Good intentions, wrong focus -- redux

The folks at Pinal County (AZ) Animal Care and Control are working on a "5-year plan" to become no kill. As a part of the plan, they decided they wanted to do a test drive on the idea by declaring it "No Kill December". Shelter Director Kaye Dickson noted that December was the lowest intake month and thus, they'd try to be no kill in December to see what the struggles would be.

Unfortunately, 19 days into the month, the shelter was 120 animals above capacity. Dickson noted that "if any more dogs come in tonight, or cats, at this point, I don't know where I'm going to put them."

So now, at least 50 animals are on the euthanasia list. 

The situation Pinal County is facing here is not an uncommon one -- and I continue to read about similar situations in the news reports. I wrote about a similar situation in Genesee County, MI last August.  And the problems seems to be extremely consistent, and extremely avoidable.

The problem is not the intent of the organization, which is good, but in its focus. The focus in most of these cases is that the organization wants to make the decision to stop killing animals. But, after a few weeks, they start running out of places to put them, and quickly become over-crowded. 

If no-kill is to work, the focus needs to shift -- away from preventing the negative and "not killing' animals --  to creating positive outcomes for them. The focus needs to be on SAVING them.

If you are an open-admission shelter, in order to go from a kill shelter to a no-kill shelter you MUST increase positive outcomes. Regardless of your shelter's capacity, if you don't increase your positive outcomes, you will eventually run out of space to warehouse them. 

Any attempt to go no kill, even for a "no kill December" must be accompanied by an aggressive attempt to move more animals SAFELY OUT of the building. This can be done through adoption specials, events at the shelter, increasing off-site adoption events, increasing hours of operation, aggressive advertising for adoptions in media, social media and PR, working to move more animals into rescue groups, returning more to their original owners or calling out for foster homes. 

A look at Pinal County's Facebook page, they did finally extend hours of operation this weekend, but that is really the only thing I can tell that they've done differently other than simply not killing. But without the life-saving measures, the inevitable overcrowding has happened.

How about this for an approach for a kill shelter that decides it wants to do a 'no kill December'?

- Before entering the month, have a series of  off-site adoption events in high-trafficked areas set up for, at the minimum, every weekend day for the entire month.

- Each day, have a "pet of the day" that is a free, or deeply discounted adoptable

- Hold a different-themed adoption special at the shelter multiple times throughout the month: The 12 dogs Christmas, name the cats after reigndeer, Home for the Holidays -- there are dozens of ideas for this. Pick multiple ideas. Plan them out. Make flyers in advance. 

- Organize a transport with a major national rescue, or, find a rescue partner that will agree to take 10 dogs and/or 10 cats per week from you. Charge no pull fee.

- Encourage the public to foster a dog or cat for the week of Christmas so it won't have to spend Christmas at the shelter. It will relieve time and stress on the staff at the shelter because there are fewer animals to care for, and, about 20% of the fosters will fall in love with the animal and adopt them from you and the animal will never come back.

-- Determine your estimated intake for the month. If that number is, say, 200, then make it your publicly stated goal to find homes for 225 pets for the holidays, and then, every single day, try to come up with something clever that will help you move at least 8 pets safely out of the shelter. 

-- If you find yourself short of meeting your goals -- go to the media and ask the public to come HELP you meet your goal of 225 pets finding homes for the holidays. The public will want to support you with this.

Then, when the month is over, and you and your staff are feeling great about a successful "no kill December", decide you're going to repeat it in January, and every month thereafter. It's not easy. It's really, really hard work. 

But if your shelter is going to get to "no kill", it needs to shift its focus. The focus should not be "not killing." The focus needs to be on SAVING them. Without that shift in focus, the shelter's quest will certainly fail.

 

 

Comments

[Friends of Newark NJ Animal Shelter]

I could not agree more. Simply put you need to decrease your length of stay to ensure your intakes do not exceed your outcomes. Some shelters with spectacular leaders can pull it off on the fly, but I suspect most shelters would need to start building programs resulting in short lengths of stay. Exceptions would be shelters who already pretty close to no-kill threshold.

It would be quite interesting to hear what programs drive KC Pet Project's and successful shelter very impressive length of stay figures.

[Brent]

Newark,

I agree that it does take time to build some of the programs. We certainly were less efficient and had fewer options for them 20 months ago than we do now at our place.

Our success is largely built on increasing adoption traffic -- building traffic to the main shelter (and much of that has been done through social media, and making our old shelter seem like a better environment to adopt from that it would have been previously). We also do a lot of adoption specials and events at the shelter.

We then opened up a 7 day a week satellite adoption facility to provide yet another option for people who may be overwhelmed by the "shelter" adoption experience. Plus, it's in a high profile area that serves a different geography than our main shelter.

It's been a process, but maximizing the number of people who are exposed to your pets is critical. You can't sit back and wait for people to find them.

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000732829259]

In researching I have done, I found out the community of Berkeley set out in the 1970s to become no kill and achieved it in 2002. Everything you say is helpful but I would hope you add spay and neuter outreach and assistance programs, targeting the specific animals most likely to overwhelm a shelters's resources. In general that is pitbull type dogs and cats in my community. Preventing births of kittens will help in finding cats homes. There is still a need for spay and neuter in many communities and outreach is needed to get to the people who need assistance. When a shelter looks at which animals they are euthanizing, which is unlikely to be bichons or golden retrievers, they should look at preventing the creation of these animals in the first place. Best wishes with your KC shelter's continued success.

[Randy]

You have hit the nail on the head! Unless your shelter has infinite capacity (and none do) then you have to either reduce intakes or increase outcomes. Its not complicated! There are techniques for both as you know but too lengthy to go into here. Unfortunately, simply running around in an emotional dizzy screaming out "no kill now" or trying to "mandate" no kill without a plan while perhaps emotionally fulfilling to some actually works against the goal since it almost guarantees disaster for the effort and gives it a bad name. Unfortunately too there are enough examples of bad implementation out there under the NK name that it diminishes the actual goal of trying to reduce EU and find every animal a home.

[TINA MARIE HOFFMAN]

I dream of seeing the day when all shelters become a NO KILL! No animal deserves to die! God created them, so who really has the right to kill them, just because they are overpopulated? If the human race is overpopulated, do you think GOD would want to kill us? Of course not! He loves us all, like He does His creatures.