KC DOG BLOG

Progress as Promised: 2012 Final Report from KC Pet Project in Kansas City, MO

For decades, the Kansas City, MO Animal Shelter resembled many public animals shelter facilities. It was old. Outdated. And had a very high kill rate.

As recently as 2007 the shelter killed nearly 7,000 dogs and cats. As recently as 2008, the shelter killed more than 60% of the dogs and cats that entered.

Everyone knew we could, and had, to do better.

In 2009, the city made the decision to privatize the operations of the animal shelter. While there were significant improvements made, not everything was going as well as everyone had hoped. In April, 2011, the city took over the operations from the private contractor while they searched for a new vendor.

In January, 2012, the Kansas City Pet Project began the operation of the city shelter after a lengthy search by the city for a new partner. KC Pet Project is an organization I'm very proud to be a part of.

It's been a wild ride -- but we have an amazing team with talented and compassionate staff and volunteers that have been working their butts off to create an amazing story for Kansas City. The shelter is still small. And outdated. And clearly not designed, in its location or layout, for lifesaving. But we're making it happen.

Honestly, there's a lot I could say about the changes, but I think the best story I can show is by showing the numbers over the past 7 years.

 

One quick note on the numbers:  In 2009, 2010 and the first half of 2011 the operators of the shelter logged all rescue transfers to non-brick-and-mortar rescues as "adoptions" instead of "transfers" - so many of the "transfer" numbers for those years are much lower than they should be and "adoption" numbers are much higher.

For the year, we had a total 85.7% live release rate. It was 87.1% for dogs, 82.4% for cats. Since July 1, it's been better than that: 90% for dogs, 85% for cats -- for a total of 89% live release rate. The live release rate was calculated using the Asilomar Accords and Maddies Fund formula -- however, our euthanasia numbers include owner-requests for euthanasia (which most shelters don't include).

I've opted to include just information about dogs and cats -- but KCPP is an open admission facility and takes in everything from animal control -- so we have saved more than 250 chickens, goats, alligators (I'm not kidding), ferrets, pigs, owls, rats, and snakes over the past 12 months also.

We have a lot of work still ahead of us, but the progress is certainly there. I'm really proud of our team.

I also want to thank Susan at No Kill News for the kind words about our organization.

KC Pet Project update -- November 2012

As regular followers of this blog know, in January, 2012, an organization that I am very proud to be a part of took over the operations of the Kansas City, MO Animal Shelter. The city decided several years ago that it should get out of the "sheltering" business, and instead to contract the management of the shelter to outside organizations.

After 2 years with a previous vendor, they parted ways and set up a new RFP -- to which the KC Pet Project was chosen to operate the shelter. We operate the shelter as an open-admission shelter for the city of Kansas City, MO, with an annual intake of about 8,000 animals.

Over the past several years, the shelter save rate has improved -- from 38% in 2007 to 63% in 2010. In 2011, 68% of the animals were saved, but mostly because the city quit impounding as many animals during the interim period of management.

Since January, KC Pet Project has been working hard to increase life-saving and the quality of care for animals in the shelter and I've been posting occassional updates along the way.

While we take in a host of animals at the shelter; pigs, birds, reptiles, goats, chickens, oppossums, racoons, zebras (jk), etc, the numbers below only reflect our dog and cat numbers only. So here are the numbers for the month of November:

Intake -- 517 -- 405 dogs, 112 cats

Adoptions: 294 -- 218 dogs, 76 cats

Returned to owner: 70 -- all dogs

Transferred to other shelters/rescue groups: 58 -- 42 dogs, 16 cats

Euthanized: 53 -- 40 dogs, 13 cats

Save Rate: 94.3% (for both dogs and cats)

This is the 5th consecutive month that we have had a save rate of more than 90%.

The dog adoption numbers reflect our highest adoption numbers thus far -- much of this is from help by opening up a temporary adoption location in Zona Rosa shopping center for the holidays. In just 3 weeks, we have had an additional nearly 100 adoptions from the secondary location and has been the source of a wealth of great news coverage of our organization.

For the year (through the end of November):

Intake: 6,531 -- 4,470 dogs and 1851 cats

Adopted: 2700 -- 1896 dogs, 804 cats

RTO: 895 - 879 dogs, 16 cats

Transferred to other rescue groups; 1,451 -- 909 dogs, 542 cats

Clinic out: 11 dogs, 2 cats

Euthanized: 891 -- 575 dogs, 316 cats

Total positive outcomes for the year (so far): 5,059 -- which is 1,350 more than in the same 11 months a year ago.

Save rate on the year: 84.3% (and rising)

It's been a tremendous year thus far -- and I'm eternally grateful for our outstanding staff for living this every day and for the 15 animals they save every single day. I'm also grateful for our outstanding volunteers (including several professional photographers) and rescue partners who are helping make it all possible -- especially given that we're now serving 2 different locations. It's an incredible group of dedicated and talented individuals we work with.

I'll have a year end recap, as well as a final recap of our Zona Rosa location after the first of the year....

 

 

 

 

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. 

KC Pet Project, Kansas City, MO -- by the numbers September 2012

The September numbers are in for KC Pet Project -- and our challenge of taking over an open-admission municipal shelter and trying to turn it into a No Kill community shelter. For those of you not familiar with KCPP, we took over the city contract on the Kansas City, MO animal shelter in January, 2012. Until that point, the shelter had about a 65% live release rate, and we've been working to improve on that number.

It's been a challenging month on a lot of levels, but our team, staff, volunteers and rescue partners, continue to show great progress and fortitude.

For the month, we did 280 adoptions, had 99 RTOs and 110 animals transferred to area rescue groups -- for a total of 489 animals saved for the month.

Our live release rate for September was 91% -- marking the 3rd consecutive month of being over 90%.

Our live release rate on the year is 84% -- 86% for dogs, 77% for cats. We've done 2,140 total adoptions on the year and created 4,186 total positive outcomes. This is more than 1,000 more positive outcomes than there were in this shelter through the first 9 months of the year in 2011.

I'll be honest, our cat numbers are probably never going to be in the 90% range. We are very lucky in Kansas City that our animal control officers do not actively seek to bring in cats -- however, about 36% of our cats come in via animal control. The only reason these cats come to us is in situations such as hoarding cases (which are rare) and when animals are badly injured or diseased in the community. So a pretty significant percent of our cats come in in situations where they just can't be saved.

We're continuing to make progress here in KC. It's a challenge to keep up in a shelter that is very small and not designed for optimal life-saving.  But it can, and is, being done.

A huge kudos goes out to our hardworking staff, volunteers and rescue partners who have all contributed immensely to our success. 

 

An update on KC Pet Project - -August, 2012

As promised, I'm continuing with my updates on what is going on at KC Pet Project here in Kansas City.

For those of you who are not aware, KCPP is a fairly new organization that was formed to take over the city contract on the Kansas City, MO animal shelter. We began operations at the shelter on January 1.

The shelter itself has long been a high-kill shelter, (with kill rates as high as 65% as recently as 2008)  although under separate private management, had a 65% save rate the past 2 years.

We took over the city contract with the goal of moving the open admission, public shelter into being a no kill shelter.

In August, we had a total intake of dogs and cats of 613 -- which is high for a shelter with a max capacity of about 200-250 animals.

Of those, we had 324 adoptions, 191 transferred to other rescue groups, and 87 returned to owners -- for a total of 602 total positive outcomes.  The 324 adoptions and 602 positive outcomes are both records for us as an organization.

We also lowered our total shelter/foster population by 99 animals -- which was huge for us during such a high intake month.

This, in total, gave us a total live release rate of 91% for the month of August, following a 91% live release rate in July. 

For the year, we've now had 1,848 adoptions, 646 RTOs, and 1,174 transferred to other shelters and rescue groups -- for a total of 3,668 positive outcomes. This is more than 1000 more positive outcomes than in the first 8 months of last year.  Our save rate on the year is just under 84%.

We've been blessed to have developed a great staff, a great (and growing volunteer base) and an outstanding group of rescue groups that are helping make our success possible.

We still feel like we have a ways to go as it hardly feels sustainable at this point, but we are making progress, and I'm really proud of our team at the shelter who are working their butts off every day to make this happen.

Neighborhood Pit Bull Day in Kansas City -- August, 18, 2012

Tomorrow, several Kansas City Area organziations are partnering for Neighborhood Pit bull Day.

The event will feature opportunities for pit bull owners to have their dogs spayed or neutered, vaccinated, microchipped and licensed with the city.  All for free.

Also, dog food samples and treats will be made available, as well as trainers on hand to help folks with their training needs.

Help will be available for both English-speakers and Spanish-speakers. 

I'm really excited for the event -- sponsored by Best Friends Animal Society in partnership with Spay & Neuter Kansas City. It's a great opportunity for our animal welfare community to reach out to the pit bull owners in Kansas City and be a part of helping them with their pet ownership needs.

Great program, and great work by both organizations involved.

Progress (as promised) in Kansas City

I've been meaning to update this information for about a week or so but time has simply gotten away, but I did want to post a quick update about the progress being made in Kansas City at making the city's archaic, open-admission shelter into a no kill shelter.

Our organization, the KC Pet Project, has been operating the city shelter since January 1. All of the data in this post is for the first five months of operating the shelter -- so from Jan 1 through May 31.

In the first five months of operations, KC Pet Project adopted out 975 dogs and cats, transferred an additional 775 to other shelters or rescue groups -- and reunited 390with their owners. In total, we created 2,140 positive outcomes for animals in the first 5 months of operations (450 more than in the same timeframe a year ago).  When we included animals still at the shelter, or in foster care, we have achieved an 86% save rate for all dogs and cats that have passed through the shelter since January 1st.  By point of comparison, the shelter has had a 65% save rate over the past 2 years. As recently as 2007, the shelter had a mere 38% save rate.

The process certainly hasn't been easy. Thus far this year, KCPP has seen a 26% increase in intake (including 24% increase from animal control) for dogs and cats as seen through the first 5 months of 2011. The increased intake has definitely made lifesaving more challenging as it is putting us on pace to have the highest shelter intake since 2008.

While we're pleased with our success so far, we know we're going to have to do more with summer intake increasing even higher -- so we've been ramping up our off-site adoption programs with consistent programs throughout the summer months. We also just purchased a van that will give us great ability to transport dogs and cats to these off-site events.

While it would be great to be able to pat ourselves on the back for the uptick in saves - it truly has been a community effort. More people have come out to our place and adopted. Rescues have been working their butts off to pull animals and place them in their programs. Our volunteeers continue to help find homes, work with training and socializing, and fostering. And the media has been very kind in how they've covered our stories. It really has been a community effort.

Thanks to everyone out there that has supported us, adopted from us, rescued from us, volunteered and donated to our cause. We're making progress. While the mission is not complete (and never will be), we are moving in the right direction.

Photo note:  This is the line that formed outside our shelter yesterday after this story ran on KCTV5 about a dog that was rescued after being abandoned on a balcony was brought to our shelter and the station covered our news about increase in intake thus far this year. The public has been amazing at responding to us -- and we thank them for their support.

Keeping animals out of shelters, and increasing Return To Owners

Eliminating unnecessary shelter killing is pretty easy math:  lower the number of animals that come into the shelter, increase the ones that get out safely, and then get the number coming in to be equal to those going out.

Much has been made about the importance of low-cost spay/neuter and its role of in lowering the animal population. and it is, indeed, an important part of the equation.

However, there are other ways to decrease the number of animals that are coming into shelters and I'm happy to report that Kansas City, MO made a step in that direction this week.

In Thursday's city council meeting, the city codified some changes to their city licensing program that should help lower the number of pets that make their way to the Kansas City, MO shelter, and help those that find their way into the shelter to find their way home.

The new ordinance is designed to increase pet licensing. In the city, only about 10% of all pets are licensed and they hope to increase that number. In order to do that, the ordinance does the following:

- Lowers pet licensing fees to $10 -- previously all altered pets were $10 and all unaltered pets were $35.

- Licensing includes a "free ride home" -- so pets with a city license on them that are picked up by animal control will be notified by animal control and taken back home free of charge up to 1x per year without a ticket and without coming to the shelter.

-- Lower shelter fees for licensed pets whos owners cannot be located quickly but are later reclaimed at the shelter

--- All fees generated from the pet licenses go to the KCMO Animal shelter for improved care of shelter animals.

The changes came after area animal welfare groups met with the city to provide recommendations on how to increase pet licensing. In the coming weeks, these groups will combine to launch a pet licensing campaign: "Lost pets can't call home."

I'm very excited for the changes -- particularly offering 'free' services to those who license pets  in order to make licensing more appealing for pet owners. I'm also happy that licensing is being seen as something that can help pet owners vs a punitive law. The free ride home will help get animals home quickly without coming into the city's old, small shelter.  The licenses will also help animals that do make it to the shelter be easier to return to owners.

Again, it's a small step, but a step that will help keep many pets out of the shelter, and help many to get home quickly if they do. And that's a good thing, and a good start to minimizing impounds.

 

Kansas City numbers improving, still a ways to go

On January 1, our group, the KC Pet Project, took over control of the Kansas City, MO Animal Shelter.  I'll talk more about that in a minute, but first, I wanted to discuss the evolution and improvements at the shelter over the years.

Here are the numbers over the past 6 years at the KCMO shelter:

                                2006       2007         2008        2009       2010       2011

Intake:                 10,441     10,949      8,273       7,202      7,251    6,128

Adopted/trans:  2,144        2,269       2,182       3,069      3,464    3,335

RTO:                     1,040        1,397         939           879          931        695

Euthanized:        6,958        6,769        4,912       3,101      2,722     1,975

Live Release Rate: 34%          38%            40%          57%          63%        68%

Here are some notes that will help some of the numbers make sense:

1) I've combined Adopted/Transferred because over the past 6 years there have been 3 different managers - and some have called transfers to rescues "transfers" and some have included them as "adoptions" -- so I just grouped them for easier comparison.

2) In 2006 and 2007 intake was VERY high in large part due to the city's passing Mandatory Spay/Neuter for Pit bulls (which increased their impounds and euthanasia) and because they had a large number of animal control officers on the streets.

3) In 2008, the city cut the number of animal control officers significantly and intake decreased.

4) In 2009, the city hired a private contractor to run the city shelter -- which they did for most of 2009, all of 2010, and the first quarter of 2011.  Under the private management, adoptioins and transfers increased dramatically.

5) Throughout the entire time, aggressive low cost spay/neuter programs and owner retention programs.

When KC Pet Project took over, we also got a firm commmitment from the city to include other things that would lower intake. Pit bulls can no longer be confiscated for not being spayed or neutered and animals are not to be confiscated for being over the pet limit.  There will also no longer be Animal Control Quotas for minimum number of impounds that existed for many parts of the past 5 years.

These are all great things to help keep animals out of the shelter in the first place. However, this is still a city with 500,000 residents, so some animals will continue to make their way to our 40 year old, outdated shelter. As the new management of the shelter, we're committed to finding ways to get new homes for all of these animals.

We started off with a lot of fanfare last week. On January 1, we had a small ribbon cutting ceremony and many adoptions. But more adoptions were needed. We opened that first day with 277 animal at the shelter -- 207 dogs (with a "real" shelter capacity for dogs of about 120).  Even with a solid first day, we needed animals out. So we extended our $20.12 adoption special all week long.

The public responded. In our first 8 days, we were able to find 181 animals new homes.

Success is short lived though as we take in enough animals every 10 days to fill up the entire shelter. This will be an adventure as we try to take a shelter that has a reputation as being a high kill shelter (which, until recently it was), to one that people consider coming to adopt their pets. The shelter is in a horrible location, so we will be continuing to find new places for people to see our adoptable pets. It may be a painful road at times, but success is eminent.

Preparing for takeover and a small Christmas miracle

Our group, the KC Pet Project, is gearing up to take full control of the Kansas City, MO Animal Shelter beginning January 1.  It's weird essentially starting a new shelter organization with 20 new employees to inherit a completely full animal shelter that currently has about 250 animals in it.

But that's what we're preparing to do.

In 2010, the shelter impounded 7,250 dogs and cats. Of those, about 40% were killed.  While this certainly isn't as bad as it is in many places, it is still plenty of killing, and way better than it has historically been in Kansas City. In 2009, the city made the decision to hire a private contractor to run the shelter as opposed to the city running it. That happened, and the shelter almost immediately went from one that killed 60% of the animals impounded to one that killed roughly 40%.  Still high. But better.

Our goal is to lower that still.  While getting to no kill is the ultimate goal, it may take us some time.  The Kansas City shelter remains one of only a couple of open admission shelters in the metropolitan area, and some of the live-saving infastructure still needs to be built (we are blessed to have a very strong low cost spay neuter program operated by Spay/Neuter Kansas City which has helped lower impounds over the past several years).  Also, about 20% of the dogs impounded at the shelter are 'pit bull' type dogs -- and with many of our surrounding suburbs having breed bans, they are more difficult to find homes for. 

But we're going to be creative and find a way.

One significant thing that is helping is embracing the many very strong rescue groups and volunteers in this community. While they haven't always been embraced, we are embracing them.

For the past month, KC Pet Project has employed our Executive Director at the shelter to work with the city staff to help in a smooth transition.  The shelter we inherited was above capacity. Our kennels are the two-sided kennels with the guillotine doors separating the two sides so dogs can be moved from side to side to ease in cleaning. Most of the kennels at the shelter are doubled down so there are dogs on both sides. 

While there are a lot of reasons this isn't optimal, it does give us the ability to hold animals longer in order to give them a chance at findng homes. Unfortunately, it also gives us very little wiggle room for increased capacity. 

Last Thursday night, Animal Control dropped off 30 more dogs at our shelter. We were officially beyond our maximum capacity.  But instead of doing the "easy" thing, which would be to kill for space, we sent out a plea. We put the list of dogs that were on our "short list" and sent an email to rescues and our volunteers for help. While our volunteer base is relatively small, they are outstanding, and they responded.

Within 24 hours, we were able to secure several foster homes for our long-timers, get several dogs adopted, and get several others sent to local rescue groups. 

We have a large transport coming up tomorrow, which will free up some space for us at the shelter. We also have a huge New Years Day Adoption Event planned (yes, a huge adoption event on the first with an almost entirely new staff -- should be exciting) which should help more.  It will at least give us a little breathing room for a few days.  So for now, crisis averted.

While I'm not going to completely change the focus of this blog -- I will, from time to time, post updates on our transition at the shelter. My hope is that giving real examples of our successes and failures can help others who also wish to transition their local shelters into No Kill Shelters also. 

So here is a key learning from our small Christmas miracle:

In the No Kill Advocacy Center's Companion Animal Protection Act, there is a clause that requires shelters to give 24 hours notice before any adoptable animal was killed. This isn't a pain in the butt -- this is a huge opportunity. When we officially hit our "above capacity" situation, we provided all rescues and volunteers 24 hours to pull from our shelter.  They responded by pulling enough animals to keep any from having to be killed.  And that's pretty darn cool.

We may not always get bailed out -- but we're going to try. And isn't giving animals one last chance at adoption worth it?