KC DOG BLOG

Very Good Sentences...Opinions

Everyone is entitled to their opinion -- but not everyone is worth paying attention to.  From Seth Godin:

"People with a history of bad judgment, people who are quick to jump to conclusions or believe in unicorns or who have limited experience in the market--these people are entitled to opinions, but it's not clear that the creator of the work needs to hear them. They've disqualified themselves because the method they use for forming opinions about how the market will respond is suspect. The scientific method works, and if you're willing to suspend it at will and just go with your angry gut, we don't need to hear from you."

This doesn't mean you should be closed minded, and not learn from others. But it does mean that if you ever do anything worth caring about, there will be people who think you're wrong. And just because people disagree with you, doesn't mean you're wrong. Look at what they've done, and what they've accomplished. If it's nothing, there is a good chance they're not worth listening to. If no one disagrees with you, you've gravitated to the middle, where no one disagrees with you because you're not accomplishing enough for anyone to actually care that you're doing it.

The costs of no kill animal control vs no kill shelters

Last week, the No Kill Advocacy Center released a new report entitled "The Economic Benefits of No Kill Animal Control."

The report, which is 12 pages long seems to be in reponse to an article in USA Today recently that talked about how "costly" no kill shelters were for cities to run, along with the reality that this is a seemingly common thought.

So it appears that we have a little bit of conflicting information. So what gives?

There is one major distinction that I want to make between the No Kill Advocacy Center's report, and the USA Today article -- and that's the difference between creating a No Kill Shelter and creating a comprehensive No Kill Animal Control program. 

Some cities separate these two functions. Some don't.

When the two work together, they can definitely not only improve public safety, but can save lives -- and with minimal if any fiscal impact. Unfortunately, many cities try to create No Kill Shelters, while still maintaining their status quo approach of punitive animal control.  If this is the case, then yes, maintaining a no kill shelter can be costly to absorb the influx of animals that comes from the animal control side.  However, if animal control is operated under a no kill philosophy, then the two can work very well together.

Let me talk a little about the no kill animal control.

When it comes to creating a No Kill community, the math is really pretty simple. In order to save them all, you have to increase postive outcomes (adoptions, sent to rescue, Return-to-owners), and lower impounds. When positive outcomes = impounds, you are no kill. So while increasing positive outcomes is essential to success, lowering impounds by keeping animals from ever coming to the shelter is just as effective.

And that's where no kill animal control comes in.

This isn't about being negligent with public safety and allowing dogs to roam the streets freely. But is about making smart decisions that can minimize impounds.

This means not seizing animals when someone is over the city's pet limit (or repealing the city's pet limit).

This means not seizing dogs because of the way they look based on a city's breed ban (or repealing that law)

This means no seizing animals that are unaltered because of a city's mandatory spay/neuter law (or repealing that law).

This means allowing animal welfare advocates to trap, neuter, and release community cats as a means of population control instead of spending resources trying capture them and house them at the shelter.

This means that if a stray animal is caught by animal control, if it has identification, returning it home without even taking it to the city shelter.

This mean working with pet owners to keep animals in homes whenever it is feasible and possible. Obviously, in situations where animals are in abusive, or neglectful situations where owners should be cited for animal cruelty, these animals should be safely and immediately removed from the cruelty in which they live. But in most cases, animal control officers should work to keep animals in homes by referring them to low cost spay/neuter clinics, pet food pantries, or just allow owners the opportunity to keep their pets vs taking them to their homes.

As Reno's Chief Animal Control Officer Mitch Schneider says, "Don't punish people through their pets, because the pets lose".  Most cities have enough homeless pets without their shelters having to also spend time handling and killing animals with homes.

The side benefit of animal control not taking homed animals to the shelter is that they then get to focus their time and efforts on dealing with truly aggressive dogs (a public safety issue) and prosecuting cruelty/neglect cases (an animal welfare and public safety issue) that will lead to improved public safety.

Then, on the back side, the shelter has fewer impounds, so they can focus their resources on better care for the animals and finding them homes.  So all sides win.

This is why sometimes cities mistakenly think that having a no kill shelter is more expensive -- it can be -- but not if both animal control and the animal shelter are thinking, planning and acting with a no kill mindset to truly build a no kill community.

Are shelters euthanizing the wrong dogs for aggression?

Last week, Forbes Magazine had an interesting interview with Ian Dunbar -- who, by most people's standards, is one of the most respected dog trainers out there.

The interview with Dunbar is interesting, as most interviews with him are. And though I confess that I, like Marji, found his take on adult dogs a little disconcerting, there was one area of the interview that I thought was very interesting.

On the second page of the written interview, Dunbar gets into a conversation about bite inhibition that I'm going to post most of the details of here. I've written some before about Bite Inhibition, and that I think the lack of early socialization and bite inhibition is the biggest determinent in major dog attacks -- but isn't something anyone really has data for. But Dunbar's comments regarding bite inhibition and shelter dogs I found to be very interesting.  Here's the section:

Forbes: How do you deal with a dog that bites?

Ian Dunbar: The question is not "Is the dog reactive?" Most dogs, like most people, are reactive.

The question is "When it reacts, does it cause damage?"

If it causes damage you're pretty much screwed. It means the dog did not develop bite inhibition in puppyhood. And there's no way to teach dog bite inhibtion safely. There's no way to teach the dog bite inhibition toward dogs and other animals at all.

There ain't no cure. The only think you can do is manage it, keep him indoors and never let him off leash. Or euthanize him. I grade bites on a scale from one to six and once you move from a three to a four, there's nothing you can do for this dog. He's going to die.

Forbes: What exactly do you mean by bite inhibition?

ID: The importance of puppy class is that puppies bite other puppies in play and they learn that their bites hurt because they have needle sharp teeth. So they learn to inhibit the force of their bites before they develop strong jaws. If they don't learn that, the dog is screwed. There's no magic here.....

Forbes: So it's all about the intensity of the dog's bite?

ID: It's the good news and bad news about bites. It's bad that it happens, because the dog is upset and stressed and lacks confidence and it felt the need to bite. That's bad. But the good news is it didn't hurt. That's bite inhibition.

Forbes: Most people don't want any part of a dog that bites.

ID: When I met Ashby, I fed him some food. He took the food and he bit me.

When I met Claude he was going to be euthanized the next day because he had bitten someone at the San Francisco SPCA. I looked at the woman's arm and there wasn't any damage at all. So I went in to see him and started pushing his buttons, which was pretty easy. Touch his collar, you get bitten. Touch his butt, you get bitten.

He bit me fourt times. I said "Great, we'll take him." Why?  The bites don't hurt. We have a dog who's scared and reactive, but he's safe. And he's proven safe. Four times he's gone off and hasn't caused any damage.

Forbes: But most people don't even consider these distinctions.

ID: Bite inhibition is the most misunderstood concept in dog training.

Think of a human analogy: Let's say you go into a biker bar and you insult a guy's motorcycle. You can have two kinds of reactions. One can be "You'd better not say that again." That's cool. The other one is he pulls a knife and stabs you.

In shelters, I'm convinced they kill all the wrong dogs, and adopt out dogs that aren't tested. If the dog snaps, they'll euthanize it. I think --  he snaps, thank goodness he's only snapping.

I realize that shelters are often challenged in these situations. It is obviously not a good idea to send aggressive dogs into adopting homes. But do we properly make the distinction between reactive and dangerous? And are shelters mistakenly euthanizing dogs that are reactive, but safe?  I'm not sure. Would love to get your thoughts.

For more on bite inhibition:

Modern Dog Magazine: Puppy Socialization and Bite Inhibition

Dog Star Daily: More on bite inhibition (because it's so important)

Dog Spelled Forward: What are the most important things you can do for your puppy? Part 1 - Bite inhibition

 

On assessing blame vs focusing on solutions

Earlier this week, there was an interesting post on Dog Star Daily entitled "Who Killed these Dogs?" The premise of the post was debunking the old mantra of "If you breed or buy, you are responsible for this" -- along with a picture of dead animals that were killed at a local animal shelter due to 'pet overpopulation'.

First of all, I will admit that I agree with the author, that the old mantra is tired and not accurate. However, I disagree with many of her other assertions -- and worse, think in an effort to assess blame created such a bad image of shelter pets that she is making the problem worse, rather than better.

The author goes on to blame several causes:

1) Failure of dog owners to educate themselves before they get a puppy

2) Veterinarians who tell owners to keep puppies at home until they're 16 weeks of age that cause pups to be poorly socialized

3) Dog trainers for not emphasizing the importance of puppy training and actively educate dog owers they see. 

She then notes:

So those of us working in rescue are faced with a constant barrage of untrained, ill-mannered and sometimes downright dangerous dogs who are unwanted and unadoptable.  We know they didn’t start out this way and we know they didn’t have to end this way.  On a daily basis we are faced with punishing the innocent dog with death while the guilty parties who created this mess walk away.  We can’t help but think that someone, besides this dog, must pay.

We think, and rightly so, that it is unfair that this dog was created only to be destroyed by no fault of his own. We blame the breeder......With each newly relinquished, returned or euthanized dog our anger and resentment grows.  We start to resent dog owners in general and tell ourselves that this whole problem exists because people are just stupid.  They don’t know what they’re doing.  They don’t care.  They cannot be trusted.  They are not like us.

Now, there is a lot in these couple of paragraphs that I think give you an idea of the 'flavor" for the article and I think encompasses a whole lot of what I find to be wrong with it.

First off, let's make no mistake, for a dog to end up euthanized in a shelter, a whole host of things have to fail:  whoever sells (or adopts) a dog has failed to educate the dog owner, the dog owner has failed to educate themselves, the dog owner has failed to put an identifyer on the dog so it can be brough back home, and probably most importantly, the shelter where the dog ended up failed to find it a new home.

Regardless of everything we do; education, training classes, etc, dogs will find their way to a shelter -- and shelters have a responsibility to find homes for those animals if they are able to be rehomed (Most are). Often, I feel like because of the resentment toward the dog owners the author describes, I think many shelters/rescuers fail to find as many homes for dogs as they could because they lose the trust in the public, they shun the public, and it is the public who is mostly likely to help them through the adoption process.

Here's the truth: there are 78 million owned dogs in this country. Each year, only about 4 million find their way into a shelter at all. That means about 95% of dog owners are actually doing right by their dog every year.  There is little reason for such massive distrust in the public.

But here's another issue I have with the article: since when did every dog that ends up in a shelter become untrained, ill-mannered and/or downright dangerous? 

While it's true that shelters see dangerous, ill mannered and untrained dogs -- the majority are just simply lost and unable to be reunited with their owners. And many of the ill-mannered and untrained are completely able to be rehabbed with a fairly small amount of training work on the part of the shelter or rescue. And isn't this our job as rescuers to provide the dog the resources it needs to be rehomed? 

I'm deeply disturbed by someone who claims to be involved in rescue to paint such a bleak picture of shelter dogs.  Here's her quip:

If you adopt an aggressive, fearful or otherwise damaged dog without understanding what that means for your future as a dog owner, you have been duped by the rescue/shelter because you walked in there uneducated and not knowing what you wanted.  No different than what happens every day on used car lots. Buyer beware and be educated!

From my experience, the majority of the dogs we see in rescue and at the shelter are gentle, loving pets. Or sure, some are high-energy and need to burn off a little steam due to the stress (and lack of exercise) that comes from shelter life -- but nothing like the image painted by the author. Meanwhile, I'm also disturbed that such a focus would be on the proper training of puppies when most homes would actually benefit from starting out with an older dog so they can avoid the struggles of handling puppies or adolescent dogs (which are far more work than most adult dogs).  Or, that more shelters/rescues can't sell the value of pet dogs -- and that the vast majority of people don't need purebred dogs -- of course that might be difficult if the rescuer shares the same image of shelter dogs as damaged goods.

So, if we want to solve the problem of dogs dying in our shelters, we must put the focus on solutions that will work.

-- Yes, educating dog owners on proper channels for getting a dog would help (and this does include when and why buying a specific breed puppy makes sense -- and it does for some people)

-- Yes, providing training classes and proper dog training will help

-- And yes, blaming people who indiscriminately breed will also help

-- But more importantly, it means understanding that there are many catch points in the process -- and the final catch point is at the shelter. And it is the shelter and rescue community's responsibility to help find homes for the dogs that make their way to the shelter. It means not treating these dogs as "damaged goods", but giving them the proper training they need to be rehomed, or doing a better job of marketing these dogs so people realize what great pets most shelter animals can (and will) become.  It also means not deamonizing "the public" -- most of who are responsible -- because of the actions of a small percentage of them. And it means not becoming resentful of this public that is also the same group that you will hope will come to adopt a dog from your shelter.

Unfortunately, I believe this author does more harm than good in her quest to lay blame, and casts a very innaccurately bleak picture of shelter dogs in the process.

A lot of empty cages this morning

This is what the cat room looked like at the Kansas City Pet Project as the team left last night.

A lot of empty cages.

KC Pet Project is an organization that is running the Kansas City Animal Shelter and were one of about 50 organizations nationally that were taking part in the ASPCA Mega Match-A-Thon event.

I want to talk a bit about the program -- because a) I think it's a great program and b) I think there are some simple learnings here that should be applied to most shelter organizations.

First off, the participating organizations applied for grants of either $5000 or $10,000. The orgs received the money which was to be used for promoting the event, spaying and neutering, collars, etc). Every animal that left the shelter had to have a collar, identification (ie microchip) and had to be spayed or neutered and ready to go. 

KC Pet Project partnered with two other local organizations -- Heartland SPCA and Wayside Waifs and created a joint TV spot that promoted the adoption event at all 3 locations.  All organizations extended their shelter hours, agreed to do a $25 adoption fee and most did radio remotes at their shelters, brought in food carts and tv and newspaper news organizations got a press release and we got a fair amount of news coverage. Our goal was to adopt out more than 500 pets among the three organizations.

Goal. Shattered. 

In the first two days of the event (and we're all still open for business today), KC Pet Project adopted out 114 pets. Heartland SPCA, 201 (I think) and Wayside did more than 200 on Friday alone (they were allegedly still processing adoptions at 11:30 Friday night, and may still be processing yesterday's adoptions as I haven't heard a final report from yesterday from them).

We called one area shelter that was not participating to see if we could pull some of their animals to help fill some empty kennels and one of the other orgs had already beaten us to it. We have also been calling some rescues who we're usually working hard to get animals OUT of our shelter and asking them to bring some back.  It's been that kind of weekend.

And it sounds like other participating shelters have had similar success. The ASPCA Pro Facebook page last night was posting pictures and reports of shelters closing down early because they were out of animals, one reported having more people than animals at the shelter and photographed their staff in some of the dog kennels.

Obviously this is great news for a fairly large number of shelters across the country -- and for a lot of animals that have found forever homes. However, many shelters will just fill up with animals again and what can we learn from this weekend to build upon the success?  So here are some of my thoughts after day two:

1) Having animals spay/neutered/vaccinated and ready to go is great for the adoption process vs having them adopted but having to wait a couple of days to have the surgeries before owners can take them home. There's nothing better than the instant gratification of taking your new pet home to be with the family immediately (it's fun for shelter staff to watch them go home too).

2) Making the adoption process fun is important. People are excited to bring a new pet into their lives -- be sure they get to enjoy that excitement.

3) A little advertising and promotion for adoption goes a long way.

4) People love pets -- and if you give them a reason to come to your shelter they will support your efforts.

5) Adoption specials work. It's what retail outlets have known for years and the model works in animal welfare also.

6) Social media is amazing at building excitement among adopters, staff and volunteers.

7) Extending hours that shelters are open helps drive excitement and give more people an opportunity to come by

8) It is amazing what a little help from the major, national organizations can do to assist shelters in moving animals out the front door.

 Here's to many more happy adoptions -- today, and for weekends to come.