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.

Thoughts on celebrating success

    Over the past weekend, KC Pet Project partnered with two other area shelters, Wayside Waifs and Great Plains SPCA, for a metro-wide adoption event. In total, 834 pets were adopted from the three shelters, 281 of them from KC Pet Project.

It was an amazing three days, and the event allowed nearly every available pet in our shelter to find a home. 

Excited, exhausted and happy with a deserved sense of accomplishment, the KC Pet Project staff and volunteers climbed into empty kennels to celebrate the very successful weekend.

Next month, I am getting the opportunity to present the KC Pet Project story at the American Pets Alive Conference in Austin (tickets are still available, so check out the link to join us!). 

During my presentation, I highlight 10 keys to our success. One of those keys is "Celebrating Success".

Over the past 5 years I think the KCPP team has done an amazing job of celebrating our success -- and I believe it's important. Not only does celebrating give our staff and volunteers an opportunity to reflect on everything they are accomplishing, but it also gives our adopters and our community an opportunity to celebrate with us, and to be a part of our accomplishments.

People want to be a part of successful organizations. And people want to adopt from successful, caring and compassionate organizations. So celebrating success allows those in your community a chance to see your accomplishments, and hopefully gives them a desire to be a part of it. You need the support of your community ---  so give them a reason to care and be involved.

This was particularly important for Kansas City Pet Project. When we first took over the operations of the shelter in 2012 we were a brand new organization, with no track record -- that was taking over a shelter with a history of under-performance. I really think many people expected us to fail. But over time, as we've had opportunities to celebrate success, we've given them more and more reason to believe in our success and d be a part of it. 

One word of caution. Don't confuse celebrating success with telling people how great you are. People don't want to be told how great you are. Do great things and then tell people about the great things that are being accomplished and how they can be a part of it. 

 Update: It's also important to note that media also loves a good celebration. Our video filmed at the shelter after the event made Inside Edition. 

Which No Kill model is best for you?

A few weeks ago, I was talking to an advocate about her quest to try to instigate shelter change in the large Midwest city in which she lives. It seems that there is some political will to take the community's shelter no kill, and they are exploring how best to implement change to set them up for success.

During the conversation, we talked about the different structures that communities have used to get to No Kill.

While the things you need to do to get to no kill are pretty much the same everywhere: low cost spay/neuter programs, increased adoptions, strong volunteer programs, foster programs, strong RTO programs, strong medical and behavioral programs, etc, the structure for this has varied a lot from community to community.

In Austin, TX they have a very high-functioning shelter, but also have a singular key not-for-profit partner that pulls hard-to-place animals from the shelter in a very strong partnership approach.

In places like Dekalb County, GA (Atlanta) with Lifeline Animal Project, or in Kansas City, with Kansas City Pet Project, not-for-profits have taken over the operations of the city-owned shelter facilities so that the public/private cooperation was able to get the community to no kill.

In a place like Washoe County, NV, the community achieved No Kill with a private shelter opening up adjacent to the county shelter. While the county shelter handles the stray intake, the animals are then transferred to the not-for-profit for adoption and transfers. 

In places like Charlottesville, VA, they achieved No Kill when a not-for-profit entity, the Charlottesville SPCA, contracted with the city for sheltering services and worked out of a a building the not-for-profit owned. Lynchburg, VA achieved success using the same model.

In Jacksonville, FL, and Portland, OR, their transitions to No Kill Success happened with a coalition of several groups that worked together to achieve no kill - including the city shelter, a major rescue organization and low cost spay/neuter clinic. The coalition approach is the way No Kill LA is working to try to make positive changes in Los Angeles as well. 

And in places like Williamson County, TX, they achieved no kill success when new leadership took over the county-owned shelter changed its own leadership and led the community to change as a county-run facility. The same has been mostly true (I think) in Baltimore County. 

All of the different options can be a little overwhelming and confusing.  So after discussing many of the different structures, the advocate asked: "Well, which model do you recommend??"

There are strengths and weaknesses of each model to be sure, and yet the single common thread that all of them have is that they have strong leadership that has access to the resources (shelter facilities and $$$) they need to succeed.

So my recommendation was to use whatever model that could get them the best leader connected with the most resources the fastest given the players, and politics in their community. 

There are many different structures -- but I think all emerged differently based on how they were able to facilitate getting the right leaders connected with the right resources. 

Given the political nature of your community, and the resources available, which model will get you there fastest? 

Transparency, Honesty and Trust -- and their importance in achieving no kill success

A couple of weeks ago, I was scheduled to give a short presentation at the HSUS Expo on Transparency as a part of a program initiated by Maddies Fund. I was unable to attend in person, but thanks to modern technology was able to "give" the presentation via video. 

I  wanted to share these thoughts (and others) on transparency via the blog, because it's incredibly important. I've heard from many shelter directors that they are afraid of being transparent because they are afraid the public, and advocates, will skewer them for mishaps and imperfections if they allow them to see behind the curtain. 

My experience has been the exact opposite. My experience is that if you AREN'T transparent, people will generally assume you are trying to hide something. People will assume the worst, unless you give them a reason not to. And that the only way to build trust within the community is by being transparent

Here is (roughly) the presentation I prepared on Transparency for the Expo:

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Hello everyone. I'm Brent Toellner with the Kansas City Pet Project. I want to take a few minutes of time today to talk about transparency. But more that talk about transparency, I want to talk about trust.

In order for your shelter, or rescue organization to be successful, you are going to need the support from your community. You are going to need help from the community to adopt, foster, volunteer, and donate to your organization. You can't do it alone. You will need the community's support. 

But before the community will support you, and I mean fully support you, they will have to TRUST you. People have learned to not be trusting; and you're going to have to earn that trust. 

And if you are going to walk away with one bit of information from this speech it should be this:  Transparency builds trust.

Transparency builds trust.

Four  and 1/2 years ago, our organization, KC Pet Project, took over the operations of the Kansas City, MO municipal animal shelter. It's an open admission shelter that services a community of roughly 500,000 people. Prior to the shelter being privatized, the shelter was a very high kill shelter. And the city's first effort at privatization was wrought with challenges, including charges of neglect against the shelter operator.

When KC Pet Project took over, we were an unknown organization, and I think most people expected that we, too, would fail.

A couple of weeks after we took over the shelter operations, I got a frantic email from a volunteer about a dog named Barney. This volunteer had volunteerd at the shelter prior to KCPP taking over. She was a loyal volunteer, who came out every Sunday.

Well, the previous week, she had fallen in love with a shaggy terrier-type dog named Barney. And when she came back the following week to volunteer, she went to Barney's kennel first because she was looking forward to seeing him again. But Barney wasn't there. 

"Where's Barney?  What happened to Barney?"

One of our staff members told her that Barney had been adopted, but she wasn't so sure. "Was he really adopted?  Or were we just trying to make her feel better?"  She wasn't so sure.

And it's a natural reaction -- it's a natural reaction for people to assume the worst unless you tell them otherwise.

From that day forward, at the end of every single day, 365 days per year, KC Pet Project has posted the names of every pet adopted from the shelter, returned home, or transferred to another rescue group. We do it because we want to give our volunteers the opportunity to celebrate adoptions and other positive outcomes with us. And we want them to TRUST and know for sure that these positive outcomes are happening.

At KCPP, we try to be very open with information -- even the bad stuff. We try to be honest about our challenges and missteps. We explain why, and we try to explain what we're doing to make it better.

We even report really challenging things like the number of animals that died in care and about owner requested euthanasia. That's a bit scary, right?

But sometimes reporting the bad stuff can be really helpful.

When we started reporting the number of animals that died in our care, we used it as an opportunity to explain some of the challenges we faced with very young neonatal kittens -- who were the ones most vulnerable in our shelter. However, talking about the challenge helped us to rapidly increase the number of foster families that opened their homes to these needy kittens. It also helped us to afford the purchase of several small kitchen scales so that these fosters can weigh their fosters twice per day so they can notice small losses in body weight before those losses become critical. And these amazing foster families have enabled us to dramatically increase the number of these needy kittens we are able to help and save. And that's the whole point, right?

We also publish numbers on Owner Requested Euthanasia -- which is a service that we do provide at KCPP as an end of life decision (our staff decides whether or not it's end of life, not the pet owner).  Talking about the numbers gives us an opportunity to talk about the people with limited resources in our community that truly need our help, or who may live in a resource desert without access to veterinary care and need our help and compassion. 

And being honest, gives us an opportunity to ask for help - -and tell the community what they can do to help KC Pet Project help save animals. 

And the same will work for you. And when YOU ask for help, they will help you. Because you were honest, and they trust you. And when you get a community of people willing to help you, it can be a very powerful tool in lifesaving.  

And it also helps your volunteers and those close to the organization have the knowledge and tools to defend the organization outside the walls and in social media. KCPP staff seldom has to respond to criticisms in social media because our volunteers and supporters take care of it. And they help us, and support us, because they trust us. And that wouldn't happen if we weren't transparent.

Transparency builds trust. And without trust, you won't have success.

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If  want to end this by providing a few examples of what transparency looks like for successful organizations, including a couple of recent stories.

First of all, here is the link to KC Pet Project's 2015 Report and raw numbers. You'll see data from previous years there as well. 

Also, I wanted to highlight what it means to be transparent in bad times. A few weeks ago, Lifeline Animal Project made a couple of really bad mistakes.  But, they didn't try to  hide their mistakes. They owned them -- and talked about what they would do to get it right in the future.  I have a great respect for their organization, and their Founder and CEO Rebecca Guinn, and think, and hope, that their honesty and transparency in this situation will help them maintain and continue to build on the trust of the community they've rightly earned over the past several years. 

And then, this article by Austin Animal Service's Deputy Chief Animal Services Officer, Kristen Auerbach also discusses transparency:

"We don't shy away from sharing the hard stuff along with all the happy news. This commitment to transparency has helped us earn people's trust and has led to many amazing acts of kindness....Once in a while, people ask us, 'Don't people ever get tired of helping you'. We've found the answer to be a resounding, 'NO!'. What we've learned is people want to be given a chance to contribute to the efforts that keep homeless animals alive. Whether they're advocates, volunteers or just animal lovers, people want to help!"

And I'm gong to share the opposite version here. I'm hesitant to post this because the situation in Des Moines is a bit complicated. The Animal Rescue League (ARL) is a better-than-most organization, although I will confess that some philosophical differences (mostly in the types of medical/behavioral issues are "treatable") prevents them from being, IMO, as good as they could be. I'll also note that while they contract with the city of Des Moines for animal services (field and shelter), Des Moines is paying them a ridiculously small amount for those services. But I found this article from yesterday interesting because ARL continues to find themselves on the defensive over the issue of transparency. The amount of time, energy and effort they've spent defending the lack of transparency is pretty amazing -- and is one reason there is a complicated situation in Des Moines due to lack of trust.

"Trust is built on telling people the truth, not telling people what they want to hear" -- Simon Sinek

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In one final note, as a part of this presentation -- Maddies Fund awarded me and 8 other industry leaders with their first ever "Maddie Hero Award." for "leading the way with their innovative ideas, progressive thinking and lifesaving actions; Exemplifying Maddie's Fund's core values of honesty, integrity and mutual respect."  I am truly honored and grateful for the recognition, although it always feels awkward receiving personal recognition for KCPP's work because truly we are successful because we have an amazing team of staff, volunteers, board members and donors at KCPP that make it all possible. But I am grateful that others have taken note of what is happening here in KC -- and I do hope we've been able to provide some inspiration for others to create lifesaving success in their own communities. 

 

 

The long-term impact of Hurricane Katrina for pit bulls - Part 4

A few months ago marked the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's devastating impact on New Orleans and much of the rest of the Gulf Coast. At the time, I shared my trip journal from 10 years ago detailing our experience volunteering for 5 days in the wake of the Hurricane, I shared the memories that have stayed with me most, and the long term impact of Hurricane Katrina of the PETS Act -- which recognized pets as part of the family in evacuation scenarios.

And while there has of course been a substantial long-term impact following Hurricane Katrina for the families impacted by the storm, and for the communities that continue to rebuild, there is another long term impact for animals that has gone virtually unnoticed-- and that's the impact on pit bull-like dogs in this country.

But to understand the impact, we need to take a little trip back -- to what feels like forever ago.

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In 2005, sheltering looked much different than it does today -- at least in many places. No kill, as a movement, was pretty new and the impact was not felt in most places and many/most public shelters were very high kill. Many also had strong prejudices against certain types of dogs.

I'll use Kansas City as an example -- because I'm most familiar with the situation -- but also because its story is pretty typical of the situation in 2005. 

In Kansas City, the shelter was high-kill -- with roughly 65% of the animals being killed in the shelter each year. The shelter's policy for pit bull-like dogs was that if they came to the shelter, they would return them to owners and there was one pit bull rescue group in town that was allowed to pull pit bulls from the shelter. The rest were killed and never given a chance for adoption.

These polices, combined with a lot of negative media attention led to a simple reality - -unless you were a volunteer for the pit bull rescue group in our community, or owned a pit bull, you had little to no exposure to them. The lack of exposure led a LOT of people to believe only what they heard, or read about pit bulls because they had no other basis for their opinion. Which meant, that even in the animal welfare community, pit bulls didn't necessarily have a great reputation. Indeed, many of the major national groups at the time had policy papers that were disparaging against pit bulls. 

They had a bad rap -- even among many in animal welfare.  Which made the group of people who knew that pit bulls were indeed good dogs fairly small. 

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In the days following Hurricane Katrina, we began to get word of all the animals that needed help in the Gulf Coast region. Our friend got a text from a friend of hers that said "almost all the dogs are pit bulls, and a lot of people here are afraid to work with them."  Well, I definitely wouldn't have considered myself an expert on pit bulls - but I wasn't scared of them. And that was motivation we needed to head to Gonzales, LA to help at the Lamar Dixon staging camp. 

In the days that followed, our experience was like that of many others. We worked with the dogs. And, a significant majority of the dogs were pit bull-like dogs. And if you were helping at Lamar Dixon, or many of the other staging sites, you were helping with pit bulls. If you were afraid to work with pit bulls you weren't going to be a lot of help.

And the end result was that hundreds, maybe thousands of volunteers from around the country, many of whom had had very little interaction with pit bulls in their years of working in animal welfare, began working with the dogs for the first time. I've seen a lot of comments that verify that this was, indeed, their experience.

And nothing creates a more positive image of pit bulls than working with the dogs. Because in spite of this being a challenging situation for the dogs and the people, the dogs were....amazing. 

As the months that followed, these volunteers went back to their communities and began talking about their experiences -- and talking about the dogs. In addition to the stories, many iconic photoes of the historic rescue efforts from the Gulf Coast were published (some of them are posted in this blog post) and a huge number these pictures included pit bull-like dogs.

The experience of working with the dogs, the stories about the rescue efforts,and the images started to change the attitudes of people WITHIN animal welfare about pit bulls. And this change in attitudes among animal welfare groups led to some significant changes in the years that followed. 

Two years later, in an historic case, a judge allowed the dogs seized from Mike Vick's dog fighting operation the opportunity to be evaluated and adopted out. While this was through a lot of work by some key folks working directly with authorities in this case, I don't think that it's any coincidence that for the first time ever dogs from a fighting case were allowed to live when now, it wasn't just "pit bull people" fighting for the dogs, it was the entire animal welfare community.

It was the animal welfare community again that put HSUS on blast after HSUS supported the killing of 127 pit bulls that were seized from a potential dog fighting ring in Wilkes County, NC in 2009 -- and the animal welfare community began to bring some of the national animal welfare groups along with them on their improved attitudes about pit bulls. 

Best Friends Animal Society was relatively quiet on the topic of pit bulls prior to Katrina. But following their experience at their own temporary shelter in Tylertown, they took an active role in helping many of the dogs from the Vick case and have become the most active national organization in affecting policy toward pit bulls in the years since.

In the time that has followed, the attitudes have continued to improve and progress is being made for pit bulls. Long-time anti-pit bull people were forced out of high-profile positions because of their insistence on killing the dogs. Ohio, which was the only state to have state-wide breed-specific laws, repealed it's breed-specific law. 19 states now prohibit breed-discrimination from government entities.

And now, many, many communities, like here in Kansas City, shelters have not only begun giving pit bulls a chance to be adopted, but adopters, and volunteers are falling in love with the dogs -- because, the dogs are....amazing.  

And it's with that experience with the dogs that more lives and attitudes will continue to change....for the better.

 

Very Good Sentences - On-Demand Pet Surrender

Best Friends Animal Society Co-Founder Francis Battista on the idea of on-demand owner-surrender of pets to shelters (bold emphasis mine):

"Rewinding this policy to assess its underlying logic suggests that it rests on two assumptions: everyone who needs to re-home a family pet should indeed be pigeonholed as uncaring, undeserving and likely to simply put their pet out on the streets. And dogs and cats, per their legal status as property, have no more value to a family than an old piece of furniture. In fact, it's easier to get rid of your dog or cat at the public's expense in most cities than it is to get rid of an old mattress.

"Both of these assumptions are invalid and harken back to the era of municipal animal shelters being about public health or rabies control, rather than serving as true community resources for the humane care of stray and unwanted pets. They also shortchange the public's willingness to work with the shelter to increase the likelihood of a positive outcome for pets."

More from Francis' blog here. 

Two years ago, Kansas City Pet Project moved to a managed intake policy for pets in spite of many of the same concerns that existed about the fear of people feeling like they were being turned away from the shelter, or fears of pets simply being "dumped" on the streets instead.

The result has been that KC Pet Project is better able to address the needs of some pet owners who want to keep their pets but may not be aware of the resources to help them do so. It has allowed us to better help people rehome their pets themselves vs coming into the shelter at all. It has also allowed us to better control the flow of pets into the shelter to create higher likelihood of a successful outcome for that pet. And, overall, has allowed us to provide better customer service to people surrendering pets as well as to adopters. All with virtually no negative side effects.

Changing the rules and helping pets in animal shelters

There area a lot of rules in animal shelters. Over the decades, laws and rules have been put in place by communities, and shelters. Some were created with good intentions. Many were put in place with an eye toward "punishing" the "irresponsible" people whose pets came to the shelter.

And many times, those rules inhibit saving animal lives.

One of the great things about the animal sheltering movement as it has evolved (and improved) in recent years is that many are now focusing on challenging and changing those rules -- with a goal and impact of saving more lives, and killing fewer animals. 

In New Mexico, the Rio Rancho Animal Control Shelter is one of those that is making changes for the better.

In October of last year, the shelter changed the city policy on owner-reclaimed animals. The law used to dictate a flat fee of $125 to reclaim a pet from the shelter -- but they changed the law which resulted in cutting the reclaim fees in 1/2 for most people.

The net result through the first 6 months of 2015 -- a 39% increase in animals returned to owners and a 5% decrease in number of animals euthanized.

That's progress.

Rio Rancho Police Captain Paul Rogers said that he thinks the decrease in Owner Reclaim fees has helped spur in the increase in animals reclaimed by owners. And while, he acknowledges that the city now has less income from reclaim fees, it also has fewer expenses from having to take care of those animals -- and so "it appears to be a wash in the end". 

He also notes that with more reclaims, fewer animals have to be euthanized -- "So the humanity is higher". 

Indeed.

For those of you who know me, you know that I am passionate that shelters need to be in the role of helping lost pets, homeless pets and abused pets -- and need to NOT be in the business of caring for animals that already have loving homes.

This is why I strongly promote outreach programs, such as HSUS"s Pets for Life Program or local programs like Families Better Together at Spay & Neuter Kansas City, Downtown Dog Rescue in LA & Ruff Riders in Brooklyn and many more.

It's is why I also why I oppose laws such as Mandatory Spay/Neuter, and arbitrary pet limit laws, that often lead to animals in loving homes being seized and removed from those homes.

I also think that high fines, and high reclaim fees can also impact whether or not a LOST pet gets back into a loving home. And yet, because laws were often designed to punish "irresponsible" pet owners, they often get in the way of caring owners from being able to reclaim their pets.

It is not terribly uncommon in shelters across the country for a pet to end up lost, and for the owner to find their pet in the shelter, and then not be able to come up with the $200, $300 or more to reclaim their pet. And this reclaim fee is often followed by tickets from animal control that are $200, $500 etc for having a dog running at large, not being licensed, etc. The fees ad up -- particularly for people who are low income or on fixed income.

And to make matters worse, often these fines take money away from things (like fence repair) that might help prevent the problem from happening again.

So even though there is a pet in the shelter, and a loving owner that wants their pet back, too often, the pet ends up NOT going back to the owner because of  the high cost of making it happen. It's bad for the owner, it's bad for the pet, and it's bad for the shelter. And the bond between human and animal is broken.

And the pet, with a home, has become a part of the already over-crowded shelter system -- and his life is in jeopardy. 

Everyone loses.

But changing the mindset, and the rules, can help bridge that gap and lead to more families reclaiming their pets. Keeping more families together, and keeping fewer animals off the euthanasia list. And this is what we should all be striving for.

Tips on decreasing length of stay in your shelter or rescue

On Monday, I spent a bit of time discussing two important concepts in creating and maintaining an open-admission no-kill shelter in your community: 

1) Focusing on saving animals so that the number of positive outcomes = the number of animals coming in

2) Decreasing length of stay as a way to increase the number of animals your shelter can care for effectively throughout the course of a year.

The first idea is pretty simple, and while the second idea is also simple, the question may be, "Sure, but how do we decrease length of stay?"

So below are some ideas of things that you and your organization can do to decrease length of stay at your shelter or rescue:

1) Be Open. People can't adopt from you when you're closed. So step number one is to be open. At KC Pet Project, we are open for adoptions and RTOs 363 days per year (we are closed Christmas and Thanksgiving). Being open maximizes the speed at which we can move animals.

Being open includes being open on both weekend days (which should be your busiest adoption days because more people should be off work and available to adopt those days). 

It should also include being open on holidays such as Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day and New Years Day -- this seems crazy to me to be closed on those are days when people are off work. Holidays tend to be our highest adoptions days!  Be open so people can come to adopt. 

This also includes being open on all weekdays as well. I know a lot of shelters are closed to the public on, say, Mondays, as a "regroup day" after the weekend. We stared off doing this at KC Pet Project. But one day Michelle (my wife, and fellow co-founder) was talking about the impact it was having on animals length of stay at the shelter. In Missouri, our stray hold for animals is a mandatory five days (the shelter must be open for the day to count).

By being closed on Monday, we were actually causing every animal that came in on a Tuesday - Sunday to serve an additional day of stray hold that didn't count toward its stray hold time. So they were serving 6 days at the shelter without being available for adoption or being sent to rescue. This accumulated to more than 8500 kennel days just in extra stray hold for our animals.

Being open is important. Be open.

#2 Increase Adoption Traffic - Obviously the more adopters you have, the faster they'll adopt animals. But you can't just open your doors and expect adopters to come. Promote that you are there. Open a permanent off-site adoption center. Showcase your animals. Be involved in your community. If you can afford to advertise, advertise. If you can't afford to advertise, put flyers in apartments, coffee shops, etc. Hand them out at parades. Take pictures of your pets for adoption and put them on your social media feeds*. And your website. Encourage people to share them. Maximize the exposure for your pets any and every way you can.

#3 Embrace Open Adoptions - I'm not going to get into open adoption policies and practices a lot in this post -- I have an entire post on Open Adoption Policies here and another here. But if you are doing the work to promote your pets to potential adopters, and the adopters show up to adopt, you also have to be sure they leave with a pet in order for the process to work!  So if you are denying people from adopting because they don't live in the right zip code, are a minority, don't have a fence, have a fence, work too much, work too little, have a child, don't have a child, or whatever reason you came up with to deny them -- second guess your adoption policies. All of them. You are driving up length of stay for your shelter or your rescue group and decreasing the number of lives you save.

#4 Increase the number of animals returned to their owner -- The only way a pet can safely leave our shelter in less than 5 days is by being returned to its owner. While the average length of stay for a dog in our shelter is about 14 days, the average length of stay for one returned to its owner is 3. RTO's are the best and fastest way of getting pets out safely. Just increasing the RTO rate three percentage points makes a difference of nearly 4,000 kennel days at our shelter.

Get pictures of lost pets up on your website and Facebook page immediately upon intake. Scan for microchips. Check for tags or other identification. It's important. And the fastest way to move animals out of your shelter quickly.

#5 Get animals altered and ready to go immediately -- So, one thing a lot of shelters do is wait for a pet to be adopted before they go through the work (and expense) of altering the animal*. So someone comes in and adopts on a Saturday, and the shelter will then put the pet on the spay/neuter schedule for Monday or Tuesday and the adopter comes back and gets the pet on Tuesday or Wednesday. Meanwhile, that pet, which has a home, just took up a kennel in your shelter for three days.

Alter them the morning the end of their stray hold and put them up for adoption immediately.

I realize this can't always happen. Sporadic veterinary hours sometimes means a vet isn't there every day. Or, often in a shelter environment dogs come down with kennel cough and it's not safe to alter them until they've had a couple of weeks to recover. In those cases, send the adopted pet home with the owner with a scheduled appointment time for their surgery. Call them a couple of days before the appointment time and have them come back for the surgery. We have had extremely high compliance with this at our shelter (most people WANT to have their pets altered) as long as we do the follow up calls. And don't worry about the "time" it takes to make the calls -- because making a phone call takes less time than caring for that animal for 3 days while you wait for the surgery to happen. 

#6. Make a plan for your  animals -- When an animal comes into your shelter, make a plan for that animal of how you expect that animal to positively leave your shelter. Does it have identification or a nice collar? Then that animal is likely to leave via RTO.

Is the pet of a certain breed that you have a good breed-rescue partner that you can plan to get the dog on day 6 when it's available for transfer?  Start making plans on day four for the transfer (80+% of our RTOs happen within 3 days, so starting to call rescue groups on day four for conditional rescue pull is appropriate).  

Is the pet highly adoptable at the shelter (or one of your satellite adoption facilities?) then by all means, promote the pet and adopt it out! 

Do you think the pet needs behavior modification? Then start it immediately. 

But more than likely, with about 2 minutes of thought, you can have a pretty good idea of what the most likely outcome for a pet is in your shelter the second it comes in. Start making a plan for it . Sure, adjust accordingly, but don't find yourself looking at a dog that has been in your shelter for 30 days and then start wondering what the plan is for that dog - that plan should have been started 25 days ago.

#7 Shorten Length of Stay for Long-timers too -- Yes, getting animals out quickly and safely is important, but in each and every shelter there are some animals that are going to take a little more time than others. Maybe it's a breed that is difficult to adopt out in your area due to high population of the breed or breed restrictions in your community. Maybe it's an animal that is not terribly well socialized. Maybe it's one that is a little jumpy and mouthy. Maybe it's an animal that came in with a bad injury and needs time to recover. Whatever the case, we've all seen these animals that end up at shelters for a fairly lengthy amount of time before being adopted. That's OK.

The important thing is to be sure that these long-timers are somewhat few, and that we do what is necessary to decrease their length of stay also.

Playgroups and other behavior modification plans can provide enrichment for these animals while they're at the shelter, and also help them become adopted more quickly. A good veterinary treatment program can help with disease.  A little additional time spent on marketing the long-timers (or potential long-timers) can also help. The important thing is, again, make a plan -- and help these animals that will be there for a longer stay than others are there for 30 or 60 days, and not 365. 

#8 Treat fosters with urgency too -- Your foster homes are kennels space for pets too. So getting animals in and out of foster home quickly can help keep fosters for you longer, but also opens those foster homes to being able to take in new shelter pets that need help. So while getting pets into foster is good, getting them out is also important.

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These are just a few of the ideas and programs that we've implemented to help decrease the length of stay for pets at our shelter so that we can maximize the number of positive outcomes and also maximize the number of animals we can care for at our shelter. Decreasing the length of stay can help your shelter or rescue group too.

I think it's so important for rescue groups to focus on these policies also because by moving animals in and out of rescue quickly, they get the pet into their permanent home more quickly AND enable the rescue to help decrease the length of stay at the area shelter too -- helping them save more lives.

It's good policy, and good practice. And it works. 

* I am aware of quite a few shelters out there that don't do a lot of life-saving practices because of fear of what might happen to the animal. They don't alter pets before they are adopted because they don't want to go through the time and expense of altering the pet because it >might< end up euthanized. They also resist putting a pet's picture on their social media to showcase it for adoption because of the fear of euthanizing the animal. If you are afraid to do things that would help save that animal's life because you may later euthanize that animal, you are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.