Amazing

After day 1 of the No Kill Conference I continue to be amazed by the people who are making such impressive things happen for animals in their community -- by making a committment to saving every healthy, treatable, nonaggressive animal that comes through the door.

In Shelby County, KY, new shelter leadership took the shelter from a high kill shelter to being a No Kill Shelter overnight.

In New Zealand, one of the largest shelters there, run by the RSPCA, went from being high kill to no kill almost immediately.

The changes came solely from having people in the shelter who cared to change the status quo and will to work hard enough to do it (and it is hard work).

There are shelters across the nation with people who run them still don't make even more than modest efforts to save the lives of animals. They think it's too hard, impossible, or not their fault that the animals aren't getting out alive. When animals are on death row, they don't try to get more help from area rescues or from the public.  We all know of those shelters. And we need to quit allowing them to get by with it.

We're close. As a nation, we are killing aroud 4-4.5 million health, treatable and non-aggressive pets each year. This seems like a daunting task, until you consider that we are a nation of over 300 million people -- 25 million of whom will add a pet to their family in the coming year.

This is very doable folks. It's not going to be easy, but it's doable.

I'll be tweeting more from the conference today -- with more follow-ups via this blog.

Comments

[Jim Crosby]

Brent:
I wanted to come up to DC but am stuck here for work, but serious question; Shelby County KY-they just suddenly declared "no kill"? OK, further questions-how many animals in, where do they go, and are they really "no kill" or are they playing "we don't kill any ADOPTABLE dogs" and the pull a fast one on the public.
Please...ask some hard questions if you can-and are willing-and let us know. Ask how many really in, how many adopted, how many transferred out, are they really not killing anything....I am so committed to reducing euthanasia for all of the animals, but am also leery because, from inside the Animal Control biz I have seen so much lying to the public.
Jim

[Dianne Rhodes]

Brent, it was nice to meet you in person. Keep up the good work!

[Brent]

Likewise Dianne.

Jim, I wasn't able to get clarifications on their numbers. My sense is that they're doing this the right way. I know it is not uncommon for people to make claims and then you dig into the numbers and it's a house of cards -- I don't get the sense that that is what is going on here. But I will follow up with them when I get back to KC and see if I can get the follow-up info. I understand your skepticism...I've seen many of the false claims too (but again, have no reason to believe that these are innaccurate).

[Jim Crosby]

Great Brent...I truly hope that they have achieved what I can only continue to work for. But I have seen the other side too...a publicly advertised "no-kill" brought animals to my facility recently to be euthanized. I made them sign them over openly to comply with MY transparency rules. Yet fans of the same facility keep stressing the "no kill" label and treat my people like trash.
What we need is to either recognize that "no kill" means none-or find a new label, like "Low kill". Or whatever. My point-let's all work towards a true no-kill society...but stop the excuses and face the lack of such a truly kind society.

[Rosemary]

I'm sure the statistics aspect is crucially important, and I can't see any way to get a proper handle on what's actually happening without persuading the big organisations to release their raw data.

There are just so many variables - how do you define "healthy" for a start.

[Brent]

Rosemary, one of the things I really, really like about the people who are following Winograd's No Kill philosophy is that transparency is essential for them and so they are usually good about being transparent with their numbers. As soon as I get them, you'll get them.

[lori hoffman]

Jim,

Stop killing animals and find them homes.

[EmilyS]

Jim is making very important points (see Brent: I'm NOT the only one with these questions!) . Supporters of the socalled "no kill" movement need to listen and stop sneering at him.

All shelters, including "no kill" ones, should be transparent. That means they ALL should disclose the number of animals that they kill (and the reasons), even if they call the killing "euthanasia".

[Brent]

Emily, there is a difference between what Jim is talking about and what your questions are.

There are certainly way too many shelters that are misusing the term 'no kill' -- or, in my opinion, using it correctly but then limiting admission to the point that they are just forcing the killing elsewhere.

That isn't what the movement is about.

Jim is questioning a shelter - which I always think is legit to confirm whether they are doing it right or doing it wrong. The reason people get frustrated with you is that you question the movement even though you've had the questions answered for you countless times.

[PAMM - People Against Miscalculating Morons]

90% of TOTAL intake is the goal - they do not get to say 90% of adoptables.

My question to Jim is WTF did you take in those animals? You have NO obligation to take in animals from another rescue/shelter. If you didn't have room for them in your shelter then don't take them in. I'm really disgusted by both the fact that they dropped them off and the fact that you took them in and killed them.

[stratobill]

When I hear stats such as yours : 4.5 million pets killed ... 25 million families that will adopt this year .... I always feel that the stats are incomplete or being taken out of context.

For instance, where did that 25 million family number come from? Of those 25 million, what percentage will be getting dogs? What percentage will be getting cats? Fish? Rabbits? These are important distinctions.

Of those plannig to get dogs, how many want
adult dogs who are over 70 pounds? Of those who want cats, how many will insist on kittens? And of those 4.5 million animals being put down, how many are feral cats? How many are unsocialized dogs?

Statistics can be manipulated to support almost any position, so I'd like to see more detail and more links to sources.

[Brent]

Bill,

4.5 million is the estimated number of dogs and cats killed in shelters every year. Maddies Fund, HSUS, Animal People, and the No Kill Advocacy Center all pretty much agree that that is well-based #.

Yes, a lot of those are feral cats -- that could all be saved with TNR programs.

Yes, a lot of these are 'pit bull' type dogs, many of whom would not be in the shelter if not for Breed Specific laws.

Most estimates would say that about 8-10% of the animals will be too unhealthy or aggressive to be saved.

The 25 million is an estimate based on the number of homes that have pets (which is about 60% of them) and the average # of pets per HH and the average lifespan of the pets.

Here are a couple of links with more information on the # of homes that are looking for pets and where they might get those pets -- which should help you out. Know that the numbers are not exact, but are in the neighborhood....

http://www.maddiesfund.org/Resource_Library/The_Shelter_Pet_Project_By_the_Numbers.html

The other is a petsmart charities study that i can no longer find online -- here are my notes from it:

http://btoellner.typepad.com/kcdogblog/2010/06/why-people-adopt-pets-vs-buy-vice-versa-research-from-petsmart-charities.html#tp

Those are good questions to ask -- but they do seem fairly consistent when cross-checked from source to source.

[PAMM - People Against Miscalculating Morons]

Let's say all the numbers are wrong and people are lying? SO WHAT! The answers are the same to decrease the killing - increase adoptions, RTO, low cost s/n options and reduce intake with good AC laws.

One thing you can do Jim is find someone take better pictures - SIX TOES - ID#A032078 looks like he's being strangled as do most of the cats. The pictures do not give me the impression its a shelter I'm going to have an uplifting experience in - the animals are being slug around like gunny sacks.

http://tiny.cc/4ubg0

I can tell you're trying to get them up there quickly - which is great for RTO. But finding someone that can take professional pictures to switch them out later will make a difference. I guarentee you put the word out on the street you will find someone that will do it.

[EmilyS]

no Brent, I have NOT "questioned the movement" except in terms of its misuse of language (though I think that misuse is so fundamental that it may cause the movement to fail). For some reason you have put me in your head as an enemy. My questions are EXACTLY the same as Jim.. who is now roundly being attacked by your commentators.

whatever.

[EmilyS]

BTW, Brent, I'm not stupid. I understand the "answers" people give me, but those answers don't address my concerns. It doesn't matter how many times I get the same answers, they still won't address my concerns.

Repetition is not an argument.

[Brent]

Emily, correct me if I'm wrong, but your 'concerns' seem to be around the misuse of the term 'no kill' by the movement - -and in spite of the knowledge that the movement stands for not killing healthy and treatable animals and only "euthanizing" animals in the true sense of the word (helplessly ill or aggressive) you continue to be upset by the name.

I don't think you are "the enemy" as much as just stubbornly getting caught up in semantics to the point that you'd rather argue them than help clarify the differentiation. It's not that hard of a concept to grasp if you resist the temptation of the large animal rights organizations to use "kill" and "euthanize" as synonyms.

If your concerns are that some organizations are misusing the term 'no kill' (which I think is Jim's concern) this I think most everyone shares that same concern and we all owe it to the betterment of saving animals' lives.

As for the people jumping on Jim, while their comments may be a bit harsh maybe, there may be some legitimate concerns. They have no pictures of adoptables on their website, they post the pictures on Pet Harbor (not Petfinder, which is what people actually use) and generally have pretty poor quality photos and no bios that tell stories about the animals and what their personalities are like. All would be pretty great suggestions for him I'd think if finding more animals homes is the goal.

[Rosemary]

As someone who's responsible for generating some of the statistics I think I can say that it's possible to have absolutely honest people who are doing their best and still get figures that are very difficult to compare usefully because there are just so many things going on.

If you take the figures Battersea Dogs Home have just released http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/08_august/02/panorama.shtml they say they're having to put down a third of the dogs they take in.

They qualify that by saying that nearly all of those are "healthy but too aggressive to rehome safely".

They're completely open-access, although they do run a waiting list - so they're not killing animals to make space to take more in.

"We" (RSPCA) have a slightly better than 90% save rate for dogs and cats, but we're not open-access, and have come in for quite a lot of stick recently for making a public statement that we'll prioritise intake. We also run veterinary clinics, so there's a certain amount of grey area where an owner might bring a dog to a clinic and insist that it had bitten someone and must be killed.

Over the whole country the best estimates (from the Dogs Trust) are that save rates for stray dogs are around 14% in local authority facilities.

Battersea's intake almost certainly isn't typical of the whole country because their catchment areas are some of the worst parts of London.

To some extent I don't think you CAN compare the summarised figures in a meaningful way without actually going in and looking at what a shelter is doing.