KC DOG BLOG

Late Night Musings: Clearing the Shelters

Yesterday was "Clear The Shelters Day" for many shelters across the nation. The Clear The Shelters event is sponsored by Hills Pet Nutrition, Telemundo and NBC Universal, and based on stats from their website, more than 90,000 pets from 1200 shelters found homes in yesterday's event.

Bakersfield Animal Center - 8-17-19

The numbers are staggering:

The Humane Society of Harlingen did 60 adoptions.

Palm Valley Animal Center/PAWS Adoption Center: 302 Adoptions

Albuqueque Animal Shelter: 113 

Brandywine Valley SPCA: 304

Pima County Animal Center: 122

City of Bakersfield Animal Care Center: 210

And so many more....

Humane Society of Harlingen (TX) - 8-17-19

It's an amazing event. And an amazing day. Today, thousands of animals are sleeping in wonderful homes instead of shelters, and thousands of shelter workers are able to work just a little less hard because their shelters are no longer completely full. It may only last for a few days, but it will be a nice, needed break in the heart of summer. 

The value of these events is tremendous. They not only provide homes for loving pets, but provide a huge sense of pride for the shelter workers and volunteers. They also highlight what is possible with adoption programs.

I think one barrier for many shelters is that they don't know when an adoption program is maximized. Their shelter does adoptions, but not enough people come. How does a shelter grow it?

When we started our work in Kansas City at KC Pet Project, within 2 years we had more than quadrupled the volume of animals adopted from the shelter from approximately 1,500 per year to more than 6,000 adoptions per year. How? By doing aggressive marketing of adoptable pets. Removing barriers to adoption. Providing great customer service. And repeating that daily. 

Clear the Shelter events, Super Adoptions, adoption promotions, etc are usually the place many shelters start in seeing the power of these types of promotions. And research has continually shown that mega-adoption events are effective and do not devalue the pets or the homes they go to. 

Brandywine SPCA - 8-17-19

Clear the Shelter Events just save lives...and show the power of marketing, providing good customer service and involving the community into your shelter's live-saving needs and goals. It also creates the opportunity to reshape shelters' thinking and focusing on adoption and live outcomes as a primary space management tool.

And that's worthy of celebration.

 

The undeniable value of being open on holidays

Like many of you, I follow many animal welfare groups and animal shelters on social media. Over the past couple of weeks, I was simply amazed at the number of shelters that sent out notifications of being closed for the holidays. And these shelters weren't just closed on Christmas;, they were closed on the day after Christmas, New Years, the day after New Years and many for Christmas Eve and New Years Eve also. 

So, during an 11 day stretch, many shelters were closed at least 4 days, and many up to 6 during that time.

What a missed opportunity.

We talk a lot in sheltering about the need to keep adopter-friendly adoption hours. Being open on weekends, and in the evenings, when most people off work is a great way to attract more adopters. If a shelter is not open when it is convenient for them to come, potential adopters likely won't be adopting from you.

This same philosophy applies to holidays - -when families are off work and together for the holidays. Since they aren't at work, they have time to come adopt a pet. And they do adopt with a lot of regularity on holidays.

This applies to many different holidays -- especially ones like Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day, but also applies to holidays like New Years Day, and Christmas Eve -- days when many shelters choose to be closed. For years, many of KC Pet Project's highest adoption days have been on the 4th of July.

And further, animals arrive in open admission shelters every single day - even holidays. So if shelters (and rescues that support those shelters) aren't trying to get animals out safely every single day, they are falling behind. I know at KCPP, we anticipate receiving 27 animals into the shelter every day....so if we aren't getting them back out, we get backed up very quickly. And even if your shelter isn't open admission, the shelters you pull animals from are getting equally backed up if animals aren't getting out of the shelter -- either through their work, or yours.

Plus, shelter staff has to be there anyway to provide care for the animals -- why not let them get to experience the best part of their job while they're there -- which is pets finding homes?

And being open works.

The Nevada Humane Society, was open until 6:30 on New Years Eve and from 11- 5 on New Years Day - and on January 2nd, the shelters staff posted the pics of all the empty kennels on their social media pages. 

In Springfield, MO, the folks at the Southwest Missouri Humane Society chose to do fee-waived adoptions on adult cats for New Years Day.  74 cats found homes in just four hours that day -- including 21 that were over the age of four and 16 that had been at the shelter for more than three months. 

Meanwhile, KC Pet Project opened on Christmas Eve with a Kittens for Kristmas promotion -- and adopted out 54 pets on Christmas Eve, including 31 kittens, that got to wake up Christmas day in a new home. 

At Metro Nashville Animal Care & Control, their "Silent Night" promotion got 90 pets adopted (and another 20 into foster homes) for the holidays -- leaving room for an impressive video of their "silent" kennels at the shelter.

And at Austin Animal Center, they invited the public to come out and spend Christmas Day with their pets -- and more than 200 people took them up on the invitation.  The influx of volunteer support -- many who were first time volunteers - ensured that all of the dogs got multiple walks and dogs were left with refrigerators full of peanut-butter filled treats for days to come. 

Saving lives requires embracing your community. A shelter cannot become no kill without the support of its community. It is this community that will be your adopters, volunteers and donors. But this also means that successful shelters will need to embrace the community when it is convenient for them to be embraced -- which is when they're not working their jobs --- which often means being available to them on weekends and holidays.

And being available to the public on holidays works incredibly for embracing your community - -and the community will respond positively, and lives will be saved.

Thoughts on mega-adoption events with low-cost adoptions

   Earlier this week, I posted a photo of our KC Pet Project staff celebrating success after a mega-adoption event in which we adopted out 281 animals during a three-day weekend.

The majority of people who saw the photo loved the celebration photo, the idea of animals being adopted from the shelter and the shelter being (at least nearly) empty. And this is how I hope and want them to feel. 

However, as I saw the photo getting shared around social media, it was inevitable that questions came up. These questions have been popping up for several years -- and  have gradually decreased over time, But the questions are out there and I thought it was a good time to address them.

The questions are all similar to the following theme, and that is, are pets that get adopted in low-cost and mega-adoption events going to good homes?

How do we know the pets are going to good homes?

How do we know they are not just going to be returned?

And how do we know they are not going to be abused?

And I think they are fair questions -- because, while getting animals out of the shelter is a good thing, if the animals are going into crappy situations, then it sort of makes it all for naught. 

For starters, during Mega-Adoption events, KC Pet Project takes adopters through the same adoption process as during a normal day. We talk to the adopters about what they are looking for in a pet. We then try to match a pet with their home life and lifestyle. And we ask a lot of questions of adopters -- but mostly to help fill gaps in knowledge they need for the pet to be successful in their home or to be sure we're making a good match -- not in an effort to trip them up into saying something "wrong" that would cause us to stop the adoption.  In short, we use our normal discussion-based open-adoption principals.

As for discounted adoption pricing and mega adoption events -- the research and our experience says they work to get pets adopted, without the feared unintended consequences of poor care or abandonment. There has been a lot of research done in animal welfare on FREE adoptions (which KCPP has never done, mostly because it doesn't seem that a $25 or $35 adoption fee is a significant barrier), but the information on free adoptions would certainly be relevant to discounted ones.

So what does the research say?

One Maddies Fund study noted that 93% of dogs and 95% of cats adopted at a FREE adoption event remained in their homes 6-12 months after the adoption event and 94% of adopters noted a "strong" or "very strong" attachment to their pet.  So the price of the adoption fee did not make the adopter value the pet any less -- in the same way that several of my pets have come to me for free and rescued off the street -- and I love them all. 

The study concluded that "successful adoptions do not require a fee, and free adoption promotions may increase adoptions without compromising the quality of the animal's life."

Another report from Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science (and supported by Maddie's Fund and the ASPCA) noted that eliminating adoption fees for cats does not devalue the animal in the eyes of the adopter, and that free adult cat adoption programs could "dramatically impact the lives of thousands of shelter cats who would otherwise reside in a shelter for months or be euthanized."

And now with many shelters around the country actively promoting low-cost adoptions, there has been zero evidence that such adoption promotions attract animal abusers to shelters. And let's face it, why would someone come in, show their ID, and adopt a mircochipped pet that they then intend to abuse when that abused animal will be tracked back to them? It doesn't make sense, and the evidence suggests it either doesn't happen, or is exceptionally uncommon.

So while concerns are good -- we all need to be good stewards of our adoptable pets -- we also need to rely on the best data available.  And that research tells us that low-cost adoptions save lives without sacrificing the quality of love and care a pet can expect to receive in the home. It's the best of both worlds.

And it's by adopting being aggressive with our adoption policies and programs that KC Pet Project has been able to more than triple the number of adoptions since taking over shelter operations, and allowed us to increase the percentage of animals saved from 38% in 2008 to 94% in 2015. And that's more success worth celebrating.  

For more reading:

Animal Sheltering Magazine - Free to Good Home (this article also gives a lot of ideas on how to make up revenue shortfalls from "free" adoptions)

Best Friends Animal Society - Reduced-Fee Adoption Promotions: Concerns and Responses

Best Friends Animal Society - High-volume adoption model controversy

Charleston Animal Society - Fee-waived adoptions save lives (this 8 minute video is really, really good)

Photo from the 2013 ASPCA Mega-Match-athon adoption event.

More Acceptance for Open Adoption Policies

About a decade ago, long before we ever conceived of the idea of KC Pet Project, or running a shelter, or writing this blog, or me ever being much involved in the idea of advocating for animals, I had several run-ins with some of the challenges people often have in adopting from shelters or rescues.

And over the course of many of these run-ins, I had an epiphany about shelters, rescues, and how many of them were actually hurting the animals they were claiming to help, by actually preventing them from going into homes that were readily available to them.

During a fairly short amount of time:

1) My father-in law was denied from adopting. He lives in the country, and has horses. He spends most of the daylight hours outside tending to his land and horses and was looking for a dog to be his partner in his work. The dog would spend all day with him at the farm, and would sleep at night in the heated horse barn after a long day of running free. He was denied because he wanted an "outside dog".

2) Some friends of ours were asked if their last dog (a Cocker Spaniel that died at the age of 19 after a great life) was kept up-to-date on all of its shots. He said "no", and that at the advice of his vet, quit giving his elderly dog shots because as an inside dog the shots would be more harmful to the dog than the likelyhood of her getting a major disease. He was denied for not providing proper vetting to his previous pet. 

3) Another friend was an avid runner. He lived in an apartment, but ran a couple of times per day and was looking for a running partner that he would give plenty of exercise to and would help make sure he stayed motivate to run every day.  He was denied adoption because the rescue didn't believe a high-energy dog shouldn't live in an apartment.

4) Another friend was denied adopting because she didn't have a fenced in yard, and her upscale historic neighborhood wouldn't allow people to put up a fence.

5) Another person we met, a very successful, young professional woman, was denied from adopting because the rescue thought her job as a lawyer would be too demanding and that she wouldn't be able to have time to properly care for the dog.

6) One rescue group I volunteered with for awhile completely refused to ever do same-sex adoptions, even though nearly every foster home for this group had 3 or more dogs in the home and were able to manage those same sex dogs just fine.

You get the idea. Even as someone who was barely involved in rescue (or maybe because of that), I saw the strangeness of claims that animals were dying in shelters because no one wanted them, and then realizing that many homes that seemed like great homes (and a couple that I knew for a fact were great homes) were unable to adopt because they were getting denied adoption.

Then, a few years later, I was at the Best Friends Conference in Las Vegas, and one of the speakers was talking about the idea of open-adoptions. That speaker (and for the life of me I can't remember who it was) said something that really resonated with me. She noted that when they approach adoptions, they looked for ways to turn people into good homes, instead of trying to look for reasons why they should be denied from adoption.

Over the years, I've attended a lot of sessions and read a lot of materials about open adoptions, and the overwhelming theme is that all shelters have a diversity of animals in them, and that the needs of those animals is as diverse as the adopters that come in. So making appropriate matches is what is important.

It is also important to note people who come to your shelter to adopt have already made a decision that they want to do a good thing by adopting. If we make that an unpleasant experience, it is no good for the adopter, no good for the animal who needs a home, and no good for the concept of adopting as a whole. And if you turn an adopter away, they will still most likely get a pet from somewhere, but you are making sure that it most likely won't be from a shelter (and definitely not your shelter), and may or may not come vaccinated, altered, etc. And in the process, you are pushing people who WANT to adopt to buying dogs, which increases the demand, and revenue, for bred dogs. 

Now let me clarify one more thing about how I describe "open adoptions". This doesn't mean that every person who wants to adopt a pet gets a pet. Most shelters that practice open adoptions do deny adopters who just have no business owning a pet. But those people are going to be a very small minority of the people who come to your shelter. 

While many people may not know a lot about pets when they come there (that's why they came to you, YOU"RE the expert on pets, not them), they genuinely want to do the right thing (that's why they came in the first place) and with a little help are going to be pretty good pet owners. 

Open adoptions means that you look for ways to get to 'Yes" instead of reasons to say no. It means educating (when necessary) instead of interogating. It means understanding that most people  want to do the right thing, and want your help in doing it. It means removing blanket adoption restrictions that artificially minimize the pool of potential adopters and treating each adopter and adoption on an individual basis. It means that "no, adoption is not for you" should be a rarity.

Last year at the Best Friends No More Homeless Pets Conference, Dr. Ellen Jefferson of Austin Pets Alive made a great statement -- and I'm paraphrasing, but it went something like this:  "If I'm in a pond and there are a lot of animals drowning in the pond, I'm going to jump in and start giving those animals to the people who come to the shore to help me. I'm not going to ask the guy trying to help me if he has a fence or if I can do a home check first, I'm going to get him the pet and save the next one as soon as possible."

Folks, the pond is our American Shelter System. And animals are drowing in our shelters. We have the power and ability to save them, but we need to quit turning away the people who come to help us.

 For a long time, I've felt like Open Adoptions were, for reasons I can't quite understand, one of the most controversial parts of the No Kill Equation. However, recently, a lot of more mainstream organizations have begun to open up to the idea and are even now promoting it. 

Last month, HSUS held it's annual sheltering conference. While I've oft been critical of HSUS having to be drug into more modern thinking by other outside influences, I've heard from several people who were at the HSUS Conference this year that it was a completely different tone and feel and that it was by far the most progressive HSUS conference thus far. 

One of the sessions was about open adoptions. The session included speakers from HSUS, the ASPCA and from Petsmart Charities. I think it's a very good sign for the movement to have these three major organizations pushing for more open shelter (and rescue) adoption policies. Such policies will find more animals homes, and thus, cause fewer to die in shelters.

Here's that presentation in its entirety. It's an hour long, but make sure you take the time to watch. Because it's solid. It talks about how there is no "we" and "them" -- but that We are them.  It talks about "free" adoptions. Pets as gifts? What happens when policies are replaced with dialogue? There is also a lot of great research here about people in under-served communities -- only 3% of whom adopt from shelters (compared to 30% of pet owners nationally) and are open to the adoption/rescue message. This section on adopting to low-income pet owners is particularly insightful and valuable (it's the 2nd half of the presentation).

Open adoptions are what all of us (shelters and rescues) need to be doing to ensure that more animals are finding homes instead of drowning in our shelters. People want to help us. And we should let them.

 

Some interesting data on pit bull intake & adoptions in shelters

Last week, Dr. Emily Weiss wrote a really interesting blog about pit bull adoptions and shelters.

Before I go into the details of the post, I will note that Dr. Weiss has been doing a great job of writing for ASPCA Pro over the last several months including a lot of data-driven information and I would recommend putting the ASPCA Pro blog in your "must read" list if it's not already. 

But last week, Dr. Weiss wrote an article entitle "Filling up the Pit" -- talking about pit bulls, which according to most shelters are the dogs that are most likely to be "at risk" in their shelter.

In the article, she pulls data from 30 shelters (she does not say which shelters, or even what region the shelters are in).  

Based on the data she collected, Pit bulls were the 3rd most popular breed of dog adopted from these 30 shelters (Chihauhuas were #1, Labrador Retrievers #2). In total, 11,376 pit bulls were adopted from these 30 shelters, which is nearly 7,000 more than German Shepherd/Shepherd mixes which were #4 on the list. 

This isn't really surprising. All three of these breeds are extremely popular and as such, are very common in shelters. It would make sense that more would be adopted from shelters because that is what is most commonly available. It's not like shelters are overflowing with Wheaton Terriers. 

What I do think is interesting is that it factually debunks a common mantra about pit bulls in shelters in that they are somehow unwanted or not desireable. It's simply not true. We've known that pit bulls are one of the most popular types of dog throughout the United States, now we also have the data to show people want to adopt them from shelters also.

She then pulls the information for intake of those shelters. I this case, it turns out that pit bulls are also the most popular dog to come into the shelter with nearly 53,000 intakes.. The combination of being #1 in intake (by a large margin), and #3 in adoptions, pit bulls ended up unfortunately being the most commonly euthanized breed/type by a very large margin. In total 25,142 pit bulls were euthanized, compared to 7,837 Labrador Retreivers. 

 

 Based on Dr. Weiss's research on reasons people surrender their pets to the shelter, she hypothesizes that we don't necessarily have a pit bull adoption problem (I agree, to a point) but that we have a pit bull intake problem -- much of which is being driven by the difficulty in finding housing for pit bull-like dogs. 

I know from our shelter experience, housing issues are a leading driver in why owners surrender their pets. Sometimes it's due to size, breed requirements for renters, but also by a person's own insurance company denying coverage. 

This becomes even more problematic in many areas of the country where breed-specific legislation further causes pit bulls to enter shelters in spite of having owners who care about them and want to keep them.

But the problem doesn't just stop with the high intake of pit bulls at shelters. The same housing/insurance/breed ban issues that cause pit bulls to come into shelters at a greater clip than other types of dogs also impact a shelter's ability to adopt them back out on the back side -- as many potential adopters will not be able to adopt a pit bull for the same reason the dogs ended up in the shelter in the first place.

In that way, I also believe that we also have a major pit bull adoption problem as well. Then tack on some shelter-specific policies that may preclude pit bulls from adoption, or a false belief by a shelter that adopters aren't looking for them (which often results in really bad profile descriptions).

It's a complex circle to be sure, but one that is infinitely solveable if we focus on what the data tells us, which is this:

1) Pit bulls are very popular dogs. People want them. People will adopt them. We should treat them accordingly.

2) Pit bulls enter shelters at a higher rate than other dogs. Obviously pet retention programs are a must, but what breed specific things cause pit bulls to enter shelters at a higher rate? 

Just raw numbers would be one factor - -the high number of pit bulls in general would be why there are so many in shelters (the same is also true for Labs & Chihuahuas). Restrictive housing  & insurance policies, laws targeting breeds, etc would also be a factor. 

This would call for eliminating breed bans and other breed specific policies. It would call for the blanket removal of breed-specific landlord policies, insurance requirements and home owners association rules.

And it would call for elimination of breed-specific adoption policies that make pit bulls harder to adopt and artificially prevent pit bulls from finding homes when they inevitably do make it to the shelter.

So in many ways, we still have a pit bull adoption issue as well. Because as long as there are more coming in, than going out safely,  there is the need for us to come up with innovative solutions to finding more of them homes. Many shelters are doing this already, but many are not which is helping contribute to the problem.

It's all inherently manageable, but it takes focusing on the data to help drive our decision-making practices. 

Love to get your thoughts. 

 

 

 

KCPP Opens Second satellite adoption location

When you read information from different people about how to increase adoptions, one of the first things that people will say is to do off-site adoptions.

While, generally I agree with doing off-site adoptions (because, more adoptions are almost always better), we have struggled to move a high volume of adoptable animals at off-site events.

However, the basic notion of off site adoptions is to take the animals TO the people, not just make people come to you.

One route that we've found extremely beneficial is by making a permanent off-site location by opening a permanent satellite adoption center at the Zona Rosa shopping center. In 2013, this 2,000 square foot adoption center handled more than 1600 adoptions for KC Pet Project. 

Well, the news has gotten even better. Over the weekend, KC Pet Project opened its SECOND retail adoption center -- this time as a full-sized adoption center inside a Petco Store. I couldn't be happier about this new location. First of all, the space is amazing, and at 2,000 square fee and offers plenty of housing for cats & dogs, a meet and greet area, and an indoor play area.  I really want to thank Petco for this amazing space. This is a fairly new concept for Petco, I think there are still less than 10 of these locations inside stores, but they are great.  I also think they will be mutually beneficial as I think not only will the adoption center increase exposure for our adoptables, but I think we will help drive traffic to their store as well.

We had a great opening weekend -- with nearly 20 pets being adopted in the first 2 days we were open.  And I'm hopeful that the early success will translate into even more forever homes being found for the animals of KCPP. 

And here's a short video that was also shot at our new location.

Also, the news stations made it out -- and here is a great report from Fox 4 KC that covered our grand opening (thanks Fox 4!).

This is a great opportunity for us, and one that I highly recommend for anyone looking to adopt out more animals from their shelter. A special thanks to Petco for making it possible.

On imagery, adoption events and celebrating success

You may have seen this picture already. According to Facebook, nearly 200,000 people have.

But I'm sharing with a bit of commentary.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of presenting at the Best Friends No More Homeless Pets Conference about the s tory of KC Pet Project. 

As a part of my presentation, I featured 11 things that I felt our organization has done very well and has been a big part of our success. Four of them are represented in this photo. 

1) The power of adoption events -- this photo was taken last night, after a 3 day long ASPCA Mega-Match-A-Thon event. During the 3 day weekend, we partnered with two other area shelters. KCPP alone adopted out 228 pets in the matter of 3 days. In total, more than 700 pets found homes in our community. Events create momentum and get animals into homes. Animals in homes saves lives.

2) Getting everyone on the bus -- it's incredible to have an entire team working to save lives. Whether it's asking the morning cleaning crew to come in at 3 am to clean kennels so we can open earlier, or our front lines adoption team, or our veterinary team working overtime to get all animals altered, or our social media/promotions team, everyone has to be involved and be on board with saving lives. This is a big part of our team. But it's definitely not all of them. 

3) Celebrating Success -- People like to support successful organizations, and staff needs to take time to celebrate success. When you adopt out 228 animals in 3 days, that's a cause to take time to celebrate.

4) The power of positive imagery -- people love positive stories. Share them. And share them visually. This picture tells an amazing story -- of a happy (and worn out) staff, of empty kennels, and lives saved. 

It was a good weekend. 

One key that isn't shown in this picture, is the importance of volunteers. Our volunteer group stepped up big time to make sure every adopter had someone working with them, to have great, easy to digest bios on the kennels, and overall just provided a tremendous amount of support for us all weekend. Thank you volunteers. We couldn't do it without you.

Note #1: Remy, the dog in the picture, is actually owned by one of our staff members and was the mascot of our 2012 Mega Match-a-Thon. She came back to visit and celebrate with us. Don't feel sorry for this dog, I guarantee she's spoiled.

Note #2: I have no idea what Matt is doing on top of the kennels. 

Meeting your match

This weekend, Kansas City Pet Project, and 2 other area shelters, are a part of the ASPCA Mega Match A Thon. It has been an amazing event for us in the past and this year appears to be no different. On Friday, day 1 of our 3 day event, we did 81 adoptions -- getting us well on our way to our goal of 200 over the course of the weekend.   81 surpasses our single day adoption record of 77 that we did on the 4th of July 2012. 

One of the many challenges in pulling off a big adoption event like this is that we have a lot of adopters come in, and a lot of volunteers helping these adopters. That's not the problem, except that sometimes it's a challenge for volunteers (and staff, or me for that matter) to make good matches between dogs and adopters because they don't know the personalities of all 300 dogs on sight (and we rotate animals through on average of every 14 days, so they're not there for long usually). 

So a group of our volunteers made "key cards" to help peple make their matches. 

The cards are a fun way to help adopters quickly determine important things like energy level, personality, ability to live with cats, children and other dogs -- so that people can quickly identify pets that will fit their wishes and lifestyle.

As we like to say, we have a dog for just about everyone, but not every dog will work for everyone.

It was really fun, and impressive to watch the adopters walking through the kennels yesterday with their "key cards" as they looked for the match for their family. 

And in the spirit of "meeting your match" I thinks this was a great way to make adopting a dog easier, more fun, and more streamlined.

Thanks to our awesome volunteers who helped put these together. It was no small task. But their benefit is certainly being seen in the adoption numbers this weekend.

 

Good intentions, but the wrong focus

Last monht, the Genesee County, MI Animal Control Department Shelter made the declaration that they were going to "end routine euthanasia" at the shelter. In fact, they were so serious about the 'no kill' declaration that euthanasia there cannot take place without a court order or written instruction from a veterinarian. 

However, a month into their directive, the shelter is overwhelmed with animals, turning away pets, and suffering from over-crowding.

This isn't the first time I've seen something like this happen, and no doubt won't be the last. And while I applaud the intentions of the shelter in ending the killing of animals at the shelter, their focus is wrong.

The focus should not be on ending euthanasia -- it should be on saving them all.

It's a subtle difference, but important. From my experience, the focus of "ending euthanasia" sets up a mindset of looking for space at the shelter to put more animals when they come in. "We can't kill them, so we have to find somewhere to put them". Inevitably, the result is overcrowding, lack of space, etc. Exactly what Genessee County is experiencing here.

However, when the focus in on saving them it, changes the mindset entirely. Instead of focusing on where to put the animals, the focus becomes: How do I get more adopted?  How do I move more to rescue?  How do I get them treated? What foster home can they stay in while they get better? How do we get more out humanely and alive?

It's a subtle difference, but an important one. And in my experience, focusing on saving a lot of lives is far more effective as a strategy than focusing on how to just not euthanize them. 

KC Pet Project makes retail adoption space permanent

Back in November, KC Pet Project, an organization that I am proud to be a part of, opened a retail adoption center in a Kansas City, Northland Shopping Center called Zona Rosa. 

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.