An Overnight Success

Late last week, Nathan Winograd posted a letter that he received from the Upper Peninsula Animal Welfare Shelter in Marquette, MI (UPAWS -- this organization was formerly called the Marquette County Humane Society but recently changed their name because people thought they were associated with HSUS, which they are not).

In the letter from the director at UPAWS, (a completely open admission shelter that has several city contract), they happily reported that in 2007, the shelter made the decision to try No Kill. The shelter was in dire financial problems, and from 1999 to 2006 they had an average Kill Rate of 60%.

In 2007, the implemented many of the changes from the book Redemption, including:

* Shelter hours open to the public increased from 5 to 7 days

* The shelter was cleaned and painted to make it more inviting to the public

* Improved staff interactions with the public

* Expanded use of foster homes

* Greater efforts put on rehabilitating animals

* Pet sponsoship programs that allowed for reduced adoption fees

* Implemented feline leukemia testing

* Increased the advertising of animals

* Began spay/neutering adoptables sooner so they could go to a home sooner

* Began a transfer program with other shelters/rescue groups

* Began offsite adotpions

* Better updates of the website with photos, videos and bios -- also began crosslisting on Petfinder

* Better integration into the community

In their fiscal year, 2008/2009, the shelter saved 92.2% of all animals, and 93.8% in 2009/2010.  The 6-8% that are killed are now all hopelessly ill, or too aggressive to be rehabilitated and rehomed safely.

So in one year, the shelter went from killing 60% of the animals they impounded, to killing less than 8% - because during a time of financial difficulty for the shelter, they implemented different thinking. The change was almost overnight.

This type of turnaround is far from unprecedented -- as a similar turnaround occurred in St. Louis earlier this year when the city shelter was only adoption out 300 dogs a year prior to a philosophy change, and then, just overnight, began adopting out 120 per MONTH (so about 5x the save rate as before).  The same turnaround is true in Halifax Nova Scotia.

I think the great thing about their letter is that it details a lot of the thought process behind the then-scary decision to go no kill.  They challenged a lot of traditional thinking, and took a leap of faith - -and they, and more importantly the animals, were rewarded for it.

The author of the letter writes about their decision to go no kill:

"Like so many shelters, we were operating with an administrator that had been with us for over 20 years who was extremely resistant to change. Outdated policies were built on myths and fallacies....We were afraid that if changes were made and not supported by the community, the result would be that animals would have nowhere to go and we were their only and final hope."

While the process was all still scary, the positive results more than kept them motivated:

"Although we were still fearful, the results spoke for themselves and we realized we could save lives and do it without condemning animals to fates 'worse than death' as we had been routinely warned. As more animals went into homes instead of garbage bags, the direction we had chosen to take was validated and many of the fears and premises we had based our policies on were proven invalid."

The end result has been more animals saved, and a community that has been more than will to provide the support necessary to keep the changes in place.  Awesome.

Your shelter too can end the killing.  And while no one is promising that it will be easy, maybe the hardest part of the equation is making the decision to ignore the archaic old school "this is how we've always done it" and implemented the types of changes that have proven to work. Even if you don't feel like you can become no kill, the solutions to killing fewer are still the same -- and it is your moral obligation to do everything you can to end the killing.

And the number of success stories is growing....and the first step is  to ignore old thinking and make the decision to take the first step.

For more on the success of UPAWS: YesBiscuit! - UPAWS: Doing it

Comments

[Toocutedobs]

These are great ideas and I am very happy to hear this success story. I am sharing this story and letter with my volunteer group and off to Amazon to find the book Redemption. Thanks again!

[Robert Garnett]

I'm not from Missouri but to convince my local shelter to become "No Kill" I need more factual data. It's not enough to say it can happen over night. A detailed before and after of each step of the"No Kill Equation" is needed for at least one of these successful no kill shelters. Perhaps the Maddie's Fund could finance one. As for the Nova Scotia SPCA they are trying to become"No Kill" over a 3-5 year time frame. This is a worthy and reasonable goal. However, they,in the beginning at least,no longer perform the A/C contract for Halifax and are not as"Open Admission" as the were in the past. They support CARMA a TNR rescue group but do no TNR of their own(something which appears quite common in all no kill shelters).While their decision to attempt to become "No Kill" is the correct one to suggest it is easy and can happen over night is disingenuous and an insult to all the hard working people who are where the rubber meets the road everyday. If it's that easy "Show me" with a detailed before and after that encompasses not only the the no kill shelter but the effects on all other shelters in the immediate area(especially the intake numbers before and after of all area shelters) When Mike Fry says his shelter is not yet "Open admission" then it seems to me these over night changes are a pipe dream, propaganda or out right lie.

[Robert Garnett]

One more thing re Nova Scotia SPCA. They are trying to become "No Kill" in all 11 of their locations throughout the entire Province.

[No_apathy]

What do you suggest for a county shelter, or one that must accept animals regardless of capacity? The no-kill shelters in my area can turn away animals if there is not enough room (which is almost always the case) and so the animals end up at the county shelter who must take them in. Obviously, there is not an unlimited amount of space and funds to house all of the animals that come in. So what is the solution? My county shelter already does much of what was bullet-pointed on the list above, but there are a few things listed there that they can work on (off-site adoptions being a key one, I think). What else should they be working on? What should I, as a community member, be doing to help?

[Brent]

Robert,

Did you read the entire letter from UPAWS? They did highlight a lot of the before and after. And yes, it took them the better part of a year to implement the majority of the changes - -but once they had all of the programs in place, they were, indeed, no kill. The results in St. Louis were almost immediate. A lot of the success seems to hinge on what programs are already in place and which ones aren't....for instance, if all you need to do is having more consumer-friendly hours, a more inviting shelter, and off-site adoptions, the change can be overnight and dramatic. If your community still needs to set up a low cost/no cost spay/neuter clinic, the changes will take longer.

There's a great piece done by the Nevada Humane Society that details their quest to get to No Kill that is worth reading here:

http://www.nokilladvocacycenter.org/pdf/HowWeDidItNHS2007.pdf

If you want more details, I think that a good next step would be to call Bonnie Brown at the Nevada Humane Society -- she's just awesome to talk to on this topic.

[Brent]

No apathy,

Obviously it's tough to provide much feedback on what else you can push them to do without knowing the specifics of what is going well and what still needs to be done in your community.

There may be things to change at the county shelter - there may also be a need to push some of the no kill shelters to do more (if they are not doing everything they should be doing to maximize adoptions, they should not be let off the hook and continue to push animals onto others).

I'd be happy to provide a few thoughts and resources for you -- feel free to email me directly and we can discuss. A link to my email can be found directly under my picture in the upper left of this page.

[Bill LeFeuvre]

Hi Brent, the sign in using facebook is not working apparently, but I just wanted to ask you if you have any more information on the Halifax SPCA, or any other cities that are No Kill in Canada besides Calgary.

Thanks,

Bill from Justice for Bella

[Brent]

At this point, not that I'm aware of Bill.

I think Typepad hasn't been interfacing well with Facebook lately. I suspect Facebook's recent homepage changes are to blame. Hopefully it will all get sorted out soon.