So today, throughout the country (check local listings), a little dog that came into our shelter at the KC Pet Project is getting national attention.
If you don't know the story, Kia was found on the dashboard of a car at the Kansas City, MO impound lot. Apparently, the car that she was in had been towed and she was trapped inside. Employees at the tow lot did not notice her inside the vehicle when it came in on April 6.
Then, on May 6, she was found on the dashboard, alive. Skinny & dehydrated, but alive. Fortunately for Kia, her previous owner was a bit of a slob, and there was enough McDonalds leftovers, cigars, and trash in the car to keep her alive for 30 days. Pretty amazing.
The story first came out 10 days ago, and made a lot of news -- getting picked up by news media in virtually every state, and several national media outlets including the Today Show, Fox News and the Huffington Post. Earlier this week, people from the Rachel Ray Show came to the shelter, shot footage at the shelter, and Kia, and one of our staff people, were able to go out and be on the Rachel Ray Show. The show is airing TODAY -- so check local listings (the video of the clip is already online, however an embed option is not available).
Kia's story is amazing, but I think the publicity of the case caught all of us off guard. As an open admission shelter in a large city, we see stories like this very regularly -- whether it's a dog that is found injured in the attic of an abandoned home, with a gunshot wound, or dogs found abandoned on a deck at a home.
Since KC Pet Project took over the operations of the shelter 16 months ago, our staff has been working hard to provide the best possible options for dogs like Kia. Whereas as recently as 4 years ago, only 35% of the animals that came into the shelter were lucky enough to find new homes, over the past 16 months, nearly 90% of them have found new homes (most of the rest would be too sick, injured, or aggressive to be suitable candidates for adoption).
It's been a fun, world-wind tour, and hats off to the great staff at KCPP who is making miracles happen every day. And thanks to Rachael Ray, who is a great advocate for shelter animals, for sharing Kia's story.
As for Kia, she is rehabbing well in her foster home where she'll stay for a few more weeks until she's ready for adoption. She's a pretty neat little girl, who has been through a lot. I'm so glad we were here to help her.
This is a public service announcement for those who are very forgetful: Sunday is Mother's Day. Don't forget your mother on Mother's Day and be sure to send her a nice card.
Don't have access to a Hallmark store? We're making it easy.
KC Pet Project has some pretty amazing Mother's Day Cards available. Buy one now (with your donation of $10 (or more) and give us your mother's mailing address and we'll send a card out in the mail to your mother for you.
Doesn't get easier than that.
The donation goes to a good cause, and I must say, these Mother's Day Post Cards are ADORABLE. So buy one, and support two great causes: your Mother (or a mother you know) and KC Pet Project.
You can order yours today HERE. Here are a couple of samples of the cards, more at the link.
Last week, KC Pet Project had the pleasure of hosting Aimee Sadler for the entire week (and thanks to Animal Farm Foundation for making this a reality for us).
For anyone not familiar with Aimee's work, essentially, she is, in my opinion (and the opinion of many others) one of the foremost experts in the country at creating playgroups for shelter dogs as a way to burn off extra energy, increase socialization, and reduce the stress of kennel life for shelter dogs.
Shelter playgroups are different than your standard dog park experience. Dogs at the shelter come from a variety of different backgrounds: some good, some pretty bad. And it's often tough to predict how dogs that come out of the shelter environment will behave around each other in a playgroup format. So understanding how to read and match dogs is essential for success. But when done well, the outcome is great.
Before I get into the playgroups experience a bit more, I would be remiss if I didn't mention a bit about the shelter experience for the dogs.
Shelter life can be tough for dogs -- and depending on the shelter construct, it can be a very tough environment for them, even under the best circumstances. Our shelter is like many urban shelters. It's 40 years old. It has one main housing area where all the dogs are kept. In many of the rows, kennels are stacked -- with smaller dogs on the top, larger dogs on the bottom. And every time a dog gets let out by a staff person, or volunteer, the dog and handler go down the row and the dogs on both levels bark: most because dogs are social creatures and they want to meet the other dog and are frustrated because they can't. Over time, this frustration builds until dog=frustration. The more the dogs get out, the better it is, but even under the best circumstances the dogs are in their kennel for 23 hours a day. While some handle this environment fine, it is very stressful for others, even under the best of circumstances.
Over the past 6 months, thanks to some volunteers and supporters, we've been able to build multiple playyards for our dogs (pictured).
Some other volunteers have instituted weekend playgroups for some of the dogs, which has been great. But with Aimee's visit, playgroups are becoming a regular occurrance, and the benefits are telling.
Because of the shelter environment, over time, many dogs develop "barrier reactivity" -- which would be a negative reaction toward other dogs when separated by a barrier (whether that barrier be a fence, a kennel, or a leash). In many shelters, it's easy for dogs that show barrier aggression to be kept separate from other dogs and be labeled as "not good with other dogs". This not only enhances the problem for the dogs, it also makes it harder for them to be adopted -- which at best makes their kennel stay longer, at worst, a candidate for euthanasia.
One such dog for us was a dog named Lucy. She is a Dogue de Boudeaux at our shelter. She was surrendered for having issues with other dogs, and after some time at the shelter, had developed a fair amount of barrier reactivity. She seemed uncertain meeting a dog through the fence, so Aimee muzzled her so she could interact with the dog, but everything would be safe. After analyzing the body language of both dogs, she opted to take off her muzzle. And Lucy....played.
Here's a video of Lucy on her second day of playgroups:
This is the power of playgroups for an open intake shelter like ours -- that dogs can get the socialization they need -- and that they WANT -- as well as much needed exercise. Aimee says that she believes 30 minutes in playgroups is about the equivelent of a 2 hour walk -- and I believe it. It also provides proper mental stimulation and socialization. And the tired dogs also create a quieter/less stressful environment inside the shelter. We also learn a LOT about the dogs, which helps our staff make better recommendations for adopters. And all of this leads to helping make the dogs more adoptable -- which decreases their time at the shelter, and overall, reduces stress. It's a huge win.
There is a lot about Aimee's playgroup model -- in handling play-types, when to interrupt play, how to handle corrections, etc. I think some of this is easily misunderstood if you don't get to hear the 3 hour presentation she gives before going into playgroups that helps define the why's. She is also very big on letting dogs communicate and work out their differences -- some of which she explains in this clip:
Overall, we're working on modifying some things to fit our particular staff and situation, but as a whole, I think playgroups will continue to make life better for the dogs at KC Pet Project. I think our staff and volunteers had a great time with it and are really enjoying seeing the dogs be, well, dogs. And it's also fun to watch stereo-types be bunked as we watch pit bulls playing with Labs, unneutered male dogs interacting well with other male dogs, etc. As would be expected when you start semi-randomly throwing 120 dogs with unknown backgrounds together, but most ended quickly, with a lot of ruckus but not much more than that. Break it up. Play on.
I'm excited about this being added to the curriculum at KC Pet Project. Over the past 9 months we've been able to maintain a 90+% live release rate by instituting programs that have proven themselves to be successful in other shelters across the country. This, is one of those programs.
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.
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.
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.
[As the managers of an urban shelter, we definitely see pit bulls that come in. However, because of their popularity, we also see a lot of adopters. Unfortunately, because of breed bans in several of our neighboring communities, we are often forced to deny adoptions because we find out half way through the process that the person lives in an area where they can not keep certain dogs. And it's frustrating, for all involved.]]>
[Well, we went to the news with our situation, and here is the report that came out of it. I'm very happy how the story came out. I often get anxious when the media chooses to do a story on pit bulls, but this one was outstanding, and definitely showed the dogs for what they are....dogs. Watch the video and click on this link -- and show a little love to Fox 4 for this great story.
Update - here's another story that ran this morning on KCTV5 in Kansas City.
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.
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.
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....
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.
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