OUT THE FRONT DOOR

Rifle is a small town of about 9000 people in Garfield County, Colorado. The Rifle Animal Shelter, which is assisted by the non-profit Friends of the Rifle Animal Shelter, takes in several hundred animals per year. I spoke to a shelter representative who told me that the shelter has contracts with the cities of Rifle and Parachute to take in strays, and accepts owner surrenders with no restrictions except a small fee. The shelter and the Friends reported a combined 98% live release rate in 2010 and again in 2011 (scroll down in the linked documents). The shelter and Friends reported no owner-requested euthanasia in either year, and the live release rate was not significantly lower with animals who died or were lost in shelter care included in with euthanasias. The Rifle Animal Shelter also reports its statistics to the state of Colorado. In 2012, the shelter took in 769 animals and had a live release rate of 99%. For 2013, Rifle reported to the state of Colorado that it had an intake of 1200 animals. Of those, 926 were adopted out. The live release rate was 99.4%. If animals who died in shelter care are counted with euthanasias, the live release rate was 97%. Rifle is one of a group of communities in the area west of Denver that report to Maddie’s Fund and the Asilomar Accords as part of the Northwestern Colorado Coalition. Other members of the coalition are Summit, Garfield, Pitkin, and Eagle counties and the cities of Aspen and Glenwood Springs. The coalition reported an overall 97% live release rate in 2010 and 98% in 2011 (see pages 1-2 in the links). Rifle, CO, was originally listed by this blog on May 6, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

I’d like to say thanks to everyone who commented and sent me e-mails about the blog’s listing criteria going forward. The suggestions were really great and have helped me a lot in making a decision. I’ve decided to go with the idea of asking the non-transparent shelters to provide their statistics to me as an official statement which can be uploaded to the blog. The way I’m going to implement this is to move all communities that do not have their statistics publicly accessible to a separate, temporary page on the blog that I will call “Other 90%+.” Then I will send an e-mail, with a copy of the Basic Matrix attached, to the shelter directors for each of the “Other 90%+” communities and ask that the matrix (or a similar form) be filled out and returned to me within 30 days, along with a statement from the director that the form represents the shelter’s statistics for the year 2013 and that I have permission to post it or link to it on the blog. In the meantime I will reduce the running totals to reflect the smaller number of communities in the right sidebar. There will be quite a drop in the totals, but hopefully it will be only temporary. Communities that do not respond to the inquiry within 30 days will be moved to the Worth Watching page or dropped. In order to keep the requirements for listing uniform across the board, I’m going to require that shelters either list publicly, or send to me for posting, statistics that include at least intake, adoptions, returns-to-owner, transfers, and euthanasias. If I have any question whether transfers are to other 90%+ organizations I will check that with the shelters. If a shelter operates as part of a coalition and coalition statistics are provided, the statistics must be corrected for intra-coalition transfers. This will take some time to implement, so the blog will be a mess for the next few weeks. Thanks in advance for your patience. Even if we come out of this with a much smaller number of communities, I think it will be worth it because we will have much more uniform information about the communities that are listed. For whatever reasons, most shelter directors do not make statistics a priority. That will never change unless we start supporting the idea that transparency is important.

Downriver Central Animal Control (DCAC, formerly the Southgate Animal Shelter) is a cooperative animal control and sheltering organization in southern Michigan near Detroit. It serves the cities of Wyandotte (population 26,000), Southgate (30,000), Allen Park (28,000), and Lincoln Park  (38,000). The DCAC adoption facility is in Wyandotte. In 2013, DCAC reported an 88% live release rate, with intake of 1451 animals. Of the live releases, 716 were transfers, presumably to Wyandotte. Wyandotte reported an intake of 782 cats and dogs in 2013, and their live release rate was 99.6% (scroll down to “city of Wyandotte” in the link). There is probably not a perfect overlap in statistical reporting for 2013, since Wyandotte operated its own animal control and shelter before the collaborative effort began in April 2013. The Wyandotte shelter gets help from P.A.W.S. of Michigan, which coordinates volunteers who help with adoption and care of animals. The volunteers also offer pet retention counseling. An organization called Pound Pals does temperament evaluations and helps fund medical care. The shelter has a Facebook page and Petfinder profiles that provide a photo, history, and evaluation of each pet. A private group called Shelter to Home opened a pet adoption center in Wyandotte in 2012 with the mission of featuring at-risk animals from the Detroit area. Shelter to Home was formed in 2007, and has a record of placing an average of 400 cats and kittens per year. The organization adopts out dogs but its primary emphasis is on cats. Wyandotte, Southgate, Allen Park, and Lincoln Park are counted in the Running Totals as 80%+ communities.

Several public shelters reported progress on live releases this week. The Southern Pines Animal Shelter in Mississippi takes in almost 5000 animals per year and provides animal sheltering for a county of 75,000 people as well as for surrounding counties. They had a live release rate of over 75% for 2014, but in the last 5 months they have been over 90% each month. Shelter manager Ginny Sims attributes the improvement to new programs, fosters, volunteers, and new partnerships. Sacramento’s city shelter, the Front Street Animal Shelter, has made great strides since director Gina Knepp took over in 2011. Now comes word that the Sacramento County shelter has also improved by using adoption specials. Director David Dickenson says the live release rate at the county shelter so far this year is 75%. The Los Angeles Animal Shelter reports a 73% save rate currently, with 85% for dogs and 57% for cats. Best Friends, through its No Kill Los Angeles initiative, is trying to reduce the kill rate for cats with a neonatal kitten program and support for TNR and return-to-field. The City of Calistoga, California, has decided to grant a contract to the Petaluma Animal Services Foundation (PASF) for animal control and sheltering. This article about the process describes how a social media campaign helped to persuade city officials to select PASF over a rival bidder based on PASF’s history of higher live release rates, even though the PASF bid will cost the city slightly more. In transport news, shelter dogs are being flown as carry-on passengers on commercial flights from the Big Island of Hawaii to the Portland, Oregon, area. About 60 dogs have been placed through this program so far. Brent Toellner has two blog posts on length of stay – the importance of managing it, and how to decrease it. And Peter Wolf’s Vox Felina blog is celebrating its five-year anniversary. The fourth in the Maddie’s Fund series of free webcasts on the five initiatives of the Million Cat Challenge is set for Tuesday, April 28, at 9 PM EST. The presenters are Ollie Davidson, program director at the Tree House Animal Shelter in Chicago, and Kathleen Olson, director of a Washington state shelter with intake of over 12,000 animals per year. Both shelters improved the shelter environment and saved more animals after instituting capacity for care programs. Register here. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer is criticizing NYC Animal Care & Control. The AC&C has a five-year contract with the city. The Humane Society of Silicon Valley won the Shorty Award in the Best Social Good category for its “Eddie the Terrible” marketing campaign. PetSmart Charities has an interactive page showing its impact by state. The Center for Shelter Dogs has many webinars covering a variety of topics. The Humane Society of Utah has a cat room with remote-controlled toys that people can operate online through the iPet Companion website. In addition to amusing the cats, the shelter hopes that the promotion will call attention to available cats and help change the perception of the shelter as a sad place.

Nevada County is located in northern California, and it shares a border with the state of Nevada. The county has almost 100,000 human residents. On July 1, 2010, a non-profit called Sammie’s Friends took over management of the Nevada County Animal Shelter from the county sheriff’s office. Animal control is still done by the sheriff’s office. In addition to the strays picked up by animal control, the shelter accepts stray animals from the public. It also accepts owner surrenders “when possible” and with a small fee. Shelter director Cheryl Wicks wrote an article for the spring 2012 newsletter in which she takes us through a day in the life of the shelter. As she says: “Running the shelter is a little like driving an ambulance, you must go fast and pay attention to detail because somebody’s life may depend on it. You must be ready to turn on a dime at any moment because amongst the everyday work there are endless surprises.” Curt Romander, a co-founder of Sammie’s Friends, told me: “We have a large budget dedicated to medical care of sick or injured animals that come into the shelter. This budget is funded by donations from the community and grants. We are also funded by proceeds from our thrift store which has been very successful.” The spring 2014 newsletter describes how Sammie’s Friends funded veterinary care for the shelter and for animals in the community for years before taking over the shelter. Romander sent me full statistics for the shelter for 2013, and they are linked here: Nevada County CA 2013 Statistics. He notes that the shelter has “maintained a euthanasia rate below 1% for the past 4 years.” My calculation of the live release rate for 2013 was 99.4%. The modified live release rate, with deaths in foster care, at the veterinarian, and at the shelter counted with euthanasias, is 96%. The shelter places most of its animals by adoption, with 1147 animals (71% of its 2013 intake of 1626 animals) having been adopted. This is an adoption rate of 12 per thousand people. The spring 2013 newsletter describes one challenging case — a bonded pair of large, nine-year-old dogs who were aggressive toward cats. The shelter placed the dogs with a foster who trained them to leave cats alone, and ultimately adopted both of them. Nevada County, CA, was originally listed by this blog on April 30, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans on August 29, 2005. The epic destruction that followed resulted in a revamping of US disaster preparedness, including big changes in how pets are treated by disaster relief agencies. In this article, Becky Robinson, the head of Alley Cat Allies, looks back at the changes in cat protection protocols in the decade since Katrina. Update on the Irvine Animal Care Center in California: The Irvine shelter had a great reputation until last year, when charges surfaced that the shelter had deviated from its No Kill mission. Two managers have since resigned. A report on the shelter made by a veterinarian who trained at the UC Davis shelter medicine program is now in, and it recommends team decisions on euthanasia and changes to dog behavior evaluations. Further reports on other aspects of the shelter’s performance will be forthcoming. This article has a look at the dismal state of things in several Louisiana and Arkansas shelters. The article highlights the fact that animal sheltering is still today, as it always has been in the United States, a system of haves and have-nots. It would be interesting to know how the cities featured in the article compare to more successful communities on metrics such as shelter funding, intake per thousand people, household income, education level, spay-neuter rates of owned pets, number of cats who have received TNR, etc. The Million Cat Challenge booth at HSUS Expo this past week was very popular, and the Challenge signed up a lot of new members. A new textbook – Animal Behavior for Shelter Veterinarians and Staff – will be released in June. One of the most controversial issues in No Kill sheltering right now is how to evaluate temperament in shelter animals, so this book fills a need. It is authored by three experts with the ASPCA. The book is mentioned in this report on the National Council on Pet Population’s second research symposium last year. Researchers in North Carolina and Connecticut have devised a program to track outdoor cats. Science on outdoor cats is fraught with controversy over the extent to which domestic cats affect wildlife. The early results from the Cat Tracker study suggest that the answer could turn out to be – not much. The study has data on 100 cats so far, and the results are that most cats “stay close to home.” Many times when cats do wander they are visiting another home nearby rather than massacring wildlife. Robin Starr, the CEO of the Richmond SPCA, spoke out strongly this past week on the occasion of the Virginia governor signing a bill redefining “private animal shelter” to clarify that the purpose of shelters is to adopt animals out to new homes. Speaking of the extraordinarily high kill rate at PETA’s “shelter,” Starr said that PETA’s argument that most of the animals it receives are old, sick, or injured is no excuse, since the Richmond SPCA receives such animals too, and it treats and rehabilitates them and finds them homes. In transport news, the ASPCA has a program called the Nancy Silverman Rescue Ride which will transport 9000 cats and dogs from the southeast to the northeast over the next three years. The inaugural trip was in January, moving 11 dogs from South Carolina to Washington, DC. Huntsville, Alabama, had a successful adoption event last Thursday as part of the North Shore Tour for Life event. Local No Kill activists have been urging the shelter to hold low-cost adoption events for years, so this is a step in the right direction. The shelter had only a 74% save rate last year, however, so it has a long way to go. A free mobile training program in Jacksonville by Pit Sisters offers basic manners classes for dogs living in zip codes identified as having the highest numbers of owner surrenders. This blog post by Animal Farm Foundation, which awarded a grant for the program, has an interview with the founder of Pit Sisters. Progress is reported at the Rowan County Animal Shelter. Rowan County is in a rural area northeast of Charlotte, North Carolina. It has about 138,000 residents and the shelter has a high intake. Transports are part of the shelter’s improvement. Stealing of pet dogs for food has become a big problem in Vietnam, and owners are fighting back. This NBC News article describes a growing phenomenon of people in villages targeted by dog thieves banding together to fight them. In one case in 2012, it ended with 10 villagers being convicted of the murder of two dog thieves who were caught in the act. Since then at least 20 more dog thieves have been killed by people defending their dogs. The villagers argue that they have been forced to defend their dogs because the police do not take dog stealing seriously. Scholarships for students who foster and help adopt out pets for a No Kill shelter – what could be better?

Macomb County, which has a population of about 850,000 people, is immediately northeast of Detroit and is part of the Detroit metro area. In January 2013 Macomb County appointed Jeff Randazzo as manager of the county animal shelter. He reports that the shelter has gone from an 80% kill rate to an 80% save rate. He cites pet retention, SNR, modificiations to the physical environment of the shelter, and other changes as reasons for the improvement. Francis Battista reports the final statistics from two community cat projects, in Albuquerque and San Antonio, that Best Friends did in collaboration with PetSmart Charities. The three-year programs led to a drop in cat intake in Albuquerque and a plummeting of cat euthanasia in both cities. Here’s an article by Dawn Erwin on Texas bill SB 1911, which will be heard on Tuesday, and which could greatly complicate veterinary treatment for shelter animals in Texas. The Koret shelter medicine program has provided links to presentation materials for several lectures at the recent HSUS Expo, including a talk by Dr. Kate Hurley on “Implementing the Cat Revolution.” Lots of transports happened this weekend. Wings of Rescue alone transported 250 dogs and cats from southern California to the Pacific northwest. In Eau Clare County, Wisconsin, the shelter has run out of dogs and is taking in dogs from other counties. Huffington Post has a wonderful article about the rescue of the Vick dogs – how several organizations pulled together and how the precedent they set has allowed former fighting dogs to have a chance for life. KC Pet Project has another in their series of miracle reunions, brought about by staff who will not give up on returning pets to their owners. In this latest case, they found a microchip in a stray cat but the numbers for the owner had been disconnected. They contacted a friend whose number had been provided as an emergency contact and were finally able to connect with the owner. It had been 7 years since the cat was lost! Owner and cat were both delighted with the reunion. Maddie’s has compiled a master list of Lost and Found pages. A great tribute to Rich Avanzino from Gregory Castle of Best Friends. Don’t miss the Maddie’s webcast this Tuesday on managed admissions. The Northeast Animal Shelter, established in 1976, has had 120,000 adoptions. A thoughtful post from John Sibley on New York City breaking the 90% barrier in February. CNN Money did an investigation in 15 cities and counties across the United States and found that dogs are being killed for unpaid fines. The investigation also found thousands of warrants that are pending for minor infractions relating to pets. Best Friends has marketing help available to its network partners for adoption specials each month throughout the year. The help includes “downloadable, customizable flyers and emails, Web banners, social media images, and much more.” A new textbook, Animal Behavior for Shelter Veterinarians and Staff, is coming out soon and it has chapters on shelter enrichment for dogs and cats. It’s appreciation week for both volunteers and animal control officers. It seems as though the USDA and PIJAC are both supporting an effort to develop standards for dog breeders. What could possibly go wrong? Here are links to the blog and Twitter feed of Dr. Jessica Hekman and the blog and Twitter feed of Dr. Julie Hecht. Lots of interesting reading on the Science of Dog.

The Chester County SPCA (CCSPCA) is an open admission shelter that serves two counties in Pennsylvania – Chester and Delaware. Chester and Delaware are contiguous counties lying just west of Philadelphia. Chester County has a high median income, whereas Delaware County is closer to average. Together, the two counties have a population of over 1 million people. The CCSPCA got a new board in 2013 following allegations of mismanagement. The board hired two directors, neither of whom lasted very long, and since last September it has had another new director, Adam Lamb. The shelter says it has saved over 90% of its animals in each of the last four months. The shelter has started new programs, including a TNR program, pet retention, wellness programs for pets, kennel enrichment, follow up on adoptions, and revised adoption procedures. It has expanded its hours and is spending more on vet care. The shelter has received a grant of $305,000 from PetSmart Charities to start a community-cat program that can help 4700 cats over the next 26 months. Intake for 2013 was reported as 5690, which is an intake of only 5 pets per thousand people. That is quite low, although it is similar to the intake for the open-admission shelter in Fairfax County, just outside of Washington, DC. The shelter has posted its full statistics for the past 5 months, but does not post statistics further back because it has transitioned to a new, more transparent method of reporting statistics. In a phone call to the shelter I was told that CCSPCA does animal control for some townships. Other townships have their own staff who bring animals to the shelter once picked up. [edited 4-2-2015]

Newport County in Rhode Island (population 83,000) lies along Narragansett Bay, and there are several islands in the bay that are part of Newport County. The largest of the islands is Aquidneck. There are three small cities on Aquidneck Island — the city of Newport (population 25,000), Middletown (16,000), and Portsmouth (17,000). Portsmouth’s territory includes several of the smaller islands along with part of Aquidneck. The Potter League is a non-profit animal shelter located in Middletown that has contracts for stray intake and sheltering for Middletown, Portsmouth, and the city of Newport. It also accepts owner surrenders from all residents of Newport County without any conditions, although it asks owners to fill out a personality profile on surrendered animals. The League offers a wide range of services and programs. In 2014 the League celebrated its 85th year of taking in the strays of Newport County. The League publishes its statistics in annual reports. In fiscal year 2014, the shelter took in 1669 animals and had a 91% live release rate, including owner-requested euthanasias. In fiscal year 2012-2013, the shelter took in 1772 animals, and had a 90% live release rate, including owner-requested euthanasias. They transferred in 369 animals, including cats from shelters that had been affected by Hurricane Sandy. According to the report for fiscal year 2011-2012, the League had a total intake of 1732 animals during the year, with a live release rate of 91% (89% if owner-requested euthanasias are included with euthanasias). The League transferred in 331 animals from “overcrowded shelters in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and the Virgin Islands.” The reports are interesting in they show that the money the League receives for its sheltering contracts is a small fraction of its total intake. One advantage that a non-profit has over a tax-funded city shelter is that non-profits can and do raise money directly from the public, often very successfully. Aquidneck Island, Rhode Island, was originally listed by this blog on August 29, 2013, based on its 2011-2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 statistics.

TNR for dogs? It may sound crazy, but hear me out. We have a few cities, particularly in the southern part of the United States, where large numbers of stray dogs apparently continue to be a problem. I have heard this from credible people who support No Kill — it isn’t just the No Kill deniers who make this claim. In some of these cities live release rates are going up, but local people question whether there is really progress toward a No Kill community since large numbers of stray dogs are not being picked up. We have other areas of the country where there are dog shortages, and dogs are brought in from outside for adoption. I believe that based on the numbers nationwide we are very close to an overall balance in dog population and that, if we had a great transport network combined with every jurisdiction maxing out its adoption rates, we could have No Kill this year for dogs. But we are not there yet. One way to tackle the problem of isolated excesses of stray dogs in some of the large cities is classic spay-neuter programs aimed at owned dogs. If 30% or more of the owned females in a city are not sterilized and if the local human population is open to the spay-neuter message, then this approach can have great results. If sterilization rates of owned pets are up around the typical 85% average for the United States, though, or if sterilization rates are lower but people resist sterilizing their pets, then we cannot expect huge reductions in strays with this method. Some cities resort to trying to catch and kill all the strays. This is a bad method not only because it is morally wrong, but because it is ineffective. Cities tried for 100 years before 1970 to control stray dog populations by means of catch and kill, and it was a complete failure. Stray dog populations continued to rise until the 1970s, when mass spay-neuter became possible. So what to do? In many cases, stray dogs who live outdoors have a reasonably good life. Alan Beck’s 1970 study of stray dogs in Baltimore found that being hit by a car was the biggest danger for homeless dogs (other than shelter killing), but only a small minority of the total dog population was killed by cars each year. He concluded that, surprisingly, stray dogs were able to find adequate food, water, and shelter and they did not ordinarily suffer from hunger or exposure. Many of them were fed by people living in their neighborhood, and their presence was tolerated. This sounds a lot like what we now know about community cats. And the preferred solution for community cats these days is TNR or SNR, not catch and kill. What about simply finding homes for all the stray dogs? I recently spoke to a dedicated No Kill advocate in one southern city who estimated that there were 150,000 stray dogs in his city. That would be 88 dogs per 1000 people, which is an astronomical number and far beyond the ability of even the best No Kill shelter to place within the community. Even if the number of stray dogs was only 1/3 of what this advocate estimates, it would still require an adoption-per-thousand-people rate of 29 dogs, which is well beyond the best rates I know of. And that does not even count dogs who are already going into the shelter. Colorado, which has over a 90% live release rate for dogs, adopted out only 10.5 dogs per 1000 people in 2013. Recently the leaders of the shelter establishment in the United States have come together behind a set of ideas that are embodied in the Million Cat Challenge. Those ideas include the concept that rather than kill a healthy community cat, the cat should be sterilized and returned to where it was found. Feral cats should be sterilized and returned to a supported colony. Why couldn’t we do the same thing for dogs? TNR for dogs is not a completely unheard-of idea. India passed a law in 2001 forbidding the killing of street dogs. There are differences of opinion about what has happened since then in terms of nuisance factors and the growth of the dog population, with some people feeling that the dogs are a serious nuisance and a danger to human health (especially from rabies, which is a big problem in India, and dog bites) while others believe that the dogs serve useful functions. The government of India has reacted by instituting a TNR program for street dogs. Other countries are using or considering TNR for stray dogs as well. Dogs are different from cats in that community cats are less intrusive than stray dogs, because they tend to be nocturnal and more cautious around people. Another difference is that there is a substantial feral population in cats whereas there are very few truly feral dogs, at least in urban and suburban areas. It does not appear as though either of those differences would be fatal to a TNR program for dogs. Beck theorized that the reason that street dogs lived more openly than cats was because people were more accepting of their presence. I think one reason people don’t like the idea of TNR for dogs is that we see dogs as being more dependent on people for their happiness than cats. People hate the idea of a dog living in the street without a person of its own, and think such a dog must be miserable. Beck’s study indicated that is not the case. Certainly, if the choice was living without a human attachment or being killed, I think the great majority of dogs would choose to live. Moreover, a TNR program for stray dogs could very quickly reduce the number of strays, probably far more quickly than TNR for cats. Dogs do not have the reproductive capacity that cats have, and something like 75% of puppies born to free-roaming mothers do not survive. And, dogs are easier to locate and capture. Before a city considers a dog TNR program, it would need to make an effort to answer the following questions: 1. What is the sterilization rate for owned dogs? If it is not at least 70% of females, then an all-hands-on-deck traditional spay-neuter campaign for owned pets may be the best approach, unless the local human population is resistant to that message. 2. What is the number of stray dogs that are not being impounded? If the number of stray dogs that are not being impounded plus the number of unreclaimed stray dogs that are impounded plus the number of owner surrendered dogs substantially exceeds 10 or more per 1000 people, then the shelter may have difficulty adopting its way out of killing with local adoptions. 3. How many dogs could be responsibly transported to other areas of the country where there is a dog shortage and transports would not take homes away from local dogs? Are there sufficient resources to make those transports safely? If spay-neuter of owned pets is already high or the human population is resistant to pet sterilization, if the number of stray dogs is high, and if responsible transport cannot bring the number of dogs needing adoption down under 10 per 1000 people, then TNR is about the only thing left. A dog TNR project would be a novel and innovative idea for one of the big national organizations to take on. If the program succeeded, it could, in combination with the Million Cat Challenge initiatives, be a quick way to make even the most intransigent southern cities truly No Kill.

On September 8th, San Antonio’s Animal Care Services (ACS) announced that it had met the No Kill standard of a 90% live release rate (LRR). Sounds great – but the news report, and another report, said that the shelter is defining the national standard for No Kill as 90% of healthy and treatable animals. That’s wrong – the generally accepted No Kill standard is 90% of all intake. I’ve never heard of No Kill being defined as saving 90% of healthy-treatables. My perusal of the stats posted on the ACS website did not indicate that they will be at 90% or better for their latest fiscal year, which ends at the end of September – instead it looks more like the LRR for the year, calculated by the standard Asilomar method, will be closer to 85%. I’m a big fan of the San Antonio effort – they are working really hard and the 85% or so that they have achieved so far is a fabulous accomplishment under the circumstances they are dealing with. They want to do even better. They are transparent, posting their full statistics online, and I do not think they were intentionally trying to deceive anyone. In fact, San Antonio would be on my short list of amazing American cities working to improve shelter lifesaving. But I don’t think they should be saying that saving 90% of healthy-treatables is “No Kill,” because that isn’t a generally accepted definition of No Kill. And the LRR for any individual month should not be used as a basis to claim No Kill, in my opinion, since LRR can vary a lot from month to month during the year. So ACS – keep up your wonderful work, but please wait to claim No Kill status until you have chalked up an LRR of 90% or above based on total intake, for an entire year. I’m sure that will be soon. The six public shelters in Los Angeles take in about 55,000 animals per year. For fiscal year 2014-2015, the “save rate” was 78.5%. For dogs the number was 88.4%, which is encouraging, but for cats it was only 68.7%. Best Friends announced last July that they had run the numbers from 2014 and decided that the best way to increase lifesaving for cats would be to open a second kitten nursery. Best Friend’s existing kitten nursery in Los Angeles is currently caring for about 2150 kittens per year, but they want to add another 4400 kittens each year to the effort. If that plan is successful, it should make a huge difference in the Los Angeles live release rate. The Humane Society of Silicon Valley, which won the Shorty Award earlier this year in the Best Social Good category for its “Eddie the Terrible” marketing campaign, is back with another bizarrely hilarious proposal. This time they are looking for fosters for ringworm kittens. I posted a couple of weeks ago that two of the four counties in Michigan that still used a gas chamber to kill shelter animals had stopped the practice. Now one of the two remaining counties, Cass County, has announced that it will stop using its gas chamber by January 1, 2016, if not sooner. The remaining Michigan county that still uses a gas chamber, Branch County, had its shelter damaged by a fire last May, but unfortunately the gas chamber was not damaged. County officials may bar the use of the chamber once the shelter is repaired and reopened. Meanwhile Sandy City, Utah, will stop the use of its gas chamber beginning next year. The leaders of the city of Waco and McLennan County had a “state of the city and county” dinner recently. The major achievement mentioned by the Waco mayor was how the city has increased the live release rate at the public shelter since taking it over two years ago. There has been a trend in the past year or two for cities and counties to realize that having a No Kill public shelter is an important asset. Kudos to the Waco mayor for understanding the value of what Waco has achieved and how much it says about the city. Another city that realizes the value of No Kill is Atlanta. This story quotes the chairperson of the board of LifeLine, the non-profit contractor that has revolutionized Atlanta’s shelters, on the importance of a lifesaving shelter in attracting new people to Atlanta. LifeLine has recruited over 100 rescue partners since taking over the contracts in 2013 for the two shelters that serve Atlanta. The American Bird Conservancy strikes again, as a participant in a stealth plan to try to destroy TNR in Washington, DC. The nation’s capital has come a long way toward No Kill in recent years, and TNR has been a big part of it. Now the city’s Department of the Environment is asking the city to adopt its proposed Wildlife Action Plan, which, on pages 145-146, asks that government-sanctioned TNR programs in the district be re-examined. Instead of returning the cats to their territory after sterilization, the plan suggests that they be taken in by shelters (this is code for saying that the cats should be killed, since most of them are feral and not adoptable) and that the government should support the “cats indoors” program. I hope the city doesn’t fall for this. Adams Morgan, a neighborhood in DC, was the site of a groundbreaking TNR project in 1990 that led to the formation of Alley Cat Allies. The TNR project gradually reduced the number of feral cats and now there are none where the original colony was. I’m sure that Alley Cat Allies and other groups will present the overwhelming evidence in favor of TNR as not only the most humane but the most effective and least costly method of feral cat control. The Washington Humane Society, which currently does TNR, was blindsided by the plan (they were not consulted) and they are arguing against it. There is something a little absurd in the idea of the District trying to make itself into a replica of how nature was in the time before people poured concrete over everything. If the bird people really want to protect the birds, they would be better off using their energy to promote “smart growth” for new construction in the District rather than persecuting cats. There are several other important cat-related stories this week: The New Yorker has a video on TNR that does a good job of showing how much work and care goes into TNR. Unfortunately the video cites the cat predation numbers from the infamous 2013 Smithsonian study without comment on how unlikely those numbers are on their face, but that is a flaw in an otherwise good video. The Texas State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners has found that veterinarian Kristen Lindsey (whose name you may recall from a controversy over an allegation that she had killed a cat with a bow and arrow) committed an unspecified violation. More details will be announced in October. HSUS has two “Rethinking the Cat” symposiums coming up, on September 18 in Indianapolis and September 24 in Madison, Wisconsin. A recent study posted on PlosOne points out that there are lots of people who are feeding feral cats but not taking them in for TNR. Dr. Emily Weiss connects the dots by asking if we should be seeking ways to recruit these people, not necessarily to do TNR themselves, but to take responsibility to contact organizations that do TNR. Asheville’s city council has unanimously approved Brother Wolf’s bid for permission to open a cat cafe in the “heart of downtown.” Don’t miss this blog by Dr. Kate Hurley on what makes a “good and worthwhile life” in animal welfare. A few more news bits in what has been a busy week: A rescue group that started helping the Smyth County Animal Shelter in Virginia last year reports that it has decreased the shelter’s euthanasia rate from 89% to 14%. The Elizabethton/Carter County shelter in Tennessee has a new director with big plans to increase its live release rate. El Paso, Texas, may be the worst city in the United States for shelter animals. Here is a thoughtful article about some of the problems in Dallas with free-roaming dogs. “Urgent” pages have saved a lot of lives, but they can also create a lot of counterproductive drama. This post on the Maddie’s Fund blog describes one shelter director’s innovations for running a more effective Urgent page. This article about the new Virginia law on animal shelters gives more attention to PETA’s views than to the proponents of the law, but it gives an idea of the battle currently being waged. Hillary Clinton, pet parent to two mixed-breed dogs, had a great response to a question about puppy mills, saying that they are terrible places for animals and we need to do more about them. Hand2Paw, a Philadelphia non-profit, helps young people who have aged out of foster care at age 18 with no place to go by providing volunteer and intern experience working with homeless animals at local shelters. Some of the young people have been hired as shelter workers. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg animal shelter has successfully implemented a managed admission plan. The plan, which includes helping owners to retain their pets, has reduced admissions by a startling 30%. The shelter reports that the community has embraced the new plan.

To borrow a phrase from the last few State of the Union speeches, the state of No Kill — is strong. In fact, it’s great. But the movement is now at a place where it behooves us to take stock and think about where we are and where we’re going. So here is my two cents on the State of No Kill. No Kill has matured enough as a movement that it has divided into two wings. We have a moderate, practical group that is made up of people who are doing the boots-on-the-ground work and direct support of boots-on-the-ground. These people include the directors of No Kill shelters, the active consultants, the donor organizations, the people in large national organizations who are working on individual community No Kill efforts, and shelter medicine specialists. The moderate wing has been enormously successful, as can be seen by the rapid growth of No Kill communities. The second faction is what I call the radical wing. It is made up of advocates who speak directly to the public and try to get them to take action to reform their local shelters through grassroots political and social pressure. The radical wing is led by Nathan Winograd, and it has also been very successful at what it does. In my work I frequently see cases where grassroots pressure from local people has caused city or county leaders to pay attention to their animal shelter. Pressure by itself does not create No Kill, and it seems to me that these communities do not actually succeed in getting to No Kill without people from the moderate middle coming in and taking the practical steps to effect the transition, but the radical wing can wake people up and give the moderate middle a chance to work. The State of No Kill is not perfect, though. The biggest issue I see right now is that No Kill moderates have not developed a leadership class to speak for them as a whole. Right now No Kill has been proven to work anywhere, under any circumstances, although some communities (San Antonio, for example) face far greater challenges than others. But there is no leadership structure in the moderate group to carry this message. This appears to be because the moderate middle is large and diverse, consisting as it does of several big organizations and hundreds of individuals who are actively managing No Kill shelters and programs. The radical wing has tried to fill this gap to some extent by talking about No Kill successes, but the radical wing lacks credibility with the traditional shelter establishment because the radical wing’s leaders are, by and large, engaged in advocacy rather than in the day-to-day work of running No Kill shelters. The radical wing, in my opinion, is more effective at its core mission, which is to get the No Kill message out to the masses and to urge existing No Kill communities to become even better. The reason that most effective movements have more than one wing is precisely because there is more than one message that needs to be conveyed. The radical wing of advocates has enough to do carrying its message of the faults with the system. It should not be expected to also carry the positive message of the moderate group of boots-on-the-ground creators of No Kill communities. No Kill moderates are ideally positioned at this time to move the traditional shelter establishment rapidly in the direction of No Kill. The debate about the effectiveness of No Kill is over. There is a need now for the traditional shelter establishment to hear from a moderate No Kill faction that is speaking with a clear voice. A moderate middle that is not interested in criticizing the traditional shelter establishment or in setting standards that the traditional establishment thinks are unattainable. Instead, the message of the moderates should be “we are people who are currently working in open-admission No Kill shelters and we understand what your problems are and we are here to help you.” There are signs that No Kill’s moderates are coalescing. A recent example is the Million Cat Challenge, which has a long list of signatories from the moderate middle. The Challenge got off to an impressive start and I can’t help but think that the support of the signatories had a lot to do with it. And in recent years the Best Friends No More Homeless Pets Conference has become a kind of de facto meeting place for No Kill moderates. The natural next step is for No Kill’s moderates to formalize in some fashion a leadership structure to guide its outreach to the traditional shelter establishment. It would be helpful if that leadership started off by setting some standards — i.e., what does “No Kill” mean, what is an “open admission” shelter, how should shelters calculate their statistics, what is required for shelter transparency, what are best practices, etc. This would be a big, much-needed, and worthwhile task all by itself. An even greater need, however, is for the moderates to be able to speak with a unified voice to the traditional shelter establishment, to let that establishment know that No Kill is now mainstream and that we will welcome them in joining us.