OUT THE FRONT DOOR

Erie County, on the western edge of New York state and bordering Lake Erie, has 919,000 residents. Buffalo, the county seat, has 261,000 people. Maddie’s Fund started a project in 2009 to increase live outcomes for shelter animals in the county, and the project is slated to run through September 30, 2014. The project has enlisted a coalition of six agencies. The lead agency for the coalition is the “SPCA Serving Erie County” (SPCASEC), a private, independent organization,  which takes in strays impounded by county animal control agencies and accepts owner surrenders. The shelter has a waiting list for cat surrenders. The other members of the coalition are the City of Buffalo Animal Shelter and four private rescues: HEART; Second Chance Sheltering Network; Black Dog (Second Chance); and Ten Lives Club. Maddie’s Fund reported that the coalition achieved a live release rate of 82% for year 3 of the project, the fiscal year ending on September 30, 2012. SPCASEC has posted calendar year statistics on its website for itself and for the county for 2012. The SPCASEC live release rate for calendar year 2012 was 82%, and the county coalition live release rate was 85%. These figures do not include owner-requested euthanasia or animals who died or were lost in shelter care. Total intake for the county for 2012 was 15,261 animals. Erie County is counted in the Running Totals as an 80%+ community.

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%. LHS has been struggling 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 They attribute this in large part to their badly outdated shelter building, which has made it difficult to control infectious diseases.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 drops to 83%. There is hope on the horizon, though, because LHS has almost completed its fundraising for a new building, which they expect will be completed this fall. In 2013 LHS transferred only 15 animals, a relatively small number. This is a good sign because it means the shelter is finding permanent homes for animals rather than transporting them to other states or to rescues. LHS is thus freeing up capacity for transporters and rescues by taking care of its animals within the community. 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!

Powhatan County, Virginia, has about 28,000 residents and is part of the Richmond metropolitan area. Animal control and sheltering are handled by the county through a municipal office, Powhatan Animal Control, that has four employees and a small shelter. The shelter takes in strays and owner surrenders. The web site for the shelter does not mention any restrictions on owner surrenders. The animal control officers do not impound cats except for owner surrenders and injured stray cats — cats are considered free roaming. In 2010, the county shelter took in 594 animals and had a live release rate of 83%. The live release rate rose to 96% in 2011, and remained at 96% in 2012 and 2013. Intake has been steadily falling, going from 595 animals in 2010 to 505 animals in 2011, to 437 in 2012 and 413 in 2013. The Virginia state database from which these statistics are taken does not break out owner-requested euthanasias. If the category of “died in facility” is added to euthanasias, the shelter had a 95% live release rate in both 2012 and 2013. The shelter’s high live release rate is due in part to its participation in adoption events with Metro Richmond Pet Savers. It also transfers many of its animals to rescues, including FLAG and BARK. The shelter typically transfers over 200 animals per year to rescues. Powhatan County, Virginia, was originally listed by this blog on May 2, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Washoe County in Nevada (population 421,000), includes the cities of Reno (population 225,000) and Sparks (90,000). The three jurisdictions have a public-private partnership for animal control and sheltering. The municipal Washoe County Regional Animal Services (WCRAS) handles animal control for all three jurisdictions. WCRAS is known for its very successful return-to-owner program, which re-homes a high percentage of animals in the field and actively seeks to find the owners of impounded animals. The great majority of animals not returned to their owners are transferred to the private, non-profit Nevada Humane Society (NHS) for placement. NHS also handles intake of owner surrenders from Washoe County residents. The shelter requires an appointment and a small fee. NHS has posted the partnership’s summary statistics for 2012 on its website (scroll down the page in the previous link to “Statistics” in the left sidebar), consisting of intake and euthanasia figures. The coalition euthanized 8% of intake in 2012 according to these figures. WCRAS and NHS have provided separate full statistical reports for 2011, allowing a calculation of their live release rates separately for that year. WCRAS had a 94% live release rate (click on “Maddie’s Fund Report 2011″ for the full statistics), counting transferred animals as live releases. NHS also reported a 94% live release rate for 2011, based on transfers and owner surrenders. If owner requested euthanasia and died/lost in shelter care are included in euthanasias, each organization had a 92% live release rate in 2011. I was not able to find a full statistical report online combining WCRAS and NHS numbers for 2011, but we can approximate a kill rate by adding the number of animals surrendered to NHS by owners to the number impounded by WCRAS, and comparing that to the total animals euthanized by both agencies. This yields an approximate 8% kill rate for the community as a whole in 2011. (The kill rate for 2011 by this method is 10% if the categories of owner requested euthanasia and died/lost in shelter care are counted in with euthanasias.) A Best Friends blog from July 2011 provides a look at how the NHS director, Bonney Brown, transformed the shelter after she took over in 2007. The blog describes how Brown has succeeded in reducing intake through pet retention programs and has increased adoptions through creative marketing.

Seagoville is a suburb of Dallas, Texas, and has about 15,000 inhabitants. The Seagoville Animal Shelter, a municipal shelter, handles animal control and sheltering for the city. The shelter published its statistics for 2011 online, reporting a 97% live release rate. The shelter’s intake for 2011 was 568 cats and dogs. Most of the animals — 327 — left the shelter through adoption. The shelter transferred 192 cats and dogs to rescues and returned 47 to their owners. Twelve dogs and 3 cats were euthanized, and those euthanasias were for reportedly for illness, injury, or aggression. The shelter director e-mailed me the statistics for 2012, and they show a 98% live release rate with an intake of 798 dogs and cats. There were 537 adoptions, 76 returned to owner, 124 sent to rescue, and TNR for 19 feral cats. There were no owner-requested euthanasias reported. The number of animals who died or were lost in shelter care was 12, and with that number included as part of euthanasias, the live release rate was 97%. This video describes how Seagoville was able to achieve its high live release rate. In addition to taking in strays, the Seagoville shelter counsels owners to try to prevent surrender. The shelter accepts owner surrenders only if there is no alternative placement available. Seagoville, TX, is counting in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

Fort Morgan is a city of 11,000 people located in the northeastern part of Colorado. It is the county seat of Morgan County, which has a population of 28,000. The area is mostly devoted to farming. The city has an animal control service, but animals are impounded by a private agency, the Fort Morgan Humane Society (FMHS). I spoke to the shelter’s operations manager, Tina Gutierrez, who told me that the shelter has contracts with Fort Morgan, Morgan County, Log Lane and Wiggins for stray intake. She said that the county has a deputy assigned to animal control. The shelter accepts owner surrenders subject to a waiting list. Gutierrez told me that she is generally able to counsel owners to be able to keep their pets or, if that is not possible, to find a rescue placement for them. Gutierrez told me that transfers from FMHS go to approved rescues. One rescue she mentioned that has been of assistance to the shelter is Furever Friends, which does adoptions and has a lost and found service. FMHS has a trap-neuter-return program for feral cats. They are neutered and given vaccinations and a full examination. The shelter does not offer owner-requested euthanasia. The state of Colorado collects statistics on animal shelters. According to those statistics, FMHS took in 1302 animals in 2012, which is an intake of 47 animals per 1000 people in the county. The live release rate for 2012 was 92%. If the number of animals who died or were lost in shelter care is counted in with euthanasias, the live release rate was 90%. Gutierrez told me that she had instituted new medical protocols since she took over earlier this year, and she expects the 2013 statistics to be even better. The city of Brush (population 5000), is located in Morgan County, and it has its own shelter and an animal control unit run by the police department. The Brush shelter does not accept owner surrenders. FMHS takes in many animals from Brush who are not reclaimed within the 5-day hold period. Brush is not listed as a 90% community, however, because the Brush Animal Shelter reported killing 56 of the 111 cats they took in during 2012.

[For today’s News Bit and the Running Totals, click here.] Culpeper County is a community of about 47,000 people located in north central Virginia not far from Washington, DC. Its county seat is the town of Culpeper. Culpeper County Animal Services and the Culpeper County Animal Shelter provide animal control and sheltering for the city and county of Culpeper. The shelter’s petfinder listing states that it takes in owner surrenders and does not mention any conditions. I was told in a phonecall to Animal Services that the organizations report combined statistics to the state of Virginia. The shelter transfers a high percentage of its cats to Culpeper Felines and Friends, a local non-profit which also reports to the state. The combined statistics for the three organizations showed an 80% live release rate for 2014. Another local organization, the Humane Society of Culpeper, has a trap-neuter-return (TNR) program that has provided TNR services to the county for over five years. The Culpeper Animal Shelter refers feral cats to this TNR program. Culpeper County, VA, is counted in the Running Totals as an 80%+ community.

[NOTE: The Worth Watching category lists communities whose animal shelter systems are doing substantially better than average, but have not reported a sustained (for one year or more) 90%+ live release rate. These communities are not counted in the running total in the blog’s subtitle. For more about the Worth Watching category, see the Worth Watching page link in the blog’s header.] The city of Portland, Oregon, has a population of 584,000 people. It is the county seat of Multnomah County, which has 735,000 people. The Portland metro area (which includes part of the state of Washington) has almost 2.3 million people. The Animal Shelter Alliance of Portland (ASAP) is a coalition of six organizations, some of which are municipal and some private, that provide animal sheltering in the Portland metro area. The municipal members of the coalition (shelters that are responsible for stray intake) are Multnomah County Animal Services (MCAS) (serving the city of Portland and Multnomah County), the Bonnie L. Hays Shelter (BLH) (serving Washington County), and Clackamas County Dog Services. The private members of the coalition are the Oregon Humane Society, the Humane Society for Southwest Washington (HSSW) (which works with Clark County Animal Control), and the Cat Adoption Team. Together these six organizations serve four counties — Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, and Clark — containing about 2 million people. ASAP estimates that its six members care for 90% of the animals needing sheltering in the four counties. The ASAP coalition increased the live release rate for the metro area from 62% in 2006 to 79% in 2011. Maddie’s Fund has reported that the coalition had an 85% live release rate for 2012, with a combined intake of almost 32,000 animals. If the coalition were to achieve the same percentage improvement in 2013 that it had in 2012, they would finish the year at a 90% or better live release rate. Coalitions such as ASAP are becoming a trend, as more and more municipal shelters seek out and work closely with private partners. In such situations it makes no sense to look at the individual shelters in isolation, and you have to look at the community coalition as a whole to get an accurate idea of what is going on. For example, the Clackamas County municipal shelter does not pick up stray cats and does not accept owner surrendered cats, but it offers cats for adoption that have been taken in by other area organizations. Conversely, the Cat Adoption Team takes in cats but not dogs. MCAS and BLH accept owner surrenders only when they have room, but owner surrenders are accepted by HSSW, and by OHS unless they are aggressive or medically unfit for adoption. People ask me from time to time why I list communities rather than individual shelters, and coalitions such as ASAP are the reason why. Even in cases where there is no formal coalition, you cannot evaluate a municipal shelter without knowing what else is going on in the community. In particular, people often want to criticize a municipal shelter for having a waiting list for owner surrenders or otherwise limiting surrenders, but if there are non-profits in the area who take in owner surrenders, then such criticisms are missing an important part of the picture.

2014 is shaping up to be a big year for the blog. In addition to continuing to feature 90%+ and Worth Watching communities, I’m working on a couple of special projects. The first project is a big numbers crunch on the communities listed in the right sidebar. There is no universally recognized way for shelters to report their statistics, and that means that statistics vary widely in consistency and completeness. Even so, I have quite a bit of data now on public shelters that are saving 90% or more of their intake, and it’s a good sample size to start asking some questions about what makes these shelters so successful. For example, what type of management structure is most common in successful public shelters?  What public shelters are most successful at return-to-owner, and how do they do it? Is human population a limiting factor for adoptions in a typical community? Do communities with managed intake policies have higher stray intake? What is the rate of growth of the number of 90%+ communities? I hope to be able to present some data on these issues and more as the year goes on. The second new project for 2014 is a book I’m working on with a couple of well-known No Kill advocates. The book will have shelter stories and much more! We’re very excited about this project and hope to have the book available by the end of the year. A couple of housekeeping notes: I’ve added a “Running Total” page to keep up with the number of individual shelters in the 90%+ communities, the population served, and the number of Worth Watching public shelters. As for 2014 updates, I will be doing revisions of each existing blog post instead of supplemental posts. Things change rapidly in the shelter world, and doing a revised post will allow me to fix broken links and update general information as well as statistics. The result of an update will be that the old post disappears. The new post will list the date of the original post at the end. I’d like to thank everyone who helped me with the blog in 2013. Your tips, e-mails, and comments were appreciated, so please keep them coming.

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.

Brown County, Indiana, has a population of about 15,000 people. The Brown County Humane Society (BCHS), located in Nashville, Indiana, is a private shelter that contracts with Brown County to take in strays. The shelter states on its website that it “accepts any and all of Brown County’s homeless dogs and cats.” Their euthanasia policy is stated as follows: “Currently only those dogs whose behavior is dangerous and beyond our resources to rehabilitate and pets which are so sick or injured that we cannot afford to treat are euthanized.” The shelter has a high intake, although it has been trending down substantially in recent years. In 2011, for example, the shelter reported that it took in 1096 dogs and cats. That translates to an intake of 73 animals per 1,000 people. (There are various estimates of average annual shelter intake in the United States, ranging from 15 to 30 per 1000 population). In 2013, the intake was 727 cats and dogs, which is 48 per 1000 people. This report, from the 2011 Best Friends No More Homeless Pets conference, details how BCHS has worked to lower intake through their spay-neuter programs. BCHS’s live release rates for the last three years were 97% in 2011, 99% in 2012, and 98% in 2013. The 2011 figure includes animals who died in shelter care with the euthanasia total. The shelter reported deaths and euthanasias separately in 2012 and 2013. In 2012 the live release rate was 97% with deaths included, and in 2013 it was 95% with deaths included. The shelter adopted out 839 dogs and cats in 2011, 757 in 2012, and 511 in 2013. I spoke with Jane Weatherford, a member of the shelter’s board of directors, in 2012 and asked how the shelter managed to adopt out so many animals in a community of only 15,000 people. She said that shelter volunteers supplement local adoptions by taking dogs and cats to off-site adoption venues. They placed 233 animals that way in 2011. BCHS, like most successful shelters, uses social media. Its Facebook page features interesting photographs and appealing descriptions of pets up for adoption as well those who have been recently adopted. Brown County, Indiana, 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.

[NOTE: The Worth Watching category lists communities whose animal shelter systems are doing substantially better than average, but have not reported a sustained (for one year or more) 90%+ live release rate. These communities are not counted in the running total in the blog’s subtitle. For more about the Worth Watching category, see the Worth Watching page link in the blog’s header.] Spokane County is located on the western border of the state of Washington. It has a population of 471,000 people, including the 209,000 people who live in the city of Spokane, which is the county seat. The Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service (SCRAPS) provides animal control and sheltering services for the county. It is expanding its jurisdiction as of January 2014, when it will start serving the city of Spokane as well as Millwood, Liberty Lake, and Cheney. SCRAPS accepts owner surrenders from its jurisdictions with no stated restrictions except a small fee. SCRAPS posts its statistics for the last several years on its website. For 2012, it reported a live release rate of 82% with an intake of 5086 animals. This was an improvement over the 78% reported in 2011. SCRAPS serves a large population and has a live release rate that is much better than average and is improving. It’s difficult to evaluate how well the shelter is really doing, though, because the shelter transfers a lot of animals to other organizations both inside and outside of its community coalition. The most recent community-wide statistics provided show a 74% live release rate for the coalition for 2010. There is further uncertainty due to the addition of the city of Spokane to the shelter’s jurisdiction in 2014.