KC DOG BLOG

Blog Postings from the No More Homeless Pets Conference in Las Vegas

Ok, first off hats off to some of the great folks who were live blogging and live tweeting from the conference. It was kind of like being there -- without being there. Thanks all -- particularly  Christie from the Pet Connection and jsibley on Twitter. Thanks all.

Christie had an awesome set of live blog posts. I'm going to link to all of them individually with a few comments about each of them. I have seen most of the speakers before so I feel comfortable about knowing what the basics of the presentations.  So please, go read Christie's posts - And some from the No More Homeless Pets Conference blog -- which are the links provided. And enjoy.  My thoughts included below.

Opening Panel Discussion

It is great to hear how much Best Friends has really embraced the No Kill movement. But what I think may be the most interesting part of this is just how many organizations (all the panelists except one) that are turning against Mandatory Spay/Neuter Ordinances. As recently as 4 years ago, it seemed like most everyone favored MSN ordinances -- but after seeing the devastating effects of these ordinances, most animal welfare orgs now do not favor them. The bottom line is that most people now currently alter their pets on their own. The most common reason people don't alter their pets is because they cannot afford to. Laws don't change that. And laws on their own only cause many animals to be confiscated for non-compliance with the law. Low cost spay/neuter programs -- programs that remove the #1 barrier for non-compliance - do work. While laws can seem to work when the low cost options are in place, they are unneccessary because the low cost options work without them. At best, the laws are unnecessary, at worst, catastrophic for animals.

I'm also amazed at how anyone could use Los Angeles as a model of "success" for this type of law.  Just because they have it, doesn't mean it's been successful.

Planning and Business Skills Save Lives

It is amazing to me how slow the animal welfare/rescue industry has been to adapt to change. While virually every other organization type is actively learning from other industries that will move them to the next level of success, it seems that many in animal welfare are horrible about goal-setting, and many even believe that success is not possible. It is time to abandon old ways of thinking about animal welfare and adopt new models that have proven succcessful.

What's New In Feral Cats?

I'm still fascinated by the number of cities that have laws that actively work against Feral Cats and feral cat caretakers.  Programs that actively seek to alter animals so the colony populations begin to stabalize and then dwindle are great. Barn cat programs are excellent. The idea that squirrels have more protrection under the law than cats is just odd to me.  And I know many people get upset about "outside" cats - but as Winograd pointed out at the conference, being outside is not the leading killer of cats in this country -- our animal shelters are.  It's time to re-think feral cats and give them a chance to live out their lives naturally vs prematurely killing them in our shelter systems.

Get Social, Save Lives

Sometimes it's important to think about "friend" raising, not just "fund" raising.  Social media outlets are excellent ways to make friends, and maintain connections, cheaply and efficiently. The more we can do to use these to our benefit the better we'll be able to reach out to others when we need homes for animals (which is always).

Building a No Kill Community -- Bonnie Brown of Nevada Humane Society

In three years, Bonnie Brown has taken the community of Reno, NV from essentially a city like most others than kills about 50% of the animals in their shelter, to a community that is essentially no-kill. It hasn't been just her thought -- it's taken an entire community of people (including animal control - yah Mitch!) to get them there.

Much of the success in Reno has been by avoiding the type of thinking that leaves animals in shelters and taking a proactive approach to marketing. While many shelters get upset about the idea of "impulse" adoptions, Bonnie points out that most of us in rescue have certainly "saved" an animal on impulse. Why would adoptions be different?  Just because a decision is made on "impulse" doesn't mean it isn't a lasting decision.

She also believes in using ideas from retail to save lives.  Auto dealers really work to get people to take cars for test drives because they know once someone drives a car, they are more likely to fall in love and buy it. Why don't we do more "trial adoptions" for people who are not 100% sure if they want a pet or not and let them take an animal home and fall in love. It's about creating an experience with the animal, not trying to get them to fall in love through a metal cage wall.

Nevada Humane also has some of the most innovative adoption promotions -- seniors for seniors,  Valentines Day Speed Dating, St. Patricks DAy, Mardi Gras, and even Arbor Day (some funny stuff here).  She also recommends taking the Wal-Mart approach to adopting out animals. While high end retailers may charge more, they move fewer items. In a shelter environment, we must move a large number of animals. Think Wal-mart, not Saks 5th Avenue. If you move a lot of animals, and do things the right way, you'll more than make up for the fees with more adoptions and more donations from people who see you're doing right by the animals.

A Tail of Two Cities - Calgary and New York

I've talked a lot about Calgary here in the past -- and there are a lot of great things going on in New York as well.  Some things though that I think are particularly relevant that are making Calgary a success where others are failing:

1) In Calgary, their main idea is that most people WANT to do the right thing, but often don't know what that is or don't have the resources to do it. There, they are all about educating people on the right things to do, and removing the barriers to doing them with things like low cost/no cost spay/neuter.

2) Their focus is also on education, not enforcement. Bill Bruce there firmly believes that laws and ticketing are not the way to gain compliance -- that education is. "Enforcement is always the last resort, not the first".  This is probably where most US cities go astray as we put way too much emphasis in this country on punishing people vs getting the right desired behavior.

3) Calgary has very high licensing rates -- which allows them to have very high Return-to-owner numbers. 30% of the animals they "intake" never even make it to the shelter -- but are driven directly home. Their focus is on getting the animal home, and not 'punishing" the owner for having the loose dog in the first place. If someone becomes a "habitual" offender, THEN they get fined. But free rides home are always available for first time offenses. This allows their animal control to be seen as a service, not as a punishing organization -- which increases licensing compliance. It also saves them a small fortune in sheltering costs by never having the animals come into the shelter.

Thanks to all who attended this weekend that made getting the information out there possible.

In 2008, Calgary has record low number of aggressive dog incidents

Well, the city of Calgary had the lowest number of aggressive dog incidents that they've had in over 25 years. Last year, the city with over 1 million population, recorded 340 aggressive dog incidents, 145 of which were bites.

In 1985, the city (which had a population of 600,000 at the time) had 1,938 aggressive dog complaints, including 621 bites. You can see their progression charted out here.

Bill Bruce, and the rest of the folks in Calgary, have opted to take a breed neutral approach to their animal control and instead of focusing on breeds, focused on the reasons behing aggressive dog incidents.

"We want to look at everything that led up to an aggressive dog attack," said Bruce.  "We're hoping to find four to six common things that people do that causes dogs to bite. Our goal is not to have anyone bitten by a dog."

It should also be noted that it appears that the population of 'pit bulls' in Calgary is increasing during this time when dog bites are going down. 

Why are more people not following this model?

Canine Legislation Conference Speaker Review - Bill Bruce

When it comes to speakers, movies, etc, I always try to temper my expectations.  Usually when I get excited about how great something, I leave disappointed.  I'm the only person who was disappointed by the movie Forrest Gump -- because I had built it up to be so great in my mind before seeing it that no movie could have met those expectations.

In spite of these efforts, I was really excited to listen to Bill Bruce speak at the Canine Legislation Conference.  Calgary has had a tremendously effective animal control program, and I couldn't wait to hear more about it.  Mr. Bruce didn't disappoint.

Calgary has a 90-95% dog licensing compliance rate.  Most cities hover between 10-20% licensing compliance....and 20% are the good ones.  Calgary has done this by providing benefits to people for licensing their dogs....for animal cotnrol being a SERVICE instead of a pain in people's butts.

Overall, they have about 95,000 licensed dogs (in a city with the population of about 1 million).  Licensing fees are $31 per year ($52 for an unaltered dog). 

In 1990 they raised the fines for getting caught with an unlicensed dog from $30 to $250 - -Bruce said that fines should generally run about 10x the cost of actually obeying the law in the first place in order to encourage compliance with the law.  They also made it very easy to license your dog -- online, via phone, at your vets office, and keosks at the animal control office, etc. 

Every dollar that they raise from animal licensing (and fines for non-compliance) go back into funding animal control -- not back into the city's slush fund.  So with an operating budget of $3.5-4.0 million, they are able to really do some things right with their animal control department.

They strongly encourage all people who license their dogs to also have them microchipped (which allows the dogs to be scanned and the owner determined immediately).  Every animal control vehicle is equipped with a scanner -- so if they find a stray dog, the animal control officer can instantly scan the dog for the chip, and deliver the dog home free of charge (although there are fines if your dog becomes a frequent flyer).   

This home delivery a) is a service for people who obey the rules and b) saves money in animal control costs because stray dogs seldom even make it to their shelter.   They are returned home where the dog belongs.  The city then doesn't incur the costs of putting the dog in the shelter, maintaining the dog while it's in the shelter, food etc.  Bruce's goal for next year is to gett 50% of the dogs returned directly home without ever reaching the shelter.

If a dog does end up making it to the shelter, its photo is taken immediately and placed on their webpage within 15 minutes of the dog reaching the shelter.  All the dogs in the shelter are treated for the basic diseases - -and if a dog is found injured, animal control will take the dog to a vet.  The vets treat the dogs because a) animal control is usually able to find the owner of the dog because they're all licensed and b) if they don't, animal control will cover the medical costs associated with treating that dog.  Wow.   

Calgary built a new shelter for their animals about 5-8 years ago that is state of the art...and has never been filled to its capacity.

Calgary also focuses a lot of its energies on education and encouraging responsible dog ownership.  They have a full time staff member, that is trained in education, that puts together a public education program.  They have six specific programs that are part fof their public school's curriculum that emphasizes respect for living things.   

Calgary also has 140 dedicated off-leash areas for dogs -- so that's 140 "dog parks".  Kansas City, MO is struggling to find a way to get a second one.  These off-leash areas provide a ton of areas for socialization for the dogs to learn how to enteract with other dogs and other people.

The net results of their efforts have been impressive.  Over the past 18 years, the city of Calgary has cut their number of dog bites and chases by more than 50% (all the while, the human and dog population of Calgary has doubled).  Last year calgary only had to euthenize 256 animals (Kansas City, KS alone euthenized 5,000 DOGS last year, the KC metro area kills in the neighborhood of 40,000 dogs and cats each year).   Almost all of the euthenizations came from dogs that had behavioral or health issues.  Bruce estimates that Calgary will become a true no-kill city within the next 3-5 years.

When Bill was talking it sounding like a utopia.  I hear stories about local animal controls breaking through locks to steal people's pets based on what breed they think it might be, the massive killing of dogs in our shelters, dogs that are put to sleep because they've been in the shelter too long but never made it up on the website or petfinder or anywhere so people knew where to find them.  I hear about dogs being taken out of someone's loving home and euthenized because someone was over the pet limit -- apparently death is perceived to be better for animals than having to live with 3 other dogs.

Calgary has accomplished so much by focusing on root issues of problems, providing service to their "customers" (it was so weird to hear an animal control officer refer to their constituents as "customers"), and getting people to obey their current laws.

They did it all without mandatory spay/neuter laws, breed specific laws, anti-tethering laws or pet limit laws.  And through paying animal control officers a fair wage -- as Bill said, "If you pay peanuts,  you'll only get monkeys."

I really wish that more cities (ahem, KCMO) would look at successful ordinances around the country (or in Calgary) and model their ordinances and enforcement efforts off of true success stories.   

All of the city administrators were invited to attend Bill's speach, unfortuantely only one city council person and two animal control officers were able to make it.  I'd have loved for them to hear Bill's message and start working toward Calgary as a model of success.