill were the American people.

Allegany County is part of the Cumberland region in western Maryland. It is a hilly, rural area with a population of about 75,000 people. The Allegany County Animal Shelter (ACAS) used to be high-kill, with a reported live release rate of about 15%. Late in 2010 a group of local volunteers, working with county management, reformed the shelter virtually overnight. Last year that turnaround culminated in the county contracting out operations to the Allegany County Animal Shelter Foundation, a private non-profit formed by the volunteers. ACAS will hit another milestone in four months, when construction starts on its much-needed new shelter building. Peter Masloch was one of the people who was most instrumental in reforming the shelter, and he provided me with information about its policies. ACAS accepts owner surrenders from county residents, with a $25 surrender fee. Sometimes the shelter asks people if they can wait a few days to surrender an animal, but they take animals immediately if the owner cannot wait. Animal control does not pick up stray cats, since they are considered free-roaming in Allegany County. The shelter partners with Homeward Bound Cat Rescue to do TNR, and those cats are not counted in intake or disposition statistics. Three of ACAS’s rescue partners have been very helpful in the shelter’s high live release rate for domesticated cats: Last Chance Animal Rescue, Lost Paws of Lancaster, and Lost Paws of New Jersey. The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled in 2011 that pit bulls are inherently dangerous dogs. Allegany County officials initially ordered that the shelter cease adopting out pit bulls, but backed off that stance after the Maryland Attorney General issued an opinion on the effect of the law pending a motion to reconsider. Currently, pit bull advocates are hoping that a legislative fix can be passed soon. In the meantime ACAS is able to adopt out pit bull mixes, since only certain purebreds are affected by the court’s ruling. In 2011, the first year of the shelter’s turnaround, ACAS did not keep precise statistics but its live release rate was approximately 90%. In 2012, the shelter’s live release rate was 96% for dogs and 93.5% for cats. Intake went up substantially in 2013 to a total of 2009 animals, but the shelter nevertheless maintained its high save rate with an overall live release rate of 95%. If animals who died in shelter care in 2013 are included with euthanasia, the live release rate was 92%. The shelter does not perform owner-requested euthanasia, and instead refers such requests to a veterinarian. Allegany County, MD, is listed in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

The South Platte River flows northward through Denver. An area just south of the city of Denver is known locally as the South Platte Valley, and it contains several small cities. The Humane Society of the South Platte Valley (HSSPV) is a non-profit that was formed in late 2009 to provide animal sheltering services for Englewood (population 30,000), and Littleton (population 42,000). The shelter has formal contracts with Englewood and Littleton, which account for more than 80% of the animals it takes in. The shelter also contracts with unincorporated Arapahoe County and Cherry Hills Village (population 6000). HSSPV accepts owner surrenders with a $100 fee. In a recent article, HSSPV director Leslie Maisonneuve said the shelter is successful at adoptions because it has many offsite adoption events and is careful to match adopters and adoptees. The shelter has a training specialist who works with animals before adoption and is available for consultation after adoption. In 2013, an organization called People Helping Pets put “virtual shelter” kiosks in the community that feature adoptable cats and dogs. Statistics on the HSSPV website show a 95% live release rate in both 2010 and 2011. HSSPV reports its statistics to the state of Colorado, and in 2012 it took in 1550 animals with a live release rate of 96%. In 2013, the shelter reported an intake of 1943 animals with a 96% live release rate. South Platte Valley, CO, was originally listed by this blog on April 21, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Las Animas County is located in southeastern Colorado and has 16,000 residents. Its county seat is Trinidad, which has 9100 residents. The county covers a large area and is sparsely populated outside of Trinidad. There is also a city in Colorado named Las Animas, but it is part of an adjacent county. Las Animas County and Trinidad both have their own animal control officers. They take animals to Noah’s Ark Animal Welfare Organization, located in Trinidad, which is the impoundment facility for the city and the county. I spoke to a representative of the shelter, who told me that Noah’s Ark accepts owner surrenders from Las Animas County and Trinidad. They ask people to make an appointment but take animals immediately if an owner cannot wait for an appointment. They also accept animals from surrounding jurisdictions when they have room. Noah’s Ark submits its statistics to the state of Colorado. For 2013, total intake was 1255 animals. This gives the shelter an extremely high pets-per-thousand-people rate of 78. The live release rate was 93%. The modified live release rate including shelter deaths was 90%.

During the last two weeks of the year I’m going to re-run my three-part series on the coming shelter dog shortage and the future of animal shelters. Those posts were by far the most popular this year, with many thousands of readers each. Rather than re-run them on the blog I will post them on Facebook. Please visit the blog’s Facebook page at: http://tinyurl.com/jam9kvm

This post looks at how No Kill did in the Southeast in 2015. We can break the area down into two regions: Upper Southeast – Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina Deep South – South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi The surprising thing about the southeast in 2015 was that the most inspiring stories came from the Deep South – an area that we have traditionally thought of as terrible for shelter animals. For many years the only real hope for homeless dogs in the Deep South was to be transported to northern shelters, and the only real hope for cats was to avoid being caught by animal control at all. Today, we have communities in the Deep South, including some large cities, that are on the cutting edge of new No Kill techniques. I had the privilege of visiting LifeLine Animal Project’s two open admission county shelters serving the city of Atlanta this past year. LifeLine took over the shelters in 2013, and both are now running at about an 85% live release rate. That’s up very sharply since they took over – a true reversal of what went before. They have all the problems of big-city shelters, including a high intake of pit bulls, and they have very little outside help. LifeLine is an example of what No Kill can do even with few resources. Jacksonville, Florida, is another phenomenal story. They have a great coalition of three partners working together in harmony – the city shelter, the Jacksonville Humane Society, and First Coast No More Homeless Pets. That’s very nice to see because there are so many other cities where egos get in the way of cooperation and people go around with a chip on their shoulder. Scott Trebatoski, who managed the city shelter in Jacksonville before being lured away to Hillsborough County, Florida (where the city of Tampa is located), has been making great strides in a place that was previously a death knell to No Kill attempts. The shelter there has been running at a save rate of over 80%. Another big story of 2015 was Miami, which is now reporting that it was over 90% for the year. Miami is getting a new shelter this year, which should help with even better lifesaving for the almost 30,000 dogs and cats they take in annually. There are success stories in smaller cities in the Deep South too. Gainesville, Florida, has been making steady progress. I don’t think Gainesville is quite to No Kill yet, but one bright spot is the Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where Dr. Julie Levy has been doing great research on TNR and RTF. Huntsville, Alabama (yes, Alabama!) has been running at over 90% lately. Southern Pines Animal Shelter in Mississippi is over 90% (they need donations to shore up their shelter building against a landslide emergency). Columbia, South Carolina, has already cut its kill rate by half, and wants to go the rest of the way to No Kill. A committee has proposed a promising plan, with the exception of mandatory spay-neuter for pit bulls. Hopefully that idea will not make it into the final plan. The upper Southeast did not have the kind of big headline No Kill stories last year that the Deep South had, but progress is being made. Virginia has more and more communities that are No Kill. Three of its communities are examples of the best in No Kill – Richmond, Lynchburg, and Charlottesville. Lynchburg is one of my favorite No Kill stories. The city’s median household income is below average for Virginia and for the United States as a whole, and yet the Lynchburg Humane Society has not only been No Kill for years now, it also opened a state-of-the-art new shelter in 2015. The city of Asheville, in North Carolina, seems to be ramping up to become a No Kill powerhouse. The Foothills Humane Society in Polk County, North Carolina, has reportedly been No Kill for some time now. West Virginia has made it onto the board with the Charleston shelter. Tennessee has a few towns that are doing well, as does Kentucky. But North Carolina, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky have few bright spots. It’s interesting to speculate on why the Deep South has all these cities that are making such fast progress toward No Kill. Whatever the reasons behind the groundswell of progress in the region, though, it’s a great thing to see. One possible problem for the future is that northern shelters may lose their supply of dogs transported from the south. That’s a good problem to have, because it means that northern shelters will be able to start reaching out to more dogs in need, perhaps from overseas. Conclusion I would give the Upper Southeast a D, with the Deep South getting a C-. I would love to give the deep South a higher grade to recognize the rapid progress that is being made, but the majority of shelters there have not joined the bandwagon – yet.

Keweenaw, Houghton, and Baraga counties are located in a mostly rural area in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Together, they form a region known as Copper Country, named for the copper mines it used to have. The Copper Country Humane Society (CCHS) is a private non-profit that provides animal sheltering services for non-feral dogs and cats for the three counties and for the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community. The shelter describes its program as follows: “Our successful adoption program matches homeless animals with responsible people seeking pets.  The nominal adoption fee helps defray some of the costs of the initial vaccination, deworming and spaying/neutering of adopted dogs and cats.  CCHS helps over 900 animals annually and ninety percent of our dogs and cats are adopted or claimed every year.  There is NO time limit on our animals looking for homes, CCHS cares for them for as long as they need us.  CCHS cares for about 80 animals each day at our shelter.” In 2010, the shelter reported to the Michigan Department of Agriculture that it had a 93% live release rate for its intake of almost 900 animals (scroll down to Copper Country in the link). The shelter relied mostly on adoptions and returning pets to their owners, with very few transfers. In 2011, with an intake of 939 animals, the shelter reported a substantially higher live release rate — a near-perfect 99%. In 2012 the CCHS report was not included in the state reports. In 2013, the shelter had an intake of 769 cats and dogs. The live release rate was 99%. All animals who were placed by adoption were sterilized. CCHS did not euthanize any dogs, and euthanized 9 cats. CCHS won the Michigan Pet Fund alliance 2014 award in the “small shelter” category for “outstanding open admission shelter with the best save rate.” The award was based on CCHS’s performance in 2013. Copper Country, MI, was originally listed by this blog on May 5, 2013. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.