OUT THE FRONT DOOR

The city of Rockwall is the county seat of Rockwall County, which is part of the Dallas metro area. The city has about 37,000 residents. In 2011, a non-profit volunteer organization called Rockwall Pets was formed for the purpose of increasing the live release rate of the city shelter, which was at about 60%. Rockwall Pets brought the live release rate of the shelter up to well over 90%, but the city employees who managed the shelter were not completely on board with the effort. The Rockwall city council voted in August 2012 to contract out the operation of the city shelter to the Collin County Humane Society (CCHS), a non-profit organization, and retain only animal control duties. The contract price was 15% less than the amount the city had paid to run the shelter previously. CCHS accepts owner surrenders from Rockwall and the city of Heath. Rockwall Pets has posted statistics for the Rockwall shelter from 2008 through 2013. The live release rate for 2012 was 97%, with a total intake of 2086 animals. The shelter had a 70% adoption rate and 18% return-to-owner rate. In 2013, the first full year of operation under CCHS, the shelter reported a 96% live release rate. Total intake was 2189, with 14% of animals returned to their owners and 68% adopted. I am listing this community as 90% Reported because I was not able to locate or obtain a full listing of statistics online as required for the right sidebar. Rockwall Pets has moved on to other initiatives in their area. Michael Kitkoski, one of the founders of Rockwall Pets, told me that they are now focusing on the cities of Royse, Rowlett, and Dallas. Rockwall, TX, is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

Kansas City, Missouri, is a city of 464,000 people. It is located on the western border of Missouri, with the state border bisecting it from the smaller city of Kansas City, Kansas. For a variety of reasons, the kill rate at the Kansas City, Missouri, animal shelter went from 66% in 2006 down to 32% in 2011. At that point, with one in three shelter animals still dying, the city decided not to renew the contract of the organization that had been running the shelter. A group of pet advocates then got together and formed a new non-profit called Kansas City Pet Project (KCPP). The president of the board of directors of the new organization was well-known blogger Brent Toellner, who writes the KC Dog Blog. The first agenda item of the new organization was to win the contract to run the city shelter. After a struggle over financing, the contract with KCPP was finally approved by the city council in November of 2011. KCPP is an “open access” shelter that accepts animals from animal control and from the public. KCPP formally began running the Kansas City shelter on January 1, 2012, with a goal to stop the killing of healthy and treatable pets. The shelter was open on New Year’s Day, putting its plan of expanded hours into practice. The shelter also debuted its “Free Ride Home” program for returning animals to their owners in the field. One week later, they had adopted out 165 pets. The shelter implemented several initiatives to increase adoptions, including an off-site adoption center and a collaborative adopt-a-thon in 2012 where 706 animals were adopted. It reached out to volunteers, and sought out rescue help. It started a transport program to send dogs to the North Shore Animal League. It successfully raised funds for play yards for dogs. It filled out its leadership team including Teresa Johnson and Shannon Wells in the top spots. In July of 2012, KCPP’s live release rate first hit 91%. They were able to maintain that high rate, and for the year from July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013 the live release rate was 91%. If owner-requested euthanasia and animals who died or were lost in shelter care are included in the euthanasia total, the modified live release rate was 88%. The total intake for the year from July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013 was 7084 animals (counting only dogs and cats) as compared to 6128 in calendar year 2011. This high intake put KCPP in a very small group of shelters of that size that have achieved a 90%+ live release rate. For calendar year 2013 KCPP’s intake was 8179 cats and dogs, as compared to 6846 in calendar year 2012. Despite the significantly higher intake, KCPP increased their live release rate to 92%. The modified live release rate (counting owner-requested euthanasia and animals who died or were lost in shelter care in with euthanasias) was 88%. In a blog post on January 12, 2014, Toellner reviewed the year. Highlights of 2013 were the shelter’s offsite adoption venue which had more than 1600 adoptions, a visit from Aimee Sadler to establish a Playing for Life program at the shelter, and a mega-adoption event in October where they adopted out 228 pets in three days. For an in-depth look at what has made KCPP so successful in such a short time, check out this brochure. It was prepared for the 2013 Best Friends No More Homeless Pets conference, where Toellner was one of the featured speakers. Kansas City, Missouri, was originally listed by this blog on August 9, 2013, based on its July 2012 to June 2013 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 calendar year statistics.

Charlottesville is an independent city within Albemarle County in Virginia, located near the Shenandoah National Park. The combined population of the city and county is about 118,000 people, not counting non-resident students who attend the University of Virginia. The Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA (CASPCA) is a private non-profit that contracts with the city and the county for animal sheltering services. The shelter takes in strays and owner surrenders. It has a pet retention program to reduce the number of owner surrenders, and requires an appointment and a fee to surrender a pet. The shelter does not guarantee acceptance of an owner surrender if the animal has a major medical or behavior issue. CASPCA posts its statistics on its website. It had a 90% live release rate in 2006 and has had a 90% or better live release rate each year since 2009. In 2011, the shelter’s live release rate was 93%. The live release rate for 2012 was 94%, with an intake of 3569 dogs and cats. If we include the categories of owner requested euthanasia (ORE) and died or lost in shelter care in with euthanasias, the shelter’s 2012 live release rate was 92%. This is the same as 2011, when the calculation including ORE and died/lost was 92%. For 2013 the shelter reported an intake of 3679 cats and dogs. This is an intake of approximately 31 per 1000 people. The live release rate was 96%. The shelter did not report any owner-requested euthanasias. If animals who died or were lost in shelter care are included with euthanasias, the live release rate was 94%. The director who first took CASPCA to a 90% or better live release rate, Susanne Kogut, resigned in June of 2012. Leslie Hervey was selected as the new executive director in the summer of 2013. Hervey was formerly the executive director of the Martinsville-Henry County SPCA in Virginia. Albemarle County, Virginia, was originally listed by this blog on April 15, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

The great majority of the communities listed in the right sidebar of this blog have attained their high live release rates by placing animals within their own communities. There are some places, though, that rely heavily on sending animals out of the state to save them. For those of you who are not familiar with transports, they generally involve sending animals from shelters in the south to rescues and shelters in the north. Colorado is a major receiving state for transports, and it takes in thousands of animals per year from other states. Transports are not easy – the trips often take 2 days (meaning that overnight accommodations must be found), a health certificate is usually required, and money must come from somewhere for gasoline, crates, etc. Transports used to be done by volunteers driving individual “legs” of 1-2 hours, which involved a lot of work in recruiting and coordinating the volunteers, but now they are often done with a large van and one driver who does the whole route. There are also private companies who will transport shelter animals for a fee. There is even a group called Pilots N Paws that uses volunteer pilots to fly animals. In most cases, the animals who are transported are on the kill list of their sending shelter, so there is no doubt that transports are literally lifesaving for the great majority of the transported animals. Many people nevertheless object to transports because they fear that transported animals will take homes away from animals in the receiving communities and result in those animals being killed. What does the evidence say on this issue? Fortunately, the state of Colorado collects detailed statistics for its animal care facilities, and since Colorado is also a state that receives many transferred animals, these statistics can tell us a lot about whether transferred animals take homes from animals in the receiving location. The Colorado reporting system has a “shelter” category that includes all shelters that receive impounded animals as well as some private organizations that have a centralized intake facility. (Rescues that do not have a centralized facility report in a separate category.) Thus, we have statistics available for public shelters in Colorado. If transports are resulting in local animals being euthanized, we should be able to see the effect in the numbers. In 2012, impounding shelters in Colorado transported in 13,726 animals —  12,642 dogs and 1084 cats. (There were probably many thousands more who were transported in by non-impounding rescues, but those transports are not germane to our inquiry since rescues generally will not euthanize for time or space). As I discussed in an earlier post, Colorado had an overall 90% live release rate for dogs for 2012. With a live release rate that high, it is unlikely that very many, if any, local dogs were killed who could have been adopted but for the transports. We know from the experience of many shelters all over the United States that the difficulty in placing the last 10% of dogs is more a matter of finding resources than finding homes — the last 10% are generally animals who need medical care or training, or perhaps hospice or sanctuary. In fact, the statistics definitively prove that, as least as far as impounding shelters are concerned, the transports of dogs into Colorado saved lives in 2012. As mentioned above, 12,642 dogs were received by impounding shelters. There were 8801 euthanasias of dogs in the entire state for 2012 by those shelters. Thus, even if we assume for the sake of argument that every single transported dog took away a home from a local dog, there were still 3841 net lives saved by the end of the year. I think it’s safe to conclude, based on these numbers, that transports of dogs into Colorado took sales away from breeders rather than taking away homes from local shelter dogs. But what about cats? There were only 1084 cats transported into Colorado in 2012. Colorado is doing far better than most states with cats, in that it had a live release rate for cats of 79% in 2012. I think we would need to know more about the cats being transported into Colorado to make a judgment. If the cats are mostly purebred, it may be that they are taking sales away from breeders rather than homes from local cats. Still, the evidence in favor of the effectiveness of transports for cats is much less than for dogs. Can we generalize from the experience in Colorado to make conclusions about transports nationwide? I think we can, because there does not appear to be anything that sets Colorado apart from the other transportation destination states that would make such a generalization invalid. There are a great many communities in the northeast that are at a 90% or more live release rate for dogs, and the northeast probably receives more transports than any other part of the country. So the same statistics that apply in Colorado probably apply to most destination communities. I think this study shows statistical support for the conclusion that there is a shortage of adoptable dogs in certain areas of the country. I think the study also shows that transporters in general are being careful not to take homes away from adoptable animals. This is shown by the fact that in 2012, transporters brought only a few cats into Colorado, and did not bring in enough dogs to push the live release rate below 90%.

Arlington, Texas is a city of 365,000 people that lies between Dallas and Fort Worth. The entire metro area has about 6.5 million people. The city does animal control and has a municipal shelter called the Animal Services Center (ASC). I called the ASC to ask about their owner surrender policy and was told that they have no conditions for surrenders other than city residency. The Friends of Arlington Animal Services (FAAS) is a non-profit that is dedicated to helping raise the ASC’s live release rate. They recently reported on ASC statistics for 2014, and the shelter had an 81% live release rate with an intake of 8579 cats and dogs. This live release rate is up from 67% in 2013. One big factor in the improvement has been the city’s new TNR program. On August 20, 2013, the city council adopted a resolution that provides for organizations in the city to work with ASC on a TNR program for community cats. The TNR number in the ASC statistics was zero up to August of 2013, but from there until the end of the year 457 cats were TNR’d. In 2014, 1055 cats received TNR. In 2013 the ASC live release rate for cats was only 52%. In 2014, the live release rate for cats increased more than 20 points for the year. Arlington, TX, is counted in the Running Totals an an 80%+community.

The city of Alameda (not to be confused with Alameda County) has 74,000 residents and is located on Alameda Island and Bay Farm Island in San Francisco Bay. Estimated median household income for Alameda is $67,000, which is somewhat above the California median household income of $57,000. In January 2012, the city of Alameda contracted with a private non-profit called the Friends of the Alameda Animal Shelter (FAAS) to manage the city shelter. The city retained management of animal control. The city was able to cut its budget costs for animal sheltering by more than two-thirds in its deal with FAAS. FAAS described its owner surrender policy in a November 2013 newsletter, noting that “we are an ‘open-door’ facility . . . . This means we accept all Alameda’s abandoned pets regardless of age, temperament, health, breed or any other factor. . . . Kennel space is always at a premium (especially in the summer), but we don’t turn away Alameda animals . . . .” The shelter charges a small fee for owner surrenders. Two FAAS officials reported In a recent newspaper article that about 70% of the animals the shelter takes in can be put up for adoption as soon as the holding period is over. Another 20% of animals require medical or behavior rehabilitation before being put up for adoption. About 4% go to rescues who can provide sanctuary or other specialized care. The remaining 6% are euthanized for behavior or medical reasons. The 6% includes dogs that FAAS considers too dangerous to be rehabilitated, which are about 2% of total intake. In 2012 FAAS intake was 820 dogs and cats, which is 11 pets per 1000 population. The live release rate for 2012 was 94%. If owner-requested euthanasia and animals who died or were lost in shelter care are included with euthanasias, the live release rate for 2012 was 91%. In 2013, the shelter’s intake increased to 901 dogs and cats, but the live release rate remained 94%, or 91% if owner-requested euthanasia and animals who died or were lost in shelter care are included with euthanasias. In 2010, before the FAAS takeover, the city shelter had a 79% live release rate with an intake of 753 dogs and cats (scroll down in the link to City of Alameda Animal Shelter). One improvement with FAAS has been in adoptions, which rose from 313 in 2010 to 437 in 2012 and 460 in 2013. The shelter has also increased its reliance on its rescue partners, with 192 transfers in 2013 compared to 32 in 2012. In a 2013 Annual Report FAAS describes plans for a new shelter in the future and mentions its new programs, including a food pantry, an expanded rescue group network, a fund for medical care, more volunteer opportunities, and kennel enrichment. Alameda, California, was originally listed by this blog on December 15, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

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

Kitsap County is in the state of Washington, right across Puget Sound from Seattle. It’s a large county, with a population of over 250,000 people. The county contains four cities — Bremerton (population of about 40,000), Bainbridge Island (23,000), Port Orchard (11,000), and Poulsbo (9000). Animal control and sheltering services are provided for Kitsap County by the Kitsap Humane Society (KHS), a non-governmental charitable organization. The shelter has an animal control unit which handles stray intake, cruelty investigations, and responding to emergencies and disasters. The shelter takes in owner surrenders with a fee, which is reduced for low-income people, and it requires an appointment. The shelter issues annual reports that include its statistics. In 2010, it reported an intake of 4285 animals and a live release rate of 94%. In 2011, reported intake was 4993 with a live release rate of 95%. The 2012 annual report states that intake was 4703 animals and the live release rate was 94%. The 2012 report also notes that the shelter increased its low-cost spay-neuter surgeries by 67% over 2011. Kitsap County, WA, is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

There was an interesting conversation a few days ago on the YesBiscuit! blog about whether the 90% live release rate standard for shelters isn’t enough and shelters should be saving a higher percentage. The conversation got me wondering whether the statistics for the 90%+ shelters listed by this blog could shed some light on the question. With almost 200 communities listed at this point, we have a pretty good sample size to work with. Quite a few communities have live release rates in the 95% to 100% range. So one question is whether there are characteristics of communities that affect how difficult it is to go beyond 90% to 95% or higher. The first thing I checked was whether climate has any effect on the number of shelters at 90%-94% versus 95%-100%.  Over the years that I’ve been researching shelters I’ve gotten an impression that shelters in colder climates, on average, have higher live release rates than shelters in warmer climates. Even so, I was surprised at how great the discrepancy was when I ran the numbers. I found a chart that ranks each U.S. state by average temperature, then counted how many communities in the blog’s right sidebar are located in the warmest 25 states versus the coldest 25 states. Out of the 184 communities currently listed, fully 131 (71%) were in the 25 colder states, while only 53 (29%) were in the 25 warmer states. The 20 coldest states had a breakdown of 30 shelters that were at 95% to 100% versus 9 that were at 90% to 94%, whereas the 20 warmest states had 12 shelters at 95% to 100% versus 9 shelters at 90% to 94%. I don’t think these numbers are being distorted by any differential in north-south population distribution: check out this map, which shows a rather even population distribution between north and south. So, if you are running a shelter in a warmer state, you have your work cut out for you. Another impression I had was that there were fewer large jurisdictions with 95% to 100% live release rates. We have to be careful in evaluating large versus small jurisdictions, though, because most jurisdictions are small (median size of 25,000 people). So, I looked at live release rates for communities under 25,000 in population versus communities over 25,000. I found a huge discrepancy in live release rates based on community size. The shelters listed by this blog that serve a population of under 25,000 people overwhelmingly have live release rates of 95% to 100% (21 to 2). Shelters in communities of over 25,000 people, by contrast, were almost evenly divided, with 23 having live release rates in the 90% to 94% range and 22 having rates of 95% to 100%. Overall, we have a striking pattern where smaller jurisdictions are more successful in getting to 95% and above.  (Interestingly, a previous statistical study I did showed minimal effect of population size on the ability of a shelter to get to the 90% threshold; thus, the effect of population size seems to pertain only to live release rates of 95% to 100%.) One of the issues brought up in the YesBiscuit! discussion was whether it’s helpful for advocates to criticize shelters that have live release rates in the 90-95% range, or whether such criticism is setting the bar too high and actually hurting the shelter reform movement. Austin was brought up as an example of a community that has taken severe criticism from advocates for killing some animals that advocates believed were savable. Austin is in the deep south, and it is the largest city in the U.S. that has achieved a 90% or more save rate.  Austin’s live release rate was 91% in 2011. I’ve not been able to find full 2012 calendar year statistics for the Austin Animal Center, but Austin Pets Alive! reported that the city had close to a 95% live release rate in fiscal year 2011-2012. Given that Austin is a big city in the deep South, the city’s attainment of a live release rate of close to 95% seems to me like a pretty awesome accomplishment. In fact, it’s unprecedented. I can’t see how criticizing Austin does the movement any good. Going beyond the head-to-head comparisons of shelter live release rates, there are several strategic considerations that are illuminated by the 184 successful communities identified thus far. One of those considerations is that the the U.S. population living in identified 90%+ communities is about 6.8 million, which is only a little more than 2% of the total U.S. population. We can probably safely double that number due to the fact that not all of the 90%+ communities have been identified, but that still leaves about 96% of the U.S. population served by shelters saving less than 90%. In these circumstances, if advocates claim that a standard that only about 4% of the population has attained isn’t good enough, it might discourage more communities than it encourages. Another consideration is that raising the bar to 95%+ could serve as an incentive for shelters to report their data in ways selected to maximize their live release rates. As of now, there is no standardized reporting system for U.S. shelters. Shelters are free to choose how they report animals in foster care, cats who have received TNR, neonatal dogs and cats, etc. A shelter that wants to make its live release rate look as good as possible can do so without being dishonest or fraudulent, simply because of the lack of any set reporting standards. One concern I have is that if unrealistic standards are set for shelter performance, shelters may start to change their reporting standards to present a rosier scenario, simply out of fear that they will be dragged through the mud by local advocates if they don’t. One final strategic consideration is that shelters that have highly effective pet retention programs will show somewhat lower live release rates than shelters that do not have such programs. This is because the animals that are retained by their owners (and thus not counted at all in shelter statistics) are ones that likely would not have been euthanized by the shelter and would have been live releases. Thus, the shelter is left with a population of animals that on average will need more rehabilitation and be harder to adopt, thereby having a higher euthanasia rate. If we insist on live release rates of 95% or more, it may have the unintended consequence of discouraging pet retention programs. I draw two conclusions from the factors outlined above. First, there are several strategic reasons having to do with performance incentives to stick with the 90% standard rather than moving to a 95% to 100% standard. Second, it’s unfair to judge all shelters by the same standard. The fact that rural shelters in the upper peninsula of Michigan can frequently put up numbers in the 95-100% range does not mean that city shelters in the warmer parts of the country can also do so, at least under the current state of things. Sticking with the 90% standard for now wouldn’t mean forever — once it becomes routine and expected for shelters to achieve 90%, then expectations could be increased. By that time we will have a much better professional infrastructure to help shelters, and communities will have been able to build large coalitions that will help them save the last 10%.

Pflugerville is a rapidly growing city in the Austin metro area. Its current population is 52,000, up from 16,000 in the year 2000. It is located north of Austin on the border of Travis and Williamson counties. The city has its own animal control division and municipal animal shelter that are collectively known as Pflugerville Animal Control (PAC). Animals are spayed or neutered before adoption (subject to exceptions for the welfare of the animal) and microchipped. I spoke with the director of the shelter, Rhonda McLendon, and she told me that the shelter accepts any owner surrender from the city with no appointment required, no fee, and no waiting list. McLendon mentioned two private organizations that have been especially helpful to the shelter, Pflugerville’s Pfurry Pfriends (PPP) and Pflugerville Pets Alive! (PPA!). Plugerville city ordinances prohibit feral cats being returned to colonies, so PPP partners with PAC to place ferals as barn cats. The cats are spayed or neutered and vaccinated. PPP donated outdoor runs for an exercise area at the shelter, and also supplies funds for heartworm treatments and complex surgeries. PPA! promotes the shelter’s pets, and has a popular Facebook page. Early in 2013, The shelter renovated a building next to its facility to increase the number of cats who can be accommodated and to house an intake center and medical facility. The PPP website has photos of the shelter’s new Cat Adoption Center, which has cat condos. The city also purchased a vehicle to use for large adoption events and emergency management. In March of 2013, the shelter’s director issued a press release noting that the shelter had a 97% live release rate in 2012. I contacted the shelter for the full statistics, and by the method I use for this blog the live release rate for 2012 was 98%. McLendon reported that PAC had a 47% reclaim rate in 2012 due in part to officers’ success at returning stray animals to their homes in the field, without bringing them to the shelter. McLendon told me that the 47% reclaim rate includes cats. When I asked how they managed to return so many cats, McLendon told me that officers will go door-to-door to try to find an animal’s home. Animals returned in the field are not counted as intake, so PAC actually served many more animals than the 982 who were impounded in 2012. Pflugerville, TX, is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

Longmont, Colorado, is a city of 86,000 people located north of Denver in Boulder and Weld counties. The Longmont Humane Society (LHS) serves as the municipal shelter for strays who are taken in by Longmont Animal Control or found within the city limits of several nearby towns, including Frederick (population 9000). LHS split off from the Humane Society of Boulder Valley (HSBV) several years ago. According to a representative of HSBV, Boulder County Animal Control takes strays to Longmont that are picked up in the unincorporated area of the county near Longmont, whereas the rest of the strays in the county go to HSBV. According to the representative, Longmont and HSBV both receive strays from the nearby town of Erie (population 6000). LHS accepts owner surrenders from its service area during business hours, with no restrictions other than a small fee. It also accepts owner surrenders from outside its service area, including out of state, if space is available. LHS reported live release rates of 82% in 2010 and 89% in 2011 (calculated by comparing euthanasias to total intake). In December of 2011 the shelter announced the appointment of Liz Smokowski as executive director. Ms. Smokowski has a master’s degree in business administration. In the shelter’s latest annual report, it stated that in 2012, Smokowski’s first full year as director, the shelter increased its live release rate to 94% and decreased its cost per animal by 10%, with an intake of 3901 animals. The report states that over 850 active volunteers supplied 60,895 hours of service in 2012. LHS also submitted a report on 2012 statistics to the state of Colorado, and this report shows a 94% live release rate as well.

Rio Blanco County is located in the northwestern part of Colorado on the Utah border. The 2010 census counted 6700 county residents, including the towns of Rangely (population 2400) and Meeker (2500). The County has two animals shelters, one serving Rangely and the other serving Meeker. Both shelters also accept animals picked up by the sheriff in unincorporated areas of the county. The Rangely Animal Shelter (RAS) is a municipal agency that handles animal control and sheltering for Rangely. Animals are vaccinated, neutered, and microchipped before being adopted. The RAS manager told me that they have a small, waivable fee for owner surrenders and will either take them in immediately or help the owner place the pet. They have a TNR program that has neutered about 200 cats, and they have adopted out 60-70 kittens born to feral mothers. The statistics submitted to the state by RAS for 2012 show a live release rate of 99%. The live release rate does not change if the one animal who died in shelter care in 2012 is included with euthanasias. The Meeker Animal Shelter (MAS) is also a municipal agency that provides animal control as well as sheltering. I spoke to the animal control officer, who told me that although MAS does not impound cats, she will respond to calls about sick or injured cats and take them to a local veterinarian. MAS accepts owner surrenders subject, at times, to a monitored waiting list. A rescue in Meeker called the Cat Coalition does TNR in the area. MAS took in 107 dogs in 2012 and had a 99% live release rate.