KC DOG BLOG

KC Pet Project makes retail adoption space permanent

Back in November, KC Pet Project, an organization that I am proud to be a part of, opened a retail adoption center in a Kansas City, Northland Shopping Center called Zona Rosa. 

The goal of KC Pet Project is to take the city's 40 year old, open admisstion animal shelter and make it into a no kill shelter. Where as recently as 4 years ago the shelter only saved 40% of the roughly 8,000 animals that enter the shelter -- in 2012, KCPP's first in operation, the shelter saved 86%.

Part of our marketing plan was to open a secondary adoption location. The location not only gives us slightly more room for animal housing, but also gives us a second permanent presence for people to find our adoptable pets. When we opened the secondary location on November 13, our goal was to adopt out 200 pets over the next 2 months. Well, we bested that, adopting out about 240 pets during that timeframe.

Not only has the retail adoption facility given us more opportunities for adoptions, it has also allowed us to do a lot of "friendmaking" in an area of the city that is 30 minutes (more than 20 miles) from our main shelter location, in an area of the city that is naturally divided by the Missouri River. 

It's been a huge opportunity for KC Pet Project, and we're thrilled to have signed a 12 month lease with them recently to continue the success. And thanks for tomorrow's feature in the Kansas City Star on the location that will help let even more people know that we're there.  Be sure to click on the link as it has a very good slide show of the location so you can get a feel for how it looks.

And on a personal note, there is a picture that includes a lot of our retail items that has a picture of one of our adopted dogs above it with her tongue hanging out. That pictured dog is Zola, a dog we fostered for about a week so she could overcome kennel cough and be ready for adoption up there and she may have been the smartest dog ever -- learning sit, shake, down, "hops", and rollover within about 5 days. She was pretty awesome and got adopted within an hour of us delivering her to the Zona Rosa location on Black Friday.

 

 

 

Shedding some pounds

If you caught yesterday's post, you saw a little positive pit bull press that was run by our local media. If you watched the two news stories you probably noted the adoption special that was mentioned in the story.

I usually don't post stuff like this here, but, well, the picture on this flyer is so clever I can't help but post it.

We're so lucky at our organization to have 3 outstanding professional photographers that donate their time and talents to our organization.

Thanks to Kaye Ness Photography, Kim Beer Photography, and Kasi Reames Photography for their dedicated talents and services.

If you live in the Kansas City area, and have pet or family photo needs, I would recommend any of these three to you. They're awesome people,and  have great eyes for the shot.

A case of the Mondays

Starting today, Kansas City Pet Project will be open on Mondays.

Last year, we made the decision to be open 6 days a week, and be closed on Mondays. We were a new organization. Money was tight. And we had to cut something, somewhere. So we decided to remained closed on Mondays to save some money, be sure we got ourselves established, and then move forward.

Starting today, we are going to be open Mondays. And it's a really big deal in our mission to maintain a high save rate for a couple of reasons.

#1) We're an open admission shelter. We take in animals every day. So if animals are coming in every day, then they need to be going out every day as well. We take in an average of about 20 dogs and cats every single day. Some days we move more out than that, some days we don't, but taking in that number, and moving almost none out, was a challenge to overcome.

#2) In Missouri, state law requires we hold stray animals for a 5-day stray hold for owners to reclaim. And it mandates that it's 5 BUSINESS days. With one day being closed each week, we essentially had to hold every stray animal (except those that came in on Mondays) for one additional day before they could become eligible for adoption -- which means we were self-imposing a 6th day of hold time. Our average length of stay for dogs is less than 15 days. 1 day is a LOT when you're rotating out dogs that quickly, especially given that nearly 80% of our owner returns happen within the first 3 days of the hold period. The extra day of hold time was accounting for about 450 animal days in the shelter each month. It was a lot. And now, that will be gone.

I'm always amazed when I hear of shelters that are closed a lot - often open only 5 days each week, or closed on even a single weekend day. It makes a huge difference in life-saving to be open. And so we will be. 362 days a year.

The first 60 minutes: Animal Sheltering's Critical Hour -- video

Yesterday, the folks over at Maddies Fund posted the video below. The presentation is given by Brian DiGangi, DVM and professor at the University of Florida school of veterinary medicine.

The presentation is about 50 minutes long, but well worth watching for anyone who is involved in sheltering because he spends a lot of time discussing the first 60 minutes of an animal's life in a shelter and the importance of that first 60 minutes in the likelihood of the animal leaving the shelter safely.

The presentation, while not terribly dynamic in nature, does cover a lot of ground and gives a lot of good information. It covers how to properly scan for microchips (it's a bit more complex than you think), quickly taking intake photos, providing a physical and behavioral evaluation (including the importance of gathering any history you can get on the animal -- even someone who picked up a stray in their neighborhood 2 hours ago knows more abou that animal than you do), vaccination protocols (and the importance of doing this every time, and quickly), and on planned movement of people and animals through the shelter (this section, at about minute 21, is very interesting as well).

While I want you to watch the whole video, there are three things I want to talk about a little bit more.

#1) Determining a pathway for an animal early on -- This is something we've talked quite a bit about at our shelter is determining an animal's pathway out of the shelter early on after intake. It doesn't take a lot of effort to do a quick evaluation effort on an animal and envision how that animal is going to eventually leave the shelter. Well-fed, well-cared for elderly animals are the most likely to be reclaimed by owners. Animals with identification are likely to be returned home.

Are certain types of dogs more likely to go to rescue groups in your community (for instance, we know that certain breed-specific rescues in town are always willing to take dogs of certain breeds)?  Are certain animals likely to be adopted quickly at the shelter?  Are some likely to need foster care in order to come behavioral or health challenges?  While you may change which "track" out of the shelter an animal is on over time, determining one early on can save a lot of headaches vs waiting for an animal to come off of stray hold and then wonder "now what do we do with it?". The speaker covers this idea early on -- about 3 minutes into the video.

#2) According to the statistics in the video, about 22% of dogs without microchips are reunited with owners. About 52% of dogs with chips are returned. For cats, a terrible 2% are reunited with owners without chips, but about 39% with chips are returned. Having a higher percentage of microchipped animals in a community is very important for owner reclaims and proper chip scanning is essential. This is all at about the 7 minute mark of the video.

#3) Vaccinations --  The speaker also gives some statistics on vaccinations. According to his numbers, more than 1/2 of the dogs that enter a shelter are not vaccinated against distemper, and about 30% aren't vaccinated against Parvo -- and there is really no way to tell if ones are vaccinated or not. So vaccinate them all -- not just for that animal's benefit, but to ensure the entire shelter population is kept safe.

Take a look and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

KC Pet Project to open retail adoption center

For the past 10 months I've been providing updates on KC Pet Project's progress toward taking the Kansas City, MO animal shelter to an open-admission, no kill shelter.

Over the past 10 months, we have been able to save 84% of the dogs and cats that have entered our shelter -- and have saved more than 90% since July 1.

But intake remains high, and ongoing, and with a shelter in an out-of-the-way location, we'll need to keep adoption high over the holidays.

So next Tuesday (November 13), KC Pet Project will be opening a retail adoption center at Zona Rosa shopping center. The retail adoption center will remain open throughout the holidays and is set to close January 15. This is a picture of the outside of the center (although the graphics are not yet complete, this is what it will look like).

The center will house about 25-35 dogs and cats available for adoption (and possibly any other small mammels that we get into the shelter) and will also have a variety of pet-related merchandise for sale.

For those of you not familiar with the geography of Kansas City, let me take a minute to describe. There are essentially 3 main geography dividers in the Kansas City metropolitan area: the state line, that divides Missouri from Kansas, and the Missouri River, that divides Kansas City, MO North/South.

Currently, the three largest shelters in the metro all operate South of the river, two on the Missouri side, and one in Kansas. The Zona Rosa location will give KC Pet Project a significant footprint in Kansas City, MO, North of the River. And Zona Rosa is the highest-trafficked retail shopping district North of the River -- so we should have a TON of foot-traffic in and out of the store (and hopefully a lot of adoptions to match).  The location will give us a 7-day-a-week retail adoption area, that will be open 12-ish hours a day in one of the fastest-growing areas of the city.

We're very excited.

We were able to obtain the space because like many retail destinations in this economy, there are a handful of openings spaces that they were looking to fill for the holidays and they were very gracious to provide the space to us as a not-for-profit for a below-market rate.

As we continue to move toward our no-kill goal, we continue to look for opportunities to increase adoptions in order to keep up with our daily supply. This is another great opportunity for us to do so.

Like always, I will update this blog with some adoption results (and more pictures of the inside of the space) as we get the store open and begin adoptions. 

New ASPCA Paper on the frequency of lost pets, and their reclaim by owners

This month, there was an interesting study by the ASPCA (written by Emily Weiss, Margaret Slater and Linda Ford) in their issue of Animals (HT to Seattle Dog Spot).

The study, performed between September-November 2010, includied 1,015 pet owning households -- 80% of whom owned dogs (817) and 50% (506) owned cats -- 30% (308) owned both a dog and a cat.

According to the reported research:

- 14% of dogs had been lost in the past 5 years, (of which, 95% were recovered) and 15% of cats were lost (of which, 75% were recovered).

-- 50% of dogs and 33% of cats had been lost multiple times

 -- 80% of dogs and 88% of cats were spayed or neutered (male dogs were less likely to be altered than female dogs). This would seem to be counter to common thinking that unaltered animals are more likely to run off than altered ones.

-- Not surprisingly, people with higher incomes and more education were MORE likely to alter their pets than people with lower incomes and less education -- further highlighting the need for targeted low-cost spay/neuter services.

-- There was no significant difference in likelihood of a pet being lost based on income or education

-- 49% of found dogs were found by searching their neighborhood, 20% came home on their own, 15% were contacted because they were wearing a tag or had a microchip, 7% were brought home by a neighbor and 6% by contacting animal control

-- 59% of cats were found because they returned home on their own, 30% were found by searching the neighborhood. Only 2% were returned home because they were wearing a tag or mcircochipped, and another 2% via contacting animal control.

--  For people who never found their lost dogs, 75% of searched their neighborhood, 75% visited the shelter, 50% hung posters, 50% put an ad in their paper, 50% posted online and 38% called their veterinarian (I will note that the sample size is very low for this since most people found their pets).

-- For people who never found their cats, 67% searched the neighborhood, 22% visited a shelter, 17% hung posters , 11% put an ad in the paper, 6% posted online and 11% called veterinarians (again, a fairly low sample size). The number of lost cat owners that never visited the shelter to look for the cat (and a verys small percent have any form of identification) is likely a reason that most shelters have strikingly low return-to-owner rates for cats.

-- People who made less than $50,000 a year were less likely to be reunited with their dogs than people in higher income brackets. For cats, low income (less than $30,000 and high income ($100,000+) were more likely to be reunited, where people between $30,000-100,000 were less likely to find them.

-- Women were more likely than men to be reunited with their dogs, but the opposite was true for cats.

-- While the numbers of unfound pets seem fairly low by these numbers, when you compare to the large numbers of owned pets in this country (86 million cats, 78 million dogs), this still means that roughly 2.2 million dogs are lost each year, and 2.6 million cats. Based on this, a large number of the animals that  find their way into shelters across the nation are actually owned animals, not strays. And based on numbers of animals that are never found, this accounts for 110,000 dogs and 645,000 cats annually that are owned, but unable to be reunited with their owners.

I think the results of the study are interesting on a lot of levels. They support a lot of reasons for targeted low cost spay/neuter programs and the need for aggressive programs to encourage pet owners to put identifying tags and microchips on their pets (particularly for indoor cats, who do get lost). It also poses a pretty hefty task on shelters to try to be creative to create programs to help reunited cats to cat owners (which includes encouraging cat owners to come to the shelter to look for their lost cats.

There may be some sample bias in this survey, but I thik it does provide some good first data on the frequency of pets becoming lost, and then found again. 

Read the study in its entirety and I'd love to get your thoughts.

The costs of no kill animal control vs no kill shelters

Last week, the No Kill Advocacy Center released a new report entitled "The Economic Benefits of No Kill Animal Control."

The report, which is 12 pages long seems to be in reponse to an article in USA Today recently that talked about how "costly" no kill shelters were for cities to run, along with the reality that this is a seemingly common thought.

So it appears that we have a little bit of conflicting information. So what gives?

There is one major distinction that I want to make between the No Kill Advocacy Center's report, and the USA Today article -- and that's the difference between creating a No Kill Shelter and creating a comprehensive No Kill Animal Control program. 

Some cities separate these two functions. Some don't.

When the two work together, they can definitely not only improve public safety, but can save lives -- and with minimal if any fiscal impact. Unfortunately, many cities try to create No Kill Shelters, while still maintaining their status quo approach of punitive animal control.  If this is the case, then yes, maintaining a no kill shelter can be costly to absorb the influx of animals that comes from the animal control side.  However, if animal control is operated under a no kill philosophy, then the two can work very well together.

Let me talk a little about the no kill animal control.

When it comes to creating a No Kill community, the math is really pretty simple. In order to save them all, you have to increase postive outcomes (adoptions, sent to rescue, Return-to-owners), and lower impounds. When positive outcomes = impounds, you are no kill. So while increasing positive outcomes is essential to success, lowering impounds by keeping animals from ever coming to the shelter is just as effective.

And that's where no kill animal control comes in.

This isn't about being negligent with public safety and allowing dogs to roam the streets freely. But is about making smart decisions that can minimize impounds.

This means not seizing animals when someone is over the city's pet limit (or repealing the city's pet limit).

This means not seizing dogs because of the way they look based on a city's breed ban (or repealing that law)

This means no seizing animals that are unaltered because of a city's mandatory spay/neuter law (or repealing that law).

This means allowing animal welfare advocates to trap, neuter, and release community cats as a means of population control instead of spending resources trying capture them and house them at the shelter.

This means that if a stray animal is caught by animal control, if it has identification, returning it home without even taking it to the city shelter.

This mean working with pet owners to keep animals in homes whenever it is feasible and possible. Obviously, in situations where animals are in abusive, or neglectful situations where owners should be cited for animal cruelty, these animals should be safely and immediately removed from the cruelty in which they live. But in most cases, animal control officers should work to keep animals in homes by referring them to low cost spay/neuter clinics, pet food pantries, or just allow owners the opportunity to keep their pets vs taking them to their homes.

As Reno's Chief Animal Control Officer Mitch Schneider says, "Don't punish people through their pets, because the pets lose".  Most cities have enough homeless pets without their shelters having to also spend time handling and killing animals with homes.

The side benefit of animal control not taking homed animals to the shelter is that they then get to focus their time and efforts on dealing with truly aggressive dogs (a public safety issue) and prosecuting cruelty/neglect cases (an animal welfare and public safety issue) that will lead to improved public safety.

Then, on the back side, the shelter has fewer impounds, so they can focus their resources on better care for the animals and finding them homes.  So all sides win.

This is why sometimes cities mistakenly think that having a no kill shelter is more expensive -- it can be -- but not if both animal control and the animal shelter are thinking, planning and acting with a no kill mindset to truly build a no kill community.

Are shelters euthanizing the wrong dogs for aggression?

Last week, Forbes Magazine had an interesting interview with Ian Dunbar -- who, by most people's standards, is one of the most respected dog trainers out there.

The interview with Dunbar is interesting, as most interviews with him are. And though I confess that I, like Marji, found his take on adult dogs a little disconcerting, there was one area of the interview that I thought was very interesting.

On the second page of the written interview, Dunbar gets into a conversation about bite inhibition that I'm going to post most of the details of here. I've written some before about Bite Inhibition, and that I think the lack of early socialization and bite inhibition is the biggest determinent in major dog attacks -- but isn't something anyone really has data for. But Dunbar's comments regarding bite inhibition and shelter dogs I found to be very interesting.  Here's the section:

Forbes: How do you deal with a dog that bites?

Ian Dunbar: The question is not "Is the dog reactive?" Most dogs, like most people, are reactive.

The question is "When it reacts, does it cause damage?"

If it causes damage you're pretty much screwed. It means the dog did not develop bite inhibition in puppyhood. And there's no way to teach dog bite inhibtion safely. There's no way to teach the dog bite inhibition toward dogs and other animals at all.

There ain't no cure. The only think you can do is manage it, keep him indoors and never let him off leash. Or euthanize him. I grade bites on a scale from one to six and once you move from a three to a four, there's nothing you can do for this dog. He's going to die.

Forbes: What exactly do you mean by bite inhibition?

ID: The importance of puppy class is that puppies bite other puppies in play and they learn that their bites hurt because they have needle sharp teeth. So they learn to inhibit the force of their bites before they develop strong jaws. If they don't learn that, the dog is screwed. There's no magic here.....

Forbes: So it's all about the intensity of the dog's bite?

ID: It's the good news and bad news about bites. It's bad that it happens, because the dog is upset and stressed and lacks confidence and it felt the need to bite. That's bad. But the good news is it didn't hurt. That's bite inhibition.

Forbes: Most people don't want any part of a dog that bites.

ID: When I met Ashby, I fed him some food. He took the food and he bit me.

When I met Claude he was going to be euthanized the next day because he had bitten someone at the San Francisco SPCA. I looked at the woman's arm and there wasn't any damage at all. So I went in to see him and started pushing his buttons, which was pretty easy. Touch his collar, you get bitten. Touch his butt, you get bitten.

He bit me fourt times. I said "Great, we'll take him." Why?  The bites don't hurt. We have a dog who's scared and reactive, but he's safe. And he's proven safe. Four times he's gone off and hasn't caused any damage.

Forbes: But most people don't even consider these distinctions.

ID: Bite inhibition is the most misunderstood concept in dog training.

Think of a human analogy: Let's say you go into a biker bar and you insult a guy's motorcycle. You can have two kinds of reactions. One can be "You'd better not say that again." That's cool. The other one is he pulls a knife and stabs you.

In shelters, I'm convinced they kill all the wrong dogs, and adopt out dogs that aren't tested. If the dog snaps, they'll euthanize it. I think --  he snaps, thank goodness he's only snapping.

I realize that shelters are often challenged in these situations. It is obviously not a good idea to send aggressive dogs into adopting homes. But do we properly make the distinction between reactive and dangerous? And are shelters mistakenly euthanizing dogs that are reactive, but safe?  I'm not sure. Would love to get your thoughts.

For more on bite inhibition:

Modern Dog Magazine: Puppy Socialization and Bite Inhibition

Dog Star Daily: More on bite inhibition (because it's so important)

Dog Spelled Forward: What are the most important things you can do for your puppy? Part 1 - Bite inhibition

 

On assessing blame vs focusing on solutions

Earlier this week, there was an interesting post on Dog Star Daily entitled "Who Killed these Dogs?" The premise of the post was debunking the old mantra of "If you breed or buy, you are responsible for this" -- along with a picture of dead animals that were killed at a local animal shelter due to 'pet overpopulation'.

First of all, I will admit that I agree with the author, that the old mantra is tired and not accurate. However, I disagree with many of her other assertions -- and worse, think in an effort to assess blame created such a bad image of shelter pets that she is making the problem worse, rather than better.

The author goes on to blame several causes:

1) Failure of dog owners to educate themselves before they get a puppy

2) Veterinarians who tell owners to keep puppies at home until they're 16 weeks of age that cause pups to be poorly socialized

3) Dog trainers for not emphasizing the importance of puppy training and actively educate dog owers they see. 

She then notes:

So those of us working in rescue are faced with a constant barrage of untrained, ill-mannered and sometimes downright dangerous dogs who are unwanted and unadoptable.  We know they didn’t start out this way and we know they didn’t have to end this way.  On a daily basis we are faced with punishing the innocent dog with death while the guilty parties who created this mess walk away.  We can’t help but think that someone, besides this dog, must pay.

We think, and rightly so, that it is unfair that this dog was created only to be destroyed by no fault of his own. We blame the breeder......With each newly relinquished, returned or euthanized dog our anger and resentment grows.  We start to resent dog owners in general and tell ourselves that this whole problem exists because people are just stupid.  They don’t know what they’re doing.  They don’t care.  They cannot be trusted.  They are not like us.

Now, there is a lot in these couple of paragraphs that I think give you an idea of the 'flavor" for the article and I think encompasses a whole lot of what I find to be wrong with it.

First off, let's make no mistake, for a dog to end up euthanized in a shelter, a whole host of things have to fail:  whoever sells (or adopts) a dog has failed to educate the dog owner, the dog owner has failed to educate themselves, the dog owner has failed to put an identifyer on the dog so it can be brough back home, and probably most importantly, the shelter where the dog ended up failed to find it a new home.

Regardless of everything we do; education, training classes, etc, dogs will find their way to a shelter -- and shelters have a responsibility to find homes for those animals if they are able to be rehomed (Most are). Often, I feel like because of the resentment toward the dog owners the author describes, I think many shelters/rescuers fail to find as many homes for dogs as they could because they lose the trust in the public, they shun the public, and it is the public who is mostly likely to help them through the adoption process.

Here's the truth: there are 78 million owned dogs in this country. Each year, only about 4 million find their way into a shelter at all. That means about 95% of dog owners are actually doing right by their dog every year.  There is little reason for such massive distrust in the public.

But here's another issue I have with the article: since when did every dog that ends up in a shelter become untrained, ill-mannered and/or downright dangerous? 

While it's true that shelters see dangerous, ill mannered and untrained dogs -- the majority are just simply lost and unable to be reunited with their owners. And many of the ill-mannered and untrained are completely able to be rehabbed with a fairly small amount of training work on the part of the shelter or rescue. And isn't this our job as rescuers to provide the dog the resources it needs to be rehomed? 

I'm deeply disturbed by someone who claims to be involved in rescue to paint such a bleak picture of shelter dogs.  Here's her quip:

If you adopt an aggressive, fearful or otherwise damaged dog without understanding what that means for your future as a dog owner, you have been duped by the rescue/shelter because you walked in there uneducated and not knowing what you wanted.  No different than what happens every day on used car lots. Buyer beware and be educated!

From my experience, the majority of the dogs we see in rescue and at the shelter are gentle, loving pets. Or sure, some are high-energy and need to burn off a little steam due to the stress (and lack of exercise) that comes from shelter life -- but nothing like the image painted by the author. Meanwhile, I'm also disturbed that such a focus would be on the proper training of puppies when most homes would actually benefit from starting out with an older dog so they can avoid the struggles of handling puppies or adolescent dogs (which are far more work than most adult dogs).  Or, that more shelters/rescues can't sell the value of pet dogs -- and that the vast majority of people don't need purebred dogs -- of course that might be difficult if the rescuer shares the same image of shelter dogs as damaged goods.

So, if we want to solve the problem of dogs dying in our shelters, we must put the focus on solutions that will work.

-- Yes, educating dog owners on proper channels for getting a dog would help (and this does include when and why buying a specific breed puppy makes sense -- and it does for some people)

-- Yes, providing training classes and proper dog training will help

-- And yes, blaming people who indiscriminately breed will also help

-- But more importantly, it means understanding that there are many catch points in the process -- and the final catch point is at the shelter. And it is the shelter and rescue community's responsibility to help find homes for the dogs that make their way to the shelter. It means not treating these dogs as "damaged goods", but giving them the proper training they need to be rehomed, or doing a better job of marketing these dogs so people realize what great pets most shelter animals can (and will) become.  It also means not deamonizing "the public" -- most of who are responsible -- because of the actions of a small percentage of them. And it means not becoming resentful of this public that is also the same group that you will hope will come to adopt a dog from your shelter.

Unfortunately, I believe this author does more harm than good in her quest to lay blame, and casts a very innaccurately bleak picture of shelter dogs in the process.

A lot of empty cages this morning

This is what the cat room looked like at the Kansas City Pet Project as the team left last night.

A lot of empty cages.

KC Pet Project is an organization that is running the Kansas City Animal Shelter and were one of about 50 organizations nationally that were taking part in the ASPCA Mega Match-A-Thon event.

I want to talk a bit about the program -- because a) I think it's a great program and b) I think there are some simple learnings here that should be applied to most shelter organizations.

First off, the participating organizations applied for grants of either $5000 or $10,000. The orgs received the money which was to be used for promoting the event, spaying and neutering, collars, etc). Every animal that left the shelter had to have a collar, identification (ie microchip) and had to be spayed or neutered and ready to go. 

KC Pet Project partnered with two other local organizations -- Heartland SPCA and Wayside Waifs and created a joint TV spot that promoted the adoption event at all 3 locations.  All organizations extended their shelter hours, agreed to do a $25 adoption fee and most did radio remotes at their shelters, brought in food carts and tv and newspaper news organizations got a press release and we got a fair amount of news coverage. Our goal was to adopt out more than 500 pets among the three organizations.

Goal. Shattered. 

In the first two days of the event (and we're all still open for business today), KC Pet Project adopted out 114 pets. Heartland SPCA, 201 (I think) and Wayside did more than 200 on Friday alone (they were allegedly still processing adoptions at 11:30 Friday night, and may still be processing yesterday's adoptions as I haven't heard a final report from yesterday from them).

We called one area shelter that was not participating to see if we could pull some of their animals to help fill some empty kennels and one of the other orgs had already beaten us to it. We have also been calling some rescues who we're usually working hard to get animals OUT of our shelter and asking them to bring some back.  It's been that kind of weekend.

And it sounds like other participating shelters have had similar success. The ASPCA Pro Facebook page last night was posting pictures and reports of shelters closing down early because they were out of animals, one reported having more people than animals at the shelter and photographed their staff in some of the dog kennels.

Obviously this is great news for a fairly large number of shelters across the country -- and for a lot of animals that have found forever homes. However, many shelters will just fill up with animals again and what can we learn from this weekend to build upon the success?  So here are some of my thoughts after day two:

1) Having animals spay/neutered/vaccinated and ready to go is great for the adoption process vs having them adopted but having to wait a couple of days to have the surgeries before owners can take them home. There's nothing better than the instant gratification of taking your new pet home to be with the family immediately (it's fun for shelter staff to watch them go home too).

2) Making the adoption process fun is important. People are excited to bring a new pet into their lives -- be sure they get to enjoy that excitement.

3) A little advertising and promotion for adoption goes a long way.

4) People love pets -- and if you give them a reason to come to your shelter they will support your efforts.

5) Adoption specials work. It's what retail outlets have known for years and the model works in animal welfare also.

6) Social media is amazing at building excitement among adopters, staff and volunteers.

7) Extending hours that shelters are open helps drive excitement and give more people an opportunity to come by

8) It is amazing what a little help from the major, national organizations can do to assist shelters in moving animals out the front door.

 Here's to many more happy adoptions -- today, and for weekends to come.